Property veteran sees investment sales market staying healthy in 2020

Karamjit Singh says demand for new homes in 2019 enabled developers to pare their inventory

Thu, Jan 16, 2020

NISHA RAMCHANDANI


THE investment sales market is expected to remain healthy this year, with residential land sales activities having picked up from last year, said the founder of a real estate investment sales firm.

Property veteran Karamjit Singh, who set up boutique property-technology firm Showsuite Consultancy this year after having left his role as senior consultant at JLL Property Consultants at the end of last year, also projects a gradual increase in land values by five per cent.

"Demand for new homes proved resilient last year and most (residential developers) were able to pare down their inventory, thereby reducing the risks of not meeting the ABSD (additional buyer's stamp duty) timelines for most projects," he said.

Some major developers are now switching to "cautious-land-buying mode as they add to their new projects pipeline for launch in 2021 onwards", he added. However, this is unlikely to spark an en bloc sale flurry this year because of the supply overhang of new homes.

Joining Showsuite Consultancy as directors are Chia Mein Mein and Pamela Kow, the consultancy said in statement on Wednesday.

Before her move to Showsuite, Ms Chia was a director at Colliers International, and had previously worked in companies such as Knight Frank and Credo Real Estate.

Ms Kow was most recently a part of the capital markets team at JLL and had also worked at Credo Real Estate in the past.

Mr Singh was formerly the co-founder and managing director of Credo Real Estate, which was the then market leader in collective sales before it was acquired by JLL in 2012. Mr Singh went on to become the head of residential and investment sales services at JLL, and later took on a consultancy role at JLL at the end of 2016. That year, he co-founded Showsuite, which offers a digital booking platform through which developers can conduct paperless bookings using smart digital contracts, among other things.

More than 1,000 units and US$1 billion worth of new houses have been booked through Showsuite's platform since August 2018.