‘Singapore luxury home prices set to recover’

Bloomberg

Singapore’s luxury home prices, which have been the worst hit by the government’s property curbs in recent years, are finally showing signs of a recovery, according to developer Guocoland Ltd.
High-end home sales in the city-state had been on an upswing even before the government in March eased some of its cooling measures in place since 2009, according to Cheng Hsing Yao, group managing director at Guocoland. The changes in March may have added more fuel to the buying sentiment, he said.
“The change in sentiment wasn’t caused by the tweaking alone,” Cheng said in an interview in Singapore. “The tweaking has contributed but sales for our projects started picking up toward the end of last year.”
Singapore-listed Guocoland is part of Malaysia’s Hong Leong Group, a Kuala Lumpur-based conglomerate with interests in financial services, manufacturing, real estate and hotels. The company is helmed by Malaysian billionaire Quek Leng Chan, whose fortune is worth about $4.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index. Guocoland develops luxury homes and offices in Singapore, Malaysia, China and Vietnam.
Guocoland acquired a prime Singapore land site for S$595 million ($430 million) a year ago, paying the highest price for a purely residential site in a government auction since 2009.
It will start marketing its 450-unit Martin Modern project on this site on July 22 and expects to complete construction by 2021. Cheng expects that the majority of the apartments will be bought by Singaporeans and Singapore-based permanent residents.