Andy Mukherjee, Columnist

Singapore Property Curbs Are a Mallet, Not a Hammer

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

July 6, 2018 at 3:48 AM UTC

Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services in Asia. Previously, he worked for Reuters, the Straits Times and Bloomberg News.

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

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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.