Why new home sales surged to a 15-year high in Singapore’s city fringe area in Q4

Sales more than quadrupled to 1,859 new homes during the quarter.

In a recent report, OrangeTee noted that many new homes were sold in the city fringe area in the fourth quarter of 2024, accounting for the largest market share of all new home transactions.

According to URA Quarterly statistics, 1,859 new homes (landed and non-landing, excluding ECs) were sold in the city fringe or RCR in Q4 2024, rising significantly by 375.4 per cent from 391 units in the preceding quarter. This represents the highest quarterly sales volume since Q3 2009 when 1,867 transactions were recorded.

Here’s more from OrangeTee:

In contrast, only 137 new homes were sold in the prime CCR, an increase from 54 units over the same period. Meanwhile, 1,424 new homes were sold in the suburban OCR last quarter, up from 715 units in the previous quarter. In terms of proportion of total new sales volume, 54.4 per cent were in RCR, 41.6 per cent in OCR and 4 per cent in CCR in Q4 2024. This is also the highest proportion of new sales in the RCR since the second quarter of 2023 when 74 per cent was recorded. It is also significantly higher than the 33.7 per cent recorded in the third quarter of 2024.

The substantial increase in new home sales in the city fringe can be attributed to several new project launches, including Emerald of Katong (846 total units in the project), Nava Grove (552 units), Union Square Residences (366 units) and Meyer Blue (226 units). These large and mid-scale projects led to a significant rise in new home sales within the RCR segment. Of these projects, Emerald of Katong emerged as the best-selling new project in 2024.

The high new sales volume recorded in RCR is considerable, given that the homes were sold at a new benchmark price within RCR. Based on data from URA Realis, the average transacted price of new condos in the city fringe hit S$2,670 psf in the fourth quarter of 2024, which marks the highest price per square foot since 1995, when such pricing data first became available. This represents a 7 per cent increase from the S$2,496 psf recorded during the same quarter in the previous year.

Comparatively, the average price of new condos in CCR dipped 5.9 per cent from S$3,154 psf in Q4 2023 to S$2,967 psf in Q4 2024. As a result, the price gap between new condos in CCR and RCR narrowed by 15.3 percentage points from 26.4 per cent in Q4 2023 to 11.1 per cent in Q4 2024.

The price gap in Q4 2024 is the lowest recorded since Q1 2013, at 4.8 per cent. The narrowing price gap indicates that more buyers recognize the value of city fringe homes and are increasingly willing to pay higher prices to live in this region.