In an exclusive Singapore neighborhood shaded with rain trees, a local tech billionaire plunked down $95 million for a mansion. Near an upscale shopping district, a Taiwanese family with a grocery empire spent $216 million for all the units in a condominium development.
That’s the kind of money sloshing around Singapore’s red-hot residential market this year. To be exact: S$32.9 billion ($24 billion) spent in the first half alone—the city’s biggest frenzy in more than a decade and double what was recorded in Manhattan over the same six months.
With inflation on many minds, the ultra-rich are stuffing cash into luxury properties around the globe, and in few places is the trend as apparent as in Singapore. The city’s home prices jumped by a record 4.1% in the first half as tycoons across Asia seek a safe harbor. Some are shifting funds from economies hammered by the pandemic or, in the case of Hong Kong, political turmoil.
The boom in Singapore is reminiscent of 2007, when “well-heeled foreigners were lured by the glamor promised by two upcoming resorts and casinos,” said Nicholas Mak, head of research and consultancy at APAC Realty Ltd. unit ERA. That flurry was tamed by the global financial crisis and property curbs. “The difference now is that there are more newly minted ultra-rich people, especially from China and India.”
Frenetic Buying
When Hong Kong-listed Shun Tak Holdings unveiled its first residential project, Park Nova wasn’t just a showcase of the 54 luxury apartments. It was a display of buyers’ wealth as Rolls-Royce Cullinan and Ferarris descended upon the site, 10 minutes by foot from Singapore’s famous shopping belt Orchard Road.
“I’ve never seen so many luxurious cars at one point,” said Dominic Lee, head of the luxury team at Singapore-based PropNex Realty. “If you drove a BMW that day, you’d feel depressed.”
All three penthouses were snapped up, fetching prices of as much as S$34.4 million. “For rich people, such prices aren’t a concern. If it’s a good buy, they would want it,” Lee said, adding that the buyers were both local and foreign.
Sales of bungalows—the equivalent of mansions and the crème de la crème of housing that can only be purchased by citizens and some permanent residents on a case by case basis—surged by 83% to over S$1.5 billion in the first half compared with a year ago. That’s also 79% higher than the pre-pandemic sales in 2019.
“There is a sudden surge of demand for prized assets from newly minted ultra-high-net-worth citizens, start-up millionaires and affluent families relocating their families to Singapore since the start of the pandemic,” said Christine Sun, senior vice president of research and analytics at OrangeTee & Tie.
In the city’s prestigious Sentosa Cove, where massive houses on the waterfront boast private berths for yachts, transactions tripled to S$190.7 million in the first half, compared with the same period a year ago, according to data from List Sotheby’s International Realty.