SINGAPORE - Investment property sales are booming in Singapore, with sales in the second quarter boosted by heavyweight sales of commercial property and collective sale deals.
Preliminary investment property sales for the three months between March and June hit $9.02 billion, rising 76.2 per cent from the previous quarter, according to research from property consultancy CBRE.
Investment property deals are transactions above $10 million, and include both land and property transactions.
The heavyweight deal of the quarter was Mercatus Co-operative's purchase of suburban mall Jurong Point for $2.2 billion.
The transaction caused domestic investment volume to jump more than 3.5 times compared with last quarter, to hit $6.2 billion.
The residential collective sales market also saw strong momentum, with four transactions completed.
The four deals amounted to $1.5 billion, which was the highest investment volume of collective sales notched up since the second quarter of 2011.
The quarter also surpassed the total of three collective sales completed last year.
Of the four, the largest deal was the sale of Eunosville, a complex of 10 residential blocks with 330 apartments. It was sold to MCL Land for $765.78 million.
Foreign investors made up almost of a quarter of the total sales tally for the quarter, with Hong Kong investors playing a dominant role.
Investors from Hong Kong were involved in joint ventures or direct acquisitions of real estate worth $1.67 billion for the second quarter. These include a consortium including Hong Kong-listed Logan Property which won agovernment land sales site along Stirling Road for $1.003 billion.
Mr Jeremy Lake, executive director of capital markets at CBRE, said that market sentiment has become very positive.
"The turnaround has been very dramatic and noticeable over the last six months and the marketplace i s quite crowded with multiple buyers looking at most assets, assuming they are priced correctly," he said.
"We expect the strong interest from Hong Kong-based investors and developers to continue for the foreseeable future."
