Monthly Archives: September 2009

Bid to stop re-routing of road rejected

A SPAT between two developers about the re-routing of an access road has gone all the way to the Court of Appeal.

Both Pacific Rover and Yickvi Realty have condominium projects on adjoining parcels of land off Newton Road. But Yickvi had a right-of-way access road to its new 11-storey property that cut through Pacific Rover’s land.

Pacific Rover, which had received planning permission to build two 30-storey residential units, wanted to optimise land usage and shift part of the access road nearer to the property’s boundary. Its condominium, called Trilight, is due to be completed in April 2011.

Yickvi initially agreed to the request, provided the subterranean electric cables, pipes and other service installations beneath the road were shifted in line with the newly adjusted road.

But talks broke down last year and the case went to the High Court, which ruled Yickvi could not object to the road shift as it would not cause a major inconvenience to the occupants of its building.

Yickvi, through lawyers from Rajah & Tann, appealed to the highest court, which agreed with the earlier ruling but ordered Pacific Rover to make sure Yickvi had immediate access, whenever reasonably required, to maintain and repair the cables running under the original route.

The Court of Appeal made clear the inconvenience caused by the realignment of the access road was not the real issue. Continue reading

Go back to basics for affordable flats

WHAT does ‘affordable’ mean?

With rising home prices hitting headlines in recent weeks, Singaporeans are falling over themselves trying to pin down affordability.

The Government, which built its reputation housing a nation, has defended its record. It says that public housing is affordable because new home owners use less than 30 per cent of their income to service their housing loans.

While this is persuasive, public scepticism has been just as strong. The gap exists because there is no agreement on what ‘affordability’ means.

The Government feels flats are affordable because those who applied for them will not be paying through their noses. But this, however, does not take into account home seekers priced out of these flats in the first place.

Many home seekers, meanwhile, feel aggrieved because an HDB flat that does not require a long commute to work is getting out of reach.

Furthermore, a study by National University of Singapore economists Tilak Abeysinghe and Gu Jiaying published last year found that the buying power of people’s lifetime earnings in 2007 was lower than it was in 1990 when tracked against the prices of HDB resale flats. By this measure, the prices of HDB resale flats have become less affordable. Continue reading