Private Homes: Rents Up 10.4% In 2nd Quarter

Source : The Straits Times, Sat, Jul 28, 2007

ALL private home owners have good reason to celebrate these days, but landlords should really pop the champagne - while their tenants should drown their sorrows.

Rents rose at an unprecedented rate in the April to June period, outpacing home prices which were far from sluggish.

Official figures showed yesterday that rents jumped 10.4 per cent in the quarter, trumping the 7.6 per cent rise in the first three months of the year. They are now 31.2 per cent higher than a year ago.

This is the highest quarterly and yearly growth since the Government made rental data public, said property firm Knight Frank. It is also the first time private home rents have shown double-digit growth in a quarter, it added.

Rents this year have gone up 18.7 per cent, compared to only 14.1 per cent in the whole of last year, added consultancy CB Richard Ellis.

More important, rents rose across the board, according to new Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) figures yesterday.

Although the core central region still led the pack with a 12 per cent jump over the first quarter, the rest of Singapore was not far behind.

Rents in the city fringe areas went up 10 per cent while those in suburban districts were just behind with a 9.4 per cent rise.

Knight Frank's latest data shows that homes in the East Coast, Thomson and Bishan areas saw rents rise by 10 to 12 per cent, matching the pace in the prime districts.

But while landlords enjoy the bubbly, their tenants are far from happy with surging rents becoming a source of concern among foreign companies bringing in growing numbers of expats.

Government releases more quarterly data on rental rates

Video Link - http://tinyurl.com/22fqj6

To help tenants get a better idea of the market, the Government yesterday released data on median home rentals, breaking it down for the first time by project.

This allows potential tenants to compare median rentals - that is, the level at which half the rentals are higher and the other half lower - of individual condominiums.

The figures showed that The Pier at Robertson, for instance, commands a median monthly rental of $6.30 per sq ft (psf), or $3,150 for a 500 sq ft unit. At the other end of the spectrum, Neptune Court has median monthly rentals of $1.56 psf, or $1,560 for a 1,000 sq ft apartment.

This new data is available on the URA website. The agency also took pains to point out that while median rents overall rose to $2.17 psf per month, there were 'a significant number of properties which were rented out at below $1.50 psf per month'.

Also, while rents are soaring, they are still some 21 per cent lower than the 1996 high, said Knight Frank.

The key reason for the rental rebound is the slew of collective sales, said experts. And as more and bigger estates are torn down, rents can be expected to surge further as displaced owners and tenants look for hew homes.

Similarly, private home prices are set for a good run.

They jumped 8.3 per cent in the second quarter to hit a level not seen since 1997. But what raised eyebrows was that prices of non-landed homes in the city-fringe areas outpaced those in red-hot prime districts.

Even in suburban areas, prices climbed 7.2 per cent - well above the 2 per cent rise in the previous quarter.

Perhaps most significantly, prices of completed homes rose more than those of uncompleted ones for the first time in at least two years.

This is a sign that the strong price rebound is due to genuine buying demand, said property consultants. Traditionally, prices of uncompleted homes tend to lead price increases because more people want to buy new homes.