Parc Botannia: The habitual misrepresentation of new units sold
In July 2019, a Straits Times article reported that there were four new projects launched in June and one of the June top sellers “Parc Botannia booked 60 units” (“New home sales in June drop 14% from May”, The Straits Times, July 15, 2019). But the July URA data showed that Parc Botannia has 48 out of 60 units returned to the developer. With a return rate of 80 percent, the project actually sold only 12 instead of 60 units for the whole month in June.
In January 2020, another article featured a new launch sales table again with Parc Botannia as the top selling project in December 2019 after 49 units sold (“New private home sales in December down 53% from November but up 10.6% from year ago”, The Straits Times, January 15, 2020). But a check on the URA data the following month showed that Parc Botannia has 27 returned units out of 49 units sold. The return rate is 55 percent. Similarly, the previous month in November the developer claimed to sell 59 units but 41 of them were returned in December. Again the project had the highest return rate of 69 percent.