HDB Resale Prices Surge in Q3, Rising 2.5%; Over Half of Flats Now Sold for S$600,000

Strong demand and limited supply drive momentum and higher sales volume in the public housing market.

In the third quarter of 2024, Housing and Development Board (HDB) resale prices surged by 2.5%, fueled by robust demand and tight supply conditions, including interest in Gelang condos. This increase follows a 2.3% rise in Q2 and surpasses the 1.3% growth recorded in the same period last year, according to HDB flash estimates released on October 1.

Christine Sun, chief researcher and strategist at OrangeTee Group, noted that this is the fastest growth since Q3 2022, when prices rose by 2.6%. The transaction volume of resale flats also saw a significant year-on-year increase of 20%, reaching 8,035 units by September 29.

Wong Siew Ying, head of research and content at PropNex, highlighted that Q3 2024 is one of the strongest quarters for the public housing resale market since Q3 2021, which saw 8,433 transactions.

A record number of million-dollar transactions were recorded in Q3, with 328 deals, up from 236 in Q2 and 128 in Q1, according to Sun. In the first nine months of 2024, 747 flats were sold for over a million dollars, compared to 469 such sales in the whole of 2023. Lee Sze Teck, senior director of data analytics at Huttons Asia, expects million-dollar flat sales to likely exceed 1,000 this year.

While million-dollar flats remain a small portion of overall sales, the rest of the market is catching up. Wong from PropNex pointed out that flats sold for more than S$600,000 now make up more than half of all transactions, up from 45.7% in the previous quarter.

Huttons' Lee reported that the average price of all room types increased, with four-room flats seeing the highest average price rise at 3.4% to S$638,205, and five-room flats the smallest at 1.5% to S$734,488. Overall, the average price of resale flats rose by 2.9% to S$629,856.

The Q3 increase brings the price growth for the first nine months of 2024 to 6.8%, outpacing the 4.9% growth for the entire year of 2023. Transaction volume for the year so far stands at 22,455 units, 11.2% higher than the 20,188 units resold in the same period last year, according to Lee.