Junior
Hi all...the price has just gone too far and much since 2008/2009. I think there should be a correction or a crash to normalize the ever-increasing psf these years. Could anyone share his/her thoughts that if correction would be imminent and will be beneficial to have everything reset to base?
Newbie
Why not reset to 1970s? Then you can buy whole building?
Seriously what is your "entry" price?
Junior
Let's say the entry price for :Originally Posted by hovivi
OCR - 600-700psf
CCR - 1000-unlimited psf
RCR - 700-900psf
HDB:
EC - 500-600k
5 Room - 300-350k
4 Room - 180-260k
3 Room - 100-140k
Newbie
this was my hdb 4A price 12-13 years ago ...
can turn back the clock
Lazy Bum
Say very easy, tomorrow property collapse and next moment you'll be asked to top up on your existing loans. Still want to buy?
When you have eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth
Newbie
A correction of that nature will only happen in a global financial crisis. Not some small EU state become bankrupt type..
It will destroy a lot of wealth. Most affected will be low and then middle income folks... all just for you to have opportunity to buy property cheap again? That's quite horrible. Anyway if that time comes, maybe lose job or reduction in pay, how to buy property? No risk appetite at that point..
If you missed the boat, then find another boat to sail on. There are so many assets worth investing...
Amber
If we have been following Mr Khaw's comments regularly, we would have taken note of his message. He mentioned that 2009 prices was about right given our current income level.
As reported, Singapore's properties are about 57% over value so a 30% correction in prices would still mean we we are still about 27% over value. So Mr Khaw's idea of a 30% price correction is actually quite prudent if it could be corrected gradually over the next 3 to five years. This is better than any sharp correction which will cause hardship to many who committed when prices were high. It is good to have a correction so that the cycle can continue.
Newbie
There is a limit to what the CMs could do so long as our property market remains beneficial relative to other markets like HK and china as rich investors seek to park their cash in property and look around Asian region to do so - at least that's my humble personal opinion
Amber
If CMs could crash the car market, so can it for property. It is all about the magnitude of the CM and whether the government wants to go for a hard or soft landing.
Junior
Buying a flat seems akin to striking the lottery, judging by the mood at a condo launch
Apr 07, 2013
By John Lui
The uniquely Singapore smell of real estate anxiety is in the air.
Five hundred or so people are crammed in here today in a big white tent to buy a piece of the Singapore dream. But as with any part of that dream, there is competition.
A ballot will decide if these people get one or more of the 868 units here at Bartley Ridge, along with its shared amenities, which include a "play agora", a "bioswale" and "meditation pods". I have no idea what they are but the hefty brochure, the size of a coffee- table book, assures me that they are very nice to have.
This church-like temporary structure, vast and air-conditioned, stands on Mount Vernon Road. Its whiteness and newness is in contrast to the rundown brown building across the street, home to the cats, dogs and other creatures cared for by the SPCA. Soon, the gently undulating grassy ground around the Bartley MRT station, close to the home to unwanted animals, the Mount Vernon Sanctuary funeral home and the Gurkha police unit will be thudding with piling works.
Inside the tent, there is an army of men and women in navy blazers and ties, doubling the size of the crowd. These are property agents, most of them at the elbow of their customers. But at this tense moment, they are also counsellors, speaking in low, soothing voices, trying to put their nervous clients at ease. Here and there are attractive young women handing out name cards, selling bank loans.
The buyers' fate hangs on the lottery. It is a system that has largely replaced the first-come-first-served system in private home sales, a style that in years past led to the sight of people - many of them teens or odd-jobbers hired as placeholders - queuing for days in the sun and rain before the start of sales.
On this day in late March, the buyers, a motley lot in T-shirts and shorts, mainly Singaporeans with a smattering of Indonesians and China nationals, retirees and working couples with children, whisper and check and recheck their papers as numbers are read out over the speakers.
A few buyers shout with joy as their ballot numbers are called and trot happily to the registration counter at the front. Some cheekier agents shout "Huat ah!", meaning "success" in Hokkien, but it is delivered as a joke in an attempt to lighten the mood.
The atmosphere has been made more tense by the recent cooling measures, which include the additional buyer's stamp duty (ABSD).
Those buying today get a 15 per cent discount that nullifies the duty, but they are swimming against the tide of fear that government price curbs, current or upcoming, will cause a price dip and make them look like the proverbial fools who rush in.
