S’pore third as City of Opportunity

Singapore has been ranked third – up four positions from last year – in PwC’s sixth edition of its Cities of Opportunity report.

For the first time, London posted the highest score in the 30 cities studied by PwC. The U.K. capital is the only city to finish first in three of the 10 indicators – economic clout, city gateway and technology readiness, a category it ties with Seoul – and was followed by New York and Singapore.

The study showed that top ranked cities embody the energy, opportunity and hope that draw people to city life. High performing cities also find the right balance between social and economic strengths in a world being quickly shaped by inescapable global trends.

Moving up four spots from the last edition, Singapore took third place overall and finishes first in two indicators – ease of doing business and transportation and infrastructure.

Despite not having a top rank in any indicator, New York continues to show strong consistency across most of the categories. Rounding out the top five cities are Toronto and San Francisco.

“Changing demographics, shifts in economic power and the concepts of urbanization being realised are the forces taking the world in a new direction,” said Bob Moritz, PwC’s U.S. Chairman and Senior Partner.

“Cities are increasingly competing for talent and are working hard to capture the promise of growth from the many opportunities in today’s rapidly changing world. As a result, people are looking for more potential for personal opportunity while demanding critical elements to increase quality of life. It’s the top ranking cities in this year’s study that are demonstrating the foresight that is needed to adapt, stay competitive and thrive for a sustainable positive future.”

Cities of Opportunity 6 also highlighted the increasing competitiveness of emerging cities across several key indicators. Beijing, which ranked 19th, finishes in the top three in both the city gateway and economic clout categories, while Seoul is top in technology readiness and is the only emerging city to reach the top 10 in the ease of doing business indicator. Seoul and Buenos Aires also break into the top three for transportation and infrastructure, while Johannesburg is in the top three for cost.

The full report is available at http://www.pwc.com/cities.

The methodology for Cities of Opportunity is based on publicly available data, using three main sources: global multilateral development organisations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; national statistics organisations, such as National Statistics in the UK and the Census Bureau in the U.S.; and commercial data providers. The data was collected during the third and fourth quarters of 2013. Besides adding Jakarta, Nairobi, and Rio de Janeiro to the study, PwC also replaced Abu Dhabi with Dubai which brought the study to 30 cities total, the largest to date. The scoring methodology was developed to facilitate transparency and simplicity for readers, as well as comparability across cities.

Source : Property Guru

TDSR: Buyers are less affected

Going by the latest private home sales figures — which rose 55 percent to 745 units in April — home buying is likely to improve as buyers get used to the more stringent home loan rules, said media reports.

According to Thomas Tan, Director of Remax, “People are getting used to the TDSR, since it is probably here to stay, and they are improving their financial portfolio to manage the TDSR.”

Introduced in June last year, the Total Debt Servicing Ratio (TDSR) framework requires banks to ensure that borrowers’ total monthly debt repayments, including car loans and other mortgages, do not exceed 60 percent of their gross monthly income.

Propnex Chief Executive Mohd Ismail believes the dust has somewhat settled, given that the TDSR has already been in play for ten months.

He said, “We expect new-sales volume to improve in the coming months, on the back of more new launches and fairly positive market interest.”

MCL Land’s Lakeville in Jurong and CapitaLand’s Sky Habitat in Bishan were among the best-selling projects last month.

Eugene Lim, Key Executive Officer at ERA believes there is high competition among developers pushing new projects, as there are limited buyers and leftover stock is weighing on the market.

However, he added more buyers will enter the new-sales market as prices stabilise.

Source: PropertyGuru