hi guys & gals... sorry to have interupted into your power debates on the current market situation and market sentiments. somehow I just can't resist to make just humble comments of my own and hopefully you guys will not be bombarding me when you see my postings.. haha..
Okie, let's start with the current stock market, the uncertainties in the current stock markets has caused a lot of fear, confusion as mentioned by a few of our fellow forumers has said, USD $5 for citi shares...who would have expect that their shares could be so dirt cheap today? who can guarantee that citi shares can still worth even $0.50 by tomorrow? nobody can!!! they have even nearly gone bust! Have we asked ourselves why did such things happened to the united states that actually affected most of the countries globally? Sub-prime issues resulted all these... in fact if we look at the market carefully, sub-prime has its existence since many years back.. it was never a problems till the us exchange against most other currencies weaken tremendously. six months back we were talking about the exchange against sgd is 1.3++. US has always been regarded as one of the major importer & exporter of most commodities/industries. if we look at the US exchange rate 4-5years back then was approx. 1.7-1.8 and people were even taolking about it shooting above 1.9. eventually it just kept dropping till we gets 1.4-1.3. over these 4-5years, many companies in US either chose to haul their production or shift their factories into the asian while those who cannot afford simply reduce their imports and price their product higher which made it not competitive in the market and eventually have to shut their factories, live on with existing stocks available and eventually go bust resulting in high unemployment rate.
high unemployment rates resulted in high loan repayment defaults to the bank, finance companies. Repossession taken place in extremely high pace and flooded in the entire property market. banks and financing companies were not able to recover the full value of the properties and thus also have to follow suit to sell them to retrieve whatever they can so as to make payment to bigger banks or investment banks like lehmann bros. when they were not able to they goes into trouble too. big companies and banks like lehmann bros also have a loan to pay off to the international banks etc and that's when they can't pay it off and realised that the income were not even enough to pay of the existing debts thus gone bust. major banks who buy loan application from such companies starts to get affected and slowly gone into troubles. rest of the world starts to get hit more or less may not be at all related to this issue but still gets the waves of it as fears injects into the general public which causes them into panic selling and cashing out whatever they can retrieve from their stocks. prices starts falling too!!!
The current market situation may seems to be kinda deep well for most of us looking down and wonder when will we actually reach the end of it. but looking back did we also realise something? there are no lowest and highest in the entire stock market or even their brokers can never tell you when its gonna hit the lowest or the highest till such time when it really did and eventually past and recorded in the history. that's where the newspapers reports come in and tells everyone that the market is at its peak and the general public goes into it and tries to be the first but realised they will never be the one who gets the best profits or even the best deal cos most of the profits had already been pocketed by wise investors.
Looking back into our property market, its a similar cycle as the stock market except for one fact. property will never go bust like the stocks where overnight your property is worth a single cent at all unless the entire singapore sinks into the sea. stock are mainly generated due to the demand and supply of it while property do not simply depends on such theory. Property is also very much depends on the inflation rates. Inflations are not somehow a simple issue where anybody or any country can control. as long as the world is still advancing and keeps going into the modernisation inflation will just keep snowballing.
A simple example, I was 14 when my mum bought our first hdb 4rm in tampines. back then she was screaming that it was really such an expensive purchase as it cost us sgd $66k. expensive then but totally dirt cheap to us now! How much is a brand new hdb 4rm cost us now? I remember able to buy an ice-cream for $0.10-0.20 then but I almost fainted just now when I went to a store to pick up some groceries and saw the price of $0.90-1.00 for a simple ice-cream when I was craving for one. haiz.. what a childhood comparison, seems cruel and useless but if we really think hard enough, why would a property investment a good investment? cos property are simply too prone to inflation rates thru out the entire globe where the resources are not forever! price goes up for a reason! if the demand and supply factor are so strong to curb the inflation rates then let's ask ourselves, how much was a pack of chicken rice when you knew how to buy? the day I buy the first pack of chicken rice was $1.20 cos I am not a rice person. there was already a lot of stalls selling chicken rice back then with tonnes of competition but yet is there anything we can do to stop the price from going up? none! the average chicken rice price today is about $2.50-3.00. did the price goes up cos there were significantly drop of chicken rice stall owners? in fact there were even more! some coffeeshop even have two rice stall selling normal chicken rice and the other selling roasted chicken rice. even boon tong kee and 5star chicken set up their own so called the chicken rice restaurant. Are they really that good that we are willing to pay easily 100% more just to eat? eating is to give you energy but do we really need to go to that extend of paying so much more?