I follow the lucky people whose numbers have been called. They have to go to another building to join another line. At the end of it, they will find out if the unit or units they want are still available.
The most popular units are the most affordable ones. These are one-bedroom homes, starting at 441 sq ft, costing around $600,000. They are tiny, about the size of the two-bedroom flats that the HDB used to build in the 1970s and 1980s. The largest design, a four-bedroom unit, costs $1.97 million for 2,120 sq ft.
But most of the buyers I spoke to will not live in them, regardless of size.
They are not buying a home; they are buying an insurance policy in a country where property values go in only one direction - into space. One retired couple I spoke to have a HUDC home in the Braddell area. Another couple in their 40s have a HDB flat in Bishan. Neither has plans to move to Bartley Ridge.
In the words of the commander of the blue- blazered battalion here today, Mr Mohamed Ismail, they are hoping to tap into "other people's money".
The chief executive of Propnex Realty ("He owned his first property at the young age of 22 and amazingly made his first million at 28", according to his biography on the corporate website) uses the phrase, which he shortens to OPM, to refer to rent income.
It is one week after the ballot. Mr Ismail is here giving a talk about his OPM principle, in the same white tent, to a crowd of about 50 people. More than 300 units have been sold in the preceding days. But there are many more left and Propnex is among the agencies charged by developers Hong Leong Holdings, City Developments and TID to move them. The second phase of the seduction campaign is in full swing and Mr Ismail is leading the offensive.
"Whether you buy Bartley Ridge or not is none of my concern," he says in his opening shot.
He is here to educate, he declares. The OPM rule applies even if you are buying a unit to live in. The audience perks up at this. They are here because they saw the advertisement in this newspaper promising a talk by Mr Ismail, or have been invited here by his salespeople.
Mr Ismail has a reputation for being an energetic, thought-provoking speaker and he does not disappoint. For the next hour, he delivers a foundation course on the property market. There are jokes. After a show of hands proved that an overwhelming majority wanted to wait for a post-cooling market correction before buying, he says in mock exasperation: "Then what the hell am I going to talk about today?"
He chides anyone who thinks that the bargains left are only in Johor or Myanmar, when there are good deals to be had in Singapore - in, for example, Bartley Ridge. He drops a tip on how to beat other landlords hoping to lure the male expatriate shopping for a rental unit ("Go to Harvey Norman, Courts or Mustafa, look for a display unit LCD TV, 55 or 60 inch, install it. For his English Premier League.")
But most of all, he does sums. He seems to know that his enemy is the wait-and-see attitude caused by the cooling measures and the cure for it is numbers - rent yield versus mortgage payable, inflation and loan interest rates, land bank statistics, recent transacted home prices and the projected 6.9 million population put forward in the White Paper. He scribbles figures furiously on sheets of paper. The audience is riveted.
Mr Ismail's talk roams through history, economics, politics and, yes, male expatriate psychology. He gives the right amount of information at the right time. It all sounds air-tight. Did he win over the sceptics? It is hard to say, but many remain behind to chat in earnest with their agents.
As I walk to the MRT station, on my way home to my HDB flat, his numbers dance in my head. I still have no idea what a bioswale or play agora are, but now, some days after Mr Ismail's talk, I catch myself wanting them.
Senior
Just look at a plate of chicken rice in the food court and you will know why the property prices have gone up.
Junior
I tell u something, i rub eyes many many times by just 1 in camp training i went back this week. Young chewren bo hiew and still hoot like no 2moro. Ok lar nvm, 1 die, all die. 1 for all and all for one
Newbie
Hearsay gament is going to any round of CM..all sillyporean and pr are allow to keep either one HDB or private housing..or you need to dispose the extra to the open market within 6 month time frame..
Amber
Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man blog,
Have you ever done something really stupid, just because you were in love? Something you look back on and cringe, thinking “why on earth did I do that?” Of course. Who hasn’t?
Fear. Love. Panic. Exuberance. Jealousy. Desire. These emotions have tremendous influence over human behavior. And when they kick in, they skew our judgment and cause us to do things that can only be characterized as highly irrational.
In the world of economics and finance, they call this ‘sentiment’. Consumer confidence, business confidence, investor confidence… these are basically emotional readings. Screw the numbers. To hell with the truth. It’s all about how people feel.
