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Opinion
Andy Mukherjee

Singapore Property Curbs Are a Mallet, Not a Hammer

Timely cooling measures will help keep housing affordable for the tech generation.

Residential And Commercial Property As City's Housing Market Is Making A Comeback
Photographer: Sanjit Das/Bloomberg

A sledgehammer to swat a fly. That’s how OCBC Investment Research is describing the unexpected curbs on Singapore’s property market announced late Thursday.

While the imposition of additional buyers’ stamp duties and tighter loan-to-value norms on home lending so early in the cycle does indeed smack of overkill (especially after a less than 10 percent recovery in residential prices following a long slide), the logic of the cooling measures may reside in a broader transformation of Singapore’s economy.