S’PORE PROPERTY: ONLY 0.25% ANNUAL RETURNS IN PAST TWENTY YEARS?

Dear ASS Editors,

I refer to the article “Private home prices rise 0.5% in Q3, ending nearly four years of decline: URA flash data” (Straits Times, Oct 2).

It states that “Private property prices have officially turned a corner, ending 15 quarters of decline that began in October 2013.

Prices in the three months to September of this year rose 0.5 per cent from the previous quarter, according to flash data released on Monday (Oct 2) by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA).

This marks the first overall rise in private home prices since the final quarter of 2013 when new major property cooling measures began taking effect.”

If you look at the above chart – you can see that the URA Private Residential Property Price Index only grew by about 5.5 per cent in the last 21 years or so, or just about an annualised return of only 0.25 per cent.

Are there any other countries’ property market in the world that has such poor returns (capital appreciation) in the last two decades or so?

Leong Sze Hian