It seems crazy, but it’s true. Right now, for example, ‘sentiment’ is telling us that the euro crisis is over. It’s telling us that the debt ceiling is pretty much resolved. And, after taking five years to reach pre-crash levels, it’s telling us that the stock market is once again safe for the average investor.
Yet the numbers tell a completely different story.
In the US, politicians are celebrating their accomplishments that the US unemployment rate has declined to 7.6%.
Of course, the real figures show that the labor force participation rate (effectively the percentage of society that they consider to be in the work force) has just hit a 30-year low. And the economy is failing to create new jobs.
Perhaps most of all, the US debt level this year will hit the danger zone that Greece was in just a few years ago when the European debt crisis kicked off in earnest.
In Europe, the situation is so bad that even the government figures are dismal. Italy is officially in a deep recession. Spain is posting a public deficit over 10% of GDP. The Greek economy shrank (officially) nearly 6% last year. Etc.
Bottom line, the numbers don’t match up with sentiment at all. And this makes for precarious investment conditions.
Over the first quarter of this year, US stock mutual funds reported $52 billion in retail investment inflows, according to market data firm TrimTabs. This is the highest inflow in a decade.
In January of this year, retail investors poured a record $77.4 billion into the stock market. To put this in perspective, the prior record, set in February 2000, was $23.7 billion.
You can probably guess how that turned out. This whoosh of money into stocks happened mere months before the crash.
It certainly seems strange when you stack it all together: on one hand, record high deficits, record high debts, record low labor force participation. On the other hand, record high stock market, record high mutual fund inflows.
Something just doesn’t add up.
Investors are throwing caution to the wind right now... ignoring the basic fundamentals and focusing exclusively on euphoric sentiment. (Or central bank policy).
Some of you may know that I was a competitive fighter for a number of years. I can personally attest, and any boxer will tell you, that it’s the punch that you don’t see coming which knocks you out.
Junior
U think possible? With current CM on locals n FT, if they dispose who they gonna sell to? So how? Sell way way below valuation for pple to pickup? But then again most pple own property liao so how?Hearsay gament is going to any round of CM..all sillyporean and pr are allow to keep either one HDB or private housing..or you need to dispose the extra to the open market within 6 month time frame..
Newbie
To be fair I am also pinning my hopes on a correction so that I can also change house but rationally in my head this will cause a lot more harm and wealth loss to the many Singaporeans owning those properties just for the sake of the small portion of people pinning their hopes for a major correction - the garment had to have a macro-economic perspective in mind and where the huge pain outweigh the perceived benefits it will be quite suicidal for the incumbent government especially with their dwindling public confidence in their policies - see their u turn for 60 days for the car CM ....
I also want to have crash but come on I think that's very selfish especially when it entails a lot of people having family breakup and being bankrupt as they went in too high geared and too fast - be content with what you have and then with prudence we can also invest and own 2 properties one day instead of keep pinning hopes ok crash - hope I am making some sense and in any case just my personal opinion
Amber
The government had already said many times that CMs were not meant to crash the market. Mr Khaw had said many times that he hoped for a soft landing. It means that prices should be allowed to correct gradually over a period of time.
Newbie
It's not correcting gradually as what we are hoping with the recent CM I feel - people seems to be absorbing the ABSD or there seems to be an ever insatiable wave of first time buyers or HDB upgraders whom dun need to pay ABSD and still paving the way for higher market sentiment though - I also waiting at the sidelines and have to keep reminding myself not to allow emotions take over and join the herd before its too late - but the dark side keeps beckoning me to make the commitment before price further defies gravity and shoot further up how
Amber
The current demand from first tiimers and upgraders alone is not sustainable. They are just taking the opportunity to buy since most investors and foreigners are not competing with them.It's not correcting gradually as what we are hoping with the recent CM I feel - people seems to be absorbing the ABSD or there seems to be an ever insatiable wave of first time buyers or HDB upgraders whom dun need to pay ABSD and still paving the way for higher market sentiment though - I also waiting at the sidelines and have to keep reminding myself not to allow emotions take over and join the herd before its too late - but the dark side keeps beckoning me to make the commitment before price further defies gravity and shoot further up how
You can be sure more CMs to come if prices continue to rise. It is acceptable for demand to increase as prices start falling (with discounts from developers).
