Number of sold residential units drops 44% in April

The number of housing units sold in Macau registered a drop of 43.7% in April when compared with the same month a year earlier, data disclosed by the Financial Services Bureau shows.
According to the same data, last month only saw transactions for 443 housing units, a significant drop from the 787 traded in the same period last year.
The average price per square meter also registered a year-on-year drop of 9%, to 97,800 patacas per square meter.
The Peninsula continues to be the location in Macau where more housing units are traded, as 78% of all transactions registered last month were there.
In terms of price, the Peninsula is the second most expensive location per square meter (98,000 patacas), only surpassed by Coloane, which registered an average of 112,000 patacas per square meter.
Taipa Island continues to be the location with the less expensive price per square meter and also the only one below average at just under 95,000 patacas per square meter.
The drop in sales and prices continues to follow the trend of recent years, which has been intensified by the effects of Covid-19 and consequent economic instability.
In 2019, the sales of housing units had already dropped by 14.6% from the previous year, the Statistics and Census Bureau informed, with just 8,277 units being traded in the market for the whole year. At the same time, the average prices for square meters registered a drop, although it was by less than 1%.
Far from the exponential hikes registered in the past, several real estate experts and investment companies have considered the market in the last two years “more stable” and “healthy.”
By comparison, in 2016 the real estate market saw a full-year hike of 142% in the number of sales and an increase in the average of price per square meter by 32%.