From surge to stability: Tracking Singapore's property market cooling measures from 1995 to 2025

Over the last three decades, the Singapore government rolled out more than 10 rounds of measures to cool the property market, each time aiming to tame rapidly rising housing prices and calm fevered buying. Various levers were pushed and pulled, making both supply and demand-side adjustments. The Business Times tracks these interventions for a closer look at what prompted the government to act, and how the market moved in response. By Michelle Low

- By Michelle Low

1995-1999 Spurred by strong growth as the economy emerged from recession in 1985, Singapore's residential property prices spiked sharply in the early 1990s. Home prices surged 36 per cent in 1993 and shot up another 42 per cent in 1994.

In 1995, prices were still levelling up and gained 10 per cent. Prices of non-landed properties in particular — apartments and condominiums — climbed 17 per cent in the year. Condo prices rose another 5 per cent in the first quarter of 1996.

Early in May 1996, then minister for national development Lim Hng Kiang flagged that the authorities were looking into speculative activity, warning that prices had risen too quickly.

On May 15, the government announced measures to "cool the temperature, stabilise the market, and prevent prices from overshooting".

Targeting gains from flipping properties and foreigners' buying, the market curbs switched on would pave the way for many more similar interventions in the decades to come.

Home prices had run up in the early 1990s for several reasons: robust economic growth; high wages and high savings; very low interest rates and readily available financing; more people upgrading from public to private housing as Housing & Development Board (HDB) flat values rose; a strong sense of confidence in the market; and a rise in foreign buying interest, with Singapore increasingly seen as a safe haven.

In themselves, such dynamics were not problematic, the government said.

But if cheap mortgages led people to overstretch, the risk of default, foreclosure and then depressed property prices would rise. Over-exposure to property loans would threaten the soundness of the whole financial system.

Some of the indicators flagged were: