Private home prices will finally hit bottom in Q4: report

The long wait is about to be over.

Private residential prices are expected to hit bottom in the fourth quarter of the year, according to PropertyGuru’s property outlook report for the second half of the year.

This forecast is hinged on the fact that transaction volumes have plateaued in the first two quarters of the year while prices have flat-lined in the first half of the year.

“There is a strong likelihood that [prices] will stabilize in the next six months to arrive at a ‘bottoming-out’ point. Looking at the data collected, we say that private property prices will contract by an additional 2 to 4 percent in the second half of the year, to reach an overall decline of 4 – 6 percent in 2015,” PropertyGuru said.

“The total volume of transactions recorded for Q1 and Q2 are 2,655 and 4,104 units respectively. Following this trend, we foresee that sales activity will also remain flat for Q3 to register 2,000 – 3,000 units on average with a possible marked improvement towards Q4 when 3,500 - 4,500 units will be sold. In overall, we expect the total number of transactions in 2015 to trend downwards by at least 20 percent from 2014 figures to close with 9,000-11,000 units,” the report added.