Luxury Home Prices To Fall 32% By 2010: Nomura

Source : The Business Times, March 27, 2008

It says sector has risen too fast relative to rental expectations.

TAKING a bearish stance on Singapore’s residential sector, Nomura Research expects luxury home prices to slide a staggering 32.3 per cent from their 2007 peak between now and 2010.





















Average prices in the luxury segment will fall 16.9 per cent in 2008, 10.3 per cent in 2009 and 9.3 per cent in 2010 as rental growth slows and yields are reappraised, Nomura says in a report.

Luxury residential prices have risen too fast relative to rental expectations, the report says.

‘Sentiment in the market has deteriorated rapidly - asset prices look to have fallen by about 5 per cent over the first two months of the year, with falls of up to 15 per cent in some non-prime locations,’ Nomura analysts Tony Darwell and Daniel Raats say.

‘We see asset prices being driven lower by marginal speculative sellers amid low transaction volumes and higher unsold pre-sale inventories.’

These factors will add up to a major correction - but not a crash - with a 2010 average price of $1,847 per square foot, marginally higher than $1,811 psf in the 1996 peak and 22.4 per cent above the 2001 peak of $1,508 psf. The mass market will not be immune from falling prices amid rising new supply, Nomura believes. ‘Mass residential prices appear on a firmer footing, supported by rental growth and prevailing yields,’ its analysts say.

‘However, the advent of new supply and the resultant increase in rental availability in prime locations is likely to see demand that was once displaced to ‘non-core mass market’ locations returning to prime districts, hurting non-core rents and ultimately mass market prices.’

As a result, mass residential prices will remain flat in 2008, climbing just 0.5 per cent, Nomura believes. And as new supply is completed in the prime districts, it expects prices to fall 10.3 per cent in 2009 and 10.1 per cent in 2010 - a total fall of some 19.4 per cent from the 2008 peak.

In view of this, the firm is maintaining its bearish stance on Singapore residential property and says the market will move swiftly from a ’state of denial’ to the realities on the ground.

Residential rents are likely to remain firm in the short term, given the low vacancy rate, Nomura reckons. But rising new supply is likely to cap rental gains from the second half of this year. Nomura forecasts that the vacancy rate will rise from 5.7 per cent at end-2007 to 8.2 per cent at end-2010.

Average rents are expected to peak in 2008, rising five per cent year-on-year to $3.64 psf per month, after rises of 14.1 per cent year-on-year in 2006 and 41.2 per cent year-on-year in 2007, Nomura says. But with supply on the rise, rents will ease 10.3 per cent year-on-year in 2009 and 15.7 per cent year-on-year in 2010.