AS borders reopen and travel flows back to Singapore, developers with projects in the Core Central Region (CCR) should benefit from a pick-up in demand. This comes as strict border curbs over the last 18 months or so have largely kept foreign buyers at bay, with sales in the CCR lagging behind the city fringe and suburbs.
From Oct 19, vaccinated travellers from 11 markets are able to enter Singapore quarantine-free as nine new vaccinated travel lanes (VTLs) across Europe, North America and South Korea (from Nov 15) join the two existing VTLs from Germany and Brunei.
While Singapore is taking a cautious approach by capping the daily number of incoming travellers across the VTLs to 3,000 arrivals, this is widely seen as a starting point, and international travel is likely to gain traction as more VTLs are launched in the months ahead.
The introduction of VTLs allows foreign buyers back into a market that has been predominantly domestic for most of the year, while Singapore’s reputation as an attractive, stable destination for property investment has been strengthened amid the pandemic, according to Knight Frank’s head of research Leonard Tay. He expects overall sales volumes for the private residential market to strengthen – more specifically, for the CCR, which hasn’t performed as well as the Rest of Central Region (RCR) and Outside Central Region (OCR).
Primary sales in the CCR from January to September this year totalled around 2,000 units, versus over 4,000 new homes sold each in the RCR and OCR, Tay highlighted.
Properties located in the prime districts – such as luxury homes – typically do well with foreign buyers and investors, and have felt the brunt of the border closures that kicked in from March 2020.
source: The Business Times