If everybody can control their emotions, who will want to buy at current high. It is only human for you to feel this way.
Junior
i have said property investment in spore going forward will face more political risk. today's sunday times have a centre piece by the state times editor talking about raising taxes for the rich., be it bringing back estate duty, tax on high income or capital gain. this is the social climate globally now and will gather strength. For spore it will happen at some point, but gradually. but it will impact the property market. If so, once again it will be the middle class that may disproportionately bear the brunt.
Newbie
Anything can happen my friend. Sell to who? gd qtn but u think garment cares? u are to dispose your hse with the time frame given. sell below valuation is probably the best choice to dispose your asset fast enough..rem you have only 6 months time frame..
Music of the night
buy iskandar 300k more risky or OCR mm 600k near MRT??
when recession comes MM near MRT still can rent out as long as u lower rent
it is obvious
Ride at your own risk !!!
Junior
then pray n hope they wun implement and withdraw ruling for 60days for homeowners to "clearstock"Anything can happen my friend. Sell to who? gd qtn but u think garment cares? u are to dispose your hse with the time frame given. sell below valuation is probably the best choice to dispose your asset fast enough..rem you have only 6 months time frame..
Newbie
probably they will reduce it to 30days this time roundthen pray n hope they wun implement and withdraw ruling for 60days for homeowners to "clearstock"
Leeds
Hi danguard, please allow me to add on what you had mentioned above.
High property prices which far exceed income has serious social, economic and political implications. At the social level, it could create social divide. At the economic and finance level, it will affects inflation and cost competitveness. At the political level, high prices favour the rich more than the poor; so there is a need to manage wealth redistributions to gain political advantage.
You are right that the government should be looking at the property market at a macro economic level. It is too simplistic to suggest that price correction will hurt property owners and benefit the few who want to buy. On the contrary, even major price correction will not affect the majority who own and live in their only property. It is the minority who own mulitple properties or investment properties that will be more affected.
However, the decisions for the government to control property prices are for social, economic (finance) and political reasons. Only then will government decides how not to affect the people drastically should price corrects.
Newbie
I think the above holds only to the extent that the majority single property owners are not highly leveraged in terms of mortgage loans though - otherwise direct impact on them will be felt when need top-up differential when revaluation suggests a big difference from when they took up the loan - might potentially have a domino effect though.
Kopi talk in my office with my colleagues suggest than 5/10 of my friends belong to that category
Junior
Ah gong ah ma. lai ah lai ah... cheap cheap only ah, help me downpay my next condo and we can 3Gen under 1 roof ah..
Leeds
Agreed!I think the above holds only to the extent that the majority single property owners are not highly leveraged in terms of mortgage loans though - otherwise direct impact on them will be felt when need top-up differential when revaluation suggests a big difference from when they took up the loan - might potentially have a domino effect though.
Kopi talk in my office with my colleagues suggest than 5/10 of my friends belong to that category
The single property owners who bought at recent high are consider minority as compare with the rest of owner occupiers. The CMs thus far are meant to prevent these buyers from having their loans larger than the value of their properties. The government has been helping this group of people without them realising it.
Junior
I am seriously baffled by your statement which implying that the gov is just an innocent by stander, while the property buyers are pushing the property price ever higher among themselves. Nothing is ever happen by accident. The rich is always enslave the poor. The powerful will always control the powerless. Isn't that the essence of free market. The concept of benevolent gov doesn't exist in the world today, not even in communist countries.
Buying a property is viewed by many as a form of risk taking or enterprise by many common people. For many people its the only form of enterprise they can do in the current economy situation. I personally foresight that it will come into this years ago. Personal income growth is not going to outperform inflation. In the future it will be even worst.
I suggest that we don't wait for benevolent gov to bring down prices. It's is not in the gov interest to see the property crash neither to bail out us in time of collapse. Gov only obligated to help the lowest end of the society, not u and me.
Global recession is coming....
Estate duty will not be brought back, at least not for next few years! Why? You want to bet? Wowhahaha!
Also, Top-tier income will not be raised. Why? You want to bet?
So simple you also don't understand?!
Who will help to pay additional taxes to the state? Doesn't recent new tax policies tell you clearly already?! Who? Very simple, the middle-class and upper middle class, who makes up the majority!
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