HOME buyers are snapping up units in some new condominiums even before they are officially launched.
And, in a twist, these brisk 'preview' sales are now being seen at mid-tier and entry-level condos - not just the luxury developments that have so far been leading the property market recovery.
This may signal that the sluggish mass-market segment, which makes up the backbone of the property market, is finally taking its first step back to the days of the property boom in the 1990s.
At that time, many homes, including cheaper, 'entry-level' ones, sold quickly in pre-launch previews.
At The Centris at Jurong West, all 107 units released in a preview starting last Friday were sold out within 24 hours, leading the developers of the 99-year leasehold condo to offer another 100 units on Saturday.
And despite a slight increase in price, about half of this second batch had been snapped up by the time sales closed yesterday, said Guthrie GTS, one of the developers of the condo to be officially launched this Saturday.
Average prices at 610-unit The Centris are $500 to $550 per sq ft (psf), with a typical three-bedder going for a relatively affordable $500,000 to $600,000.
The Centris is only the second major condo this year targeted at the mass market - mainly first-time home buyers and HDB flat-dwellers upgrading to private housing.
It was the same happy story in Serangoon Road, where about 40 per cent of the 89 units released at the freehold One St Michael's condo were sold at an average price of $600 psf.
Most of these were taken up within the first weekend of the 131-unit project's preview, which started on Sept 23.
At nearby City Regency in St Michael's Road, about half the condo's 56 units have been sold since they were released two weeks ago, priced at about $600 psf.
These strong take-up rates may be due to pent-up demand for entry-level condos, consultants said.
Over the last two years, only two other mass-market projects on the scale of The Centris have been launched, and neither is in a long-established residential area like Jurong.1
They are GuocoLand's 625-unit Quartz at Buangkok, which sold about 70 units within a week of its preview in May, and Wing Tai's Kovan Melody, which sold more than 125 of its 778 homes in the first weekend of its 'soft launch' in August 2004.
The good response to The Centris 'looks like a start' to what is commonly seen as the long-overdue pick-up of the mass market, said Mr Nicholas Mak, director of research and consultancy at Knight Frank.
'It is a positive sign that could lead to an improvement in buying sentiment.'
But he cautioned that 'it is still a bit too early to say that the whole mass market is starting to move based on this one project', as too few entry-level condos have been launched recently to draw a trend.
Mr Mak also noted that The Centris has an edge over competitors: It is on top of Jurong Point mall, in one of the busiest suburban centres in Singapore, and can draw from the large pool of HDB upgraders in Jurong, where many HDB estates are over 10 years old.
The mass market has been languishing following the property downturn, with the phenomenon of crowds thronging condo previews recently limited to high-end homes such as The Sail @ Marina Bay.
At The Sail's invitation-only soft launch last October, the first batch of 100 units was snapped up in half an hour and another 150 apartments had been sold at average prices of $1,080 psf by the end of the day.
More recently, at Wheelock Properties' Ardmore II at Ardmore Park, 65 per cent of the 118 units available had been sold as of Friday.
The project, which was soft-launched on Tuesday, is selling at between $4.2 million and $5.5 million per unit, or about $2,300 psf.
And at nearby Tate Residences in Claymore Road, developer Hong Leong Holdings has sold more than 90 per cent of the project's 85 units in the last month without an official launch. Average prices have crept up from $2,200 psf to $2,250 psf, Hong Leong said.
fiochan@sph.com.sg
