Will there be a silver lining in residential property supply in 2017?

Overall vacancy in private housing is to peak at 12.6% in 2017.

There could be a budding supply-led recovery in selective property sectors which include residential spaces, UOB Kay Hian foresees.

Their analysis of unsold private residential inventory indicates that 2018 is likely the year where vacancy could reverse its upward trend after peaking this year, as supply tapers.

"We expect overall private housing vacancy to peak at 12.6% in 2017 before fundamentals begin improving in 2018 (12.5% vacancy) to 2020 (11.1% vacancy)," the research house noted.

It furthered, "This will be propelled by tapering private residential supply, as even we forecast muted residential demand of about 8,200 units p.a. from 2015 to 2020, by incorporating conservative population growth estimates at a CAGR of 1.2%."

As of 3Q16, unsold inventory, including completed units, of 27,894 units was near trough levels, based on URA data stretching back to 1999. 4Q16 URA flash estimates indicate slower qoq decline, with the private residential price index down 0.4% qoq compared with 3Q16’s 1.5% qoq contraction. The flash estimates also indicate a slower decline in private home prices for 2016 (-3.0%) compared with 2015 (-3.7%).

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia