Housing rents dropped 10.3% versus August 2013 peak

But rental volumes inched up.

Rental prices for HDB flats softened 0.6% MoM in August 2016 and 4.0% YoY in the same month a year ago.

According to SRX Property Price Index for HDB Rentals, rents for HDB 3 Rooms, HDB 4 Rooms, HDB 5 Rooms and Executive slipped 0.4%, 0.6%, 0.1% and 1.6% respectively.

“Rents in August 2016 were down 10.3% compared to its peak in August 2013,” SRX revealed.

Meanwhile, HDB rental volume inched up 0.3% to 1,719 flats in August compared to that in July. On a full year basis, however, rental volume decreased by 4.1% in August 2016 from August 2015.

Like HDB rents, non-landed private rents also crept down 0.6% in August. The largest slump was in units in OCR with 1.5% decline. Rents in RCR also dropped 0.6% while rents in CCR climbed 0.5%.

“Year-on-year, private rents in August 2016 were down by 4.7% from August 2015. In individual sectors, CCR, RCR and OCR posted 0.6%, 5.7% and 7.1% year-on-year decrease in price, respectively. Rents in August 2016 was 17.2% down compared to its peak in January 2013,” SRX data showed.

The volume of non-landed private rents last month went up 3.4% to 4,595 units as against the 4,443 units rented in July 2016. Year-on-year, rental volume in August 2016 was 18.1% higher than 3,892 units rented in August 2015, SRX added.