The Singaporean government is closely observing the direction of the domestic housing market. The market is said to be in a correction phase after it has been in decline for the past thirteen years, according to a report from Bloomberg.com.
This market correction was confirmed by Singaporean Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam. He confirmed this during a summit of the Economic Society of Singapore.
He confirmed that the government had sought to "temper the market" because of the "sharp up-cycle" of home prices for a period of six years. With the policies, government data showed that residential property prices had fallen as much as 42 percent to its lowest level for 2015.
Shanmugaratnam said, "We went about it in a very determined way in the past four years. We've succeeded in tempering the market, it's now in a phase of correction. But we're still watching it closely."
"The Asian markets always go through these cycles in the property market, and you've got to do something to temper it, " he said.
Now these measures have paid off, as confirmed by Singaporean National Development Minsiter Khaw Boon Wan, as reported in the straitstimes.com. During the introduction of the People Action Party line up in Sembawang GRC, Khaw said, "What I shared at my first meeting with my MND (Ministry of National Development) colleagues was, let us try hard to achieve a soft landing of the housing market within four years."
He added, "Two years ago, when prices began to peak and then began to come down, believe me, I was the one most relieved."
Despite the success, Khaw urged the Government to continue to monitor the situation as well as the external markets very closely as the soft landing that was achieved, 'may suddenly become a hard landing."
Housing is a major issue in the coming elections and the Government is keen on riding out the correction in the next few quarters.
