AN EXAMINATION OF THE STRUCTURE AND PRICE DYNAMICS OF THE PRIVATE RESIDENTIAL MARKET IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

The study in this dissertation examines the dynamics of private residential prices in Singapore from the third quarter of 1999 to the third quarter of 2012. The purpose is to investigate the existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between key macroeconomic factors and specific fundamental factors underlying Singapore’s private residential market with appropriate error correction, and also to better understand the short-run dynamics of the private residential market. The study is useful to both private real estate developers and policy makers as it enables them to better evaluate decisionmaking for private residential development projects and to better implement policies that aim to stabilize the private residential market prices at sustainable levels. Adopting the cointegration vector error correction model (VECM), the results show that Sngapore’s private residential market prices are on the whole cointegrated with available stock, mortgage interest rates and population. The Granger Causality tests reveal that in the short-run, the past levels of the common stock market index (the Straits Times Industrial Index (STI), population and the occupied stock can help to predict future private residential prices. An error-correction mechanism is also incorporated in the changes of the private residential prices to account for the short-run deviations from their equilibrium relationship among the factors concerned.