Singapore Million Dollar Public Homes — 2024 Analysis Update
In Oct 2022, I analysed 20 years of Singapore public housing data, and found an increasing trend of million dollar public homes sold from 2012 to 2022. And these million dollar public home sales were slowly occurring beyond the central residential areas of Singapore to certain outskirt residential areas. Metaphorically, I described this situation like a virus spreading from the city centre to the outskirts. While there have been several government property cooling measures (here and here) since then, the Singapore public housing market seems to still be red hot, with many new million dollar public home transactions happening even in 2024. Hence, I want to update my analysis to see how the situation is now.
Update on million dollar homes
I updated my chart to show the number of million dollar public home transactions per month, and included timestamps of some events.
The three property cooling measures taken by the Singapore government in Sep 2022, Feb 2023 and Apr 2023 did lead to some drop in million dollar transactions in the following month. However, the measures did not stop the upward trend of million dollar transactions, with it reaching its historical peak of 70 in Jan 2024.
Percentage of million dollar public homes
I also updated the view on per month million dollar transactions as a percentage of overall public housing transactions This is because the increase in million dollar transactions could be from a proportionate increase in overall public housing transactions. In Figure 2, the bar chart shows the number of monthly public home transactions, while the line chart shows the percentage of public home transactions that were worth a million Singapore dollars or more.
We see the general increase in percentage of million dollar public home transactions over total public home transactions starting from Dec 2019. In fact, each month since Dec 2021 had roughly at least 1% or more (only April 2023 had 0.97%) of public home transactions that were million dollar homes! This percentage also hit its historical high in Jan 2024, at 2.95%. During pre-covid times, million dollar public home transactions were barely above 0.5% of overall public home transactions.
Table — Spread of million dollar public homes
Next, we look at the distribution of million dollar public transactions in Figure 3.
We see that all regions with million dollar transactions in 2022 had even more million dollar transactions in 2023 (except Bishan). Bukit Panjang also had their first million dollar transaction in 2023. The “million dollar home virus” has continued its spread in 2023.
Heat Maps — Spread of million dollar public homes
I also added several heat maps to show the spread of these million dollar public homes across the years. Brighter and redder areas have more million dollar public home transactions. To keep things succinct, I am only showing heat maps from 2015, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
In 2015, we only saw million dollar public homes in the south of Singapore.
By 2021, we see more million dollar homes beyond the south, and into the central and west parts of Singapore.
In 2022, million dollar homes continue to spread further into the suburbs, to certain north and east regions of Singapore.
Lastly in 2023, we see even more million dollar homes in both the central, west and east areas (the spots get redder or bigger). Visually, the heat maps paint a very stark picture on the spread of million dollar public homes across Singapore in the past few years.
Some ideas
Despite several government property cooling measures, we continue to see a rising number of million dollar public home transactions across different parts of Singapore.
That said, I am not concluding that the Singapore property market is now unaffordable. Calculating housing affordability requires more work than I can commit to. Nonetheless, just like how our media likes to continually report on million dollar public home transactions, I feel million dollar public homes create a psychologically intimidating anchor for many Singaporeans.
This said, many factors could suggest why million dollar public homes are becoming so common:
- The demand for public housing in Singapore remains high, from young families buying their first homes to families downgrading from private homes.
- There was a public housing supply crunch in Singapore that started during the Covid-19 period, and the public housing supply is only starting to ramp up.
- The quality of Singapore public housing remains high, and families are willing to upwards of a million Singapore dollars for some of them due to their good location and their previous owners keeping the homes in good condition.
- The booming Singapore private housing market is causing previous potential upgraders to stay on or look at public housing instead.
- Home sellers tend to anchor their expected sale prices to recent neighbouring public home transactions, and there were similar public homes around their region that were sold for a million dollars, these home sellers will be less willing to accept a lower offer.
Conclusion
In conclusion, although the numbers suggest that million dollar public homes are becoming more common in Singapore, even at its peak, only 2.95% of public homes transacted in a month are a million dollars or more. While there many fascination about million dollar public homes, from the windfall for home sellers to exorbitantly high price for home buyers, I am interested to see how this trend continues, and to see if the Singapore government will implement more measures to tackle this situation.