Let's take another important factor to consider... how about our every month end salary, if you start your first job with $1k after working for 20 years or even more can you still be contented drawing $1k every end of the month? I doubt so!!! just in case some of us is not aware, salary is part of the cause contributing to higher inflation rate. I used to draw barely $500 per month as a army regular but just 5 years later I realised all my junior who entered army for barely 2 years has salary that is almost catching up with mine!!! what a ironic!
Modernisation in life has a cost and the cost is resulting in just simply higher and higher cost! I honeslty wish I can also turn the clock back and live in the kinda life where I can get $1.20 for a pack of chicken rice, $0.10 for an ice-cream and of course $1.20 for a pack of cigarette but lets face it... its never possible unless another meteor drops on the entire earth to create and total mass distruction and we simply have to start all over again primitively. even with that I believe with our current adaptivity the modernisation could even evolve much faster then the rate our ancestors had experienced.
Back into the real life, since these are simply never gonna be possible then taking consideration of the inflation rates that keep on going higher and higher and higher. property prices which is mainly driven by the inflation will definitely be higher and higher. Of course due to certain global finance crisis and economical situation, we will see some drop in the prices. As an agent I cannot assure you it will not drop further or even when it will drop, I also cannot assure how much its will drop.. but similarly, nobody can deny the fact that property price will definitely shoot up to it next high again! am sure farnie and the rest of you will also agree with me by then you cannot assure me whether the price really at its peak or will go further more and how much further it will go. In fact as an agent we do look at the property more carefully then anybody else in the world just like those brokers will definitely analyse the stock market more carefully then the rest of us who are not in the industry cos its their job to advise their client. To be fair to us agents, we are definitely not in a better industry then the stock brokers. Most often we get penalised and badmouthed by a lot of people due to some wrong doings or misguidings from other agents and likely to be registered and bombarded in the forums etc. as compared to the brokers, they can simply just tell us 'no choice leh, nobody expected that also.. I also lose a lot of money in this stocks also..' they ended with a sad face and most often forgiven by us. but unfortunately in property you will never hear us telling you this reason cos whoever tells you that is simply being irresponsible! We are also human beings trying to earn a living to feed our family too. but i am sure most of us agents are definitely trying to give you the best and am defnitely sure again that none of them wanna see anyone of their clients loses money in their property!!!
Lastly, whenever we market a project we personally also look at the nearby project and advise our clients on our projects why it is a good buy and of course being a consumer you can choose to buy or not to buy.
Remember, you can never sell a 4year old bmw at the price of a brand new bmw even with a new coe... similarly, you can never sell a brand new bmw at the price of a 10 years old bmw just because somebody is selling at that kinda of price on the papers. If you can understand the logic of the buying and selling of cars, I am sure most of you guys and gals can understand why do we have to advise our client what is a good buy and what's not.
Just my two long cents and hope to hear some positive or constructive feedbacks from the rest of the forumers so we may all learn from one another.
Pet
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Originally Posted by dtrax
that's why sales were good for the "1 bedder". I think both the $ quantum and the psf are too huge. the showflat is located on leonie hill road but the actually location is river valley grove road so don't be conned. Just because 3300psf drop to 2700psf drop to 1600psf doesn't mean its cheap imho.
, that's life. 
