ISSS608 2016-17 T1 Assign1 Lee Mei Hui Cheryl

Abstract

This report aims to analyze the Singapore Public Housing Resale Market conditions in 2015 and the first half of 2016 through the use of visual analytics. Overall, it has been noted that

• In 2015 and 2016, most resale flats were 3-Room, 4-Room or 5-Room, with 2016 Q1 and Q2 showing more resales than 2015 Q1 and Q2 respectively
• Median resale prices since 2015 have remained relatively constant across all flat types with the exception of the multi-generational units
• Districts with the most number of flats sold were generally cheaper and vice versa
• Smaller houses had higher median price per square meter

Problem and Motivation

One vision that the late Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, had was for every Singaporean to have a home to live in. Hence, the government started the Housing Development Board to create affordable housing for the nation. However, with Singapore’s limited land space and increasing urban development, coupled with demand and supply at work, public housing in Singapore has faced steady increases in price over the years. To address this problem, the government implemented several property cooling measures since 2009 with notable success. However, how has this impacted our current property resale market?
This report aims to look specifically at the resale public housing market in Singapore for the year 2015 and 2016 in order to understand the following issues

• The share of resale public housing supply in 2015,
• The distribution of resale public housing prices in 2015, as well as
• Any patterns between the first half of 2016 and 2015 for the above findings

Approaches

HDB resale data was obtained from data.gov.sg and analyzed. The Resale Flat Prices data set selected covers the period of Mar-2012 to Jun-2016, but this report only focuses on data from 2015 and 2016. It also contained the following information that was utilized:

• Year-Month - Showing year and month of which the flat was resold
• Towns - District where resale flats were sold in Singapore
• Flat Type - Made up of 7 categories, where the more rooms a flat has, the larger the flat
• Storey Range - The floor range of which the flat was sold
• Floor area sqm - The area of the flat
• Lease Commencement Date - Year of which the flat finished construction and was sold
• Resale Price - Price at which the flat was sold

From the above data, extra fields were derived

• Year - Derived by splitting the Year-Month column into just the Year
• Month - Derived by splitting the Year-Month column into just the Month
• Month(group) - Derived by grouping each months into their respective quarters, Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4
• Price/Area - Derived by taking (Resale Price) ÷ (Floor Area sqm)

Through the use of Tableau, the above data was analyzed and charts were created to show relationships and findings. Summarized results were then compiled into an infographic for easy reading. Detailed results can be found in the "Results" section below.

Results

General observations

General Observations can be found in the infographics attached

• 

  Infographic on Resale Housing

Explaining each observation

Resale Flats Composition in terms of Flat Type
90% of all flats were made up of either 3-Room, 4-Room or 5-Room flats as evident from the Pareto Chart below for 2015 and 2016 respectively.

• Pareto No. of resale applicants 2015.jpg

  Pareto Chart for 2015

• Pareto No. of resale applicants 2016.jpg

  Pareto Chart for 2016

Generally, the number of HDB resale flats transacted over the past 16 years is on a downward trend, with slight upheaval in the last two years. The year 2016 may show an increase from 2015, based on pro-rated figures. The average RPI, on the other hand, shows an opposite trend, with increasing index over the years, only to decrease in the last two years.