February saw 1,101 new private units sold

The figures have spoken! In what has been touted the “effect of cooling measures,” private residential transactions for new units hit a low of 1,101 sold in February 2011. If we include Executive Condos (ECs), then only 1,228 units were sold altogether.

That figure might be low, but don't forget February only has 28 days and there's also Chinese New Year which effectively took out 3 days of property hunting. We've done some calculations and the results are pretty interesting.

But before we go into that, here are the most popular and most expensive units sold:

Most popular:
Waterfront Isle - 282 units sold (median $997 psf)
My Manhattan - 69 units sold (median $1,219 psf)

Canberra Residences - 59 units sold (median $819 psf)
Suites@East Coast - 56 units sold (median $1,438 psf)
Austville Residences (EC) - 63 units sold (median $721 psf)

Most expensive units sold:
Tomlinson heights (Tomlinson Road)- $3,277 psf
Robinson Suites (Robinson Road)- $2,918 psf
Belle Vue Residences (Oxley Walk)-$2,730 psf

Crunching numbers
Some news sources proclaim that the numbers indicate a 'four month low'. While technically correct, it is rather misleading to the layman. The figure for February is still above the 1,000 unit mark, and if you put in the EC figures, it gets even higher. That means demand is still strong.

Last month, it was 1,189 new units sold, though it might seem there is a month on month decrease, if you divide that figure by the number of days in a month, we see something different.

January has 31 days with 1,189 sold, that makes 38.35 units sold per day. February works out to 39.92 sold per day. If you take out 3 days of Chinese New Year, that figure rises to 44.04 sold per day!

So sales volume might be lower, but the rate is actually higher. So let's not come to the conclusion too quickly that the cooling measures have worked.

What will the number be in March? Well, the developers have been holding back on new launches (as they have launched too many in Feb) and on the property front it seems rather quiet. Is it a ploy by the developers to cool the market down themselves? Or are the cooling measures finally 'taking effect'? If you ask us, we have no idea, all we all can do is speculate...

via URA

[ extracted from H88.com ]