Final figures released by the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore on Friday showed that private home prices fell by 0.2 per cent in the second quarter from a year earlier, an upward revision from the preliminary estimate of a 0.4 per cent drop, but it was the first time the country's house prices had fallen since the first quarter of 2020. To put this in perspective, private property prices in Singapore rose 3.3 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of this year.

Data from the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore (URA) showed that while house prices fell in the second quarter, the number of home transactions rose by about 16 per cent year-on-year from the first quarter. home sales in May reached a one-year high. The supply crunch has eased with the launch of new developments.

Desmond Lee, Singapore's Minister for National Development, said after the release of the data; "We are seeing signs of a slowdown in the property market and we will continue to increase housing supply to meet demand."

Singapore's property boom has also spilled over into the public housing market. The Housing Development Board's second-hand home price index hit a new high in the second quarter, rising 1.4 per cent from the first quarter for the 13th consecutive quarter of growth.

Morgan Stanley analysts Wilson Ng and Derek Chang believe the slowdown in house price growth is only temporary and that prices in Singapore will continue to rise in the second half of this year:

"We believe the recent price slowdown was driven by the latest round of property cooling measures in April, and we expect prices to rise modestly for the rest of the year. For the year as a whole, prices will rise by 5 per cent."

In recent years, global tycoons have been "flooding" into Singapore, and the country's property market has exploded in popularity, making it unaffordable for many local residents. In order to control the price of flats, the Singapore government has introduced a series of policies to curb prices, in April the foreign buyers to double the stamp duty, from 30 per cent to 60 per cent, and also increased the levy on second-hand buyers.

And before April's regulatory policies, the Singapore government has already introduced property market cooling policies in December 2021 and September 2022 twice.

The ULI Asia-Pacific Residential Accessibility Index Report 2023, released by research organisation Urban Land Institute (ULI), shows that the median price of a private home in Singapore will be US$1.2 million (about Rs. 8.56 million) in 2022, which is ranked as the highest home price in major cities in the Asia-Pacific region. After surging 10.6 per cent in 2021, Singapore home prices continue to jump 8.6 per cent in 2022.

At the same time, Singapore's private rental housing monthly rent is also the highest in the Asia-Pacific region, the median rent in 2022 up to $ 2586 (about 18,500 yuan), a year-on-year increase of 30 per cent, "far more than" Sydney, Melbourne and Hong Kong and other cities.

Although Singapore's private housing topped the Asia-Pacific region, but private housing only accounted for about 20 per cent of Singapore's housing stock. ULI report shows that Singapore's median house price is 4.7 times the median household income, the homeownership rate year-round to maintain more than 90 per cent, the majority of Singaporeans live in the government HDB flats.

In this sense, housing is the most accessible to Singaporeans, with government-built HDB flats being the least burdened.

Generally, housing is considered "unaffordable" when the ratio of median house price to median annual household income exceeds 5. By this measure, of the 45 cities in the Asia-Pacific region surveyed, only HDB flats in Singapore and flats in Melbourne and Brisbane are "affordable". In Hong Kong, the value was 26.5, a significant drop from the previous year (30.5).