Real estate investment sales volume in Singapore totalled over $11.05 billion in 2020, according to estimates by CBRE Research. It marks the lowest investment sales volume since the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, at $7.7 billion in total.
Real estate investment sales volume in Singapore totalled over $11.05 billion in 2020, according to estimates by CBRE Research. It marks the lowest investment sales volume since the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, at $7.7 billion in total. “As a result of the pandemic, it was unsurprising that investors preferred to sit on the side lines as they wait for value to emerge,” says Desmond Sim, CBRE head of research for Singapore and Southeast Asia. Last year’s figure also reflects a 52.4% drop from the $23.22 billion registered in 2019, according to CBRE.There was also an absence of deals above $1 billion, with some failing to materialize due to “a widening gap between buyer-seller price expectations” CBRE’s Sim says. In fact, 67.8% of total investment deals in 2020 were bite-sized transactions of less than $25 million, notes CBRE. Foreign capital inflows dropped by 53% y-o-y to $3.18 billion in 2020, owing to travel restrictions.Encouraged by the strong sales in project launches, as well as the declining inventory of unsold units, developers have turned to government land sales and even the private market to acquire land. This is evident from the strong bidding seen for the GLS sites at Yishun Avenue 9 and Tanah Merah Kechil when their tenders closed in late October.There was also a spate of single-owner and collective sales in November and December. They include the sale of 15 terraced houses on Guillemard Road for $93 million, the collective sale of Fairhaven and Sophia Ville for a total of $62 million and Advance Apartments at Geylang Lorong 25A, which was sold for $26.5 million towards the end of December. The biggest deal in December was the sale of the 752,015 sq ft site where the Caldecott Broadcast Centre once stood. The site sold by MediaCorp fetched $280.9 million, purchased jointly by Perennial Real Estate Holdings and Kuok Khoon Hong, Perennial Real Estate chairman.