Tag Archives: Developers

Smaller homes take lion’s share of sales

Posted on 14 Sep 2009 | Comments Off on Smaller homes take lion’s share of sales

Home-seekers have gotten hungrier for apartments in recent months but have yet to work up a hearty appetite for large units.

Across many property launches, studio apartments and two-bedders
remain most popular, reflecting continued price sensitivity on the buyers’
part. They are generally ’still not as ambitious’, says DMG & Partners property analyst Brandon Lee.

At NTUC Choice Homes’ Trevista in Toa Payoh where 550 units have been launched, the majority of units left are three and four-bedders. Many buyers went straight for the two-bedroom units when the project’s preview began some two weeks ago.

GuocoLand saw the same trend when it launched Sophia Residence in the Dhoby Ghaut area. ‘All one and two-bedders were snapped up as soon as they were launched,’ says a GuocoLand spokesman. The project also has three and four-bedroom units.

Anecdotal evidence also points to a preference for smaller homes at projects such as Viva and Ascentia Sky. In another instance, the 70-unit Airstream at St Michael’s Road – where most units measured 625 sq ft in size or smaller – sold out last month.

Aiding the trend, some developers caught sight of homeseekers’ shrinking pockets as the downturn came and reconfigured their projects to offer a bigger number of smaller units. Continue reading →

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Posted in Developers, Property Market / Real Estate

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Mapletree plans Singapore Reit

Posted on 13 Sep 2009 | Comments Off on Mapletree plans Singapore Reit

MAPLETREE Investments, the property unit of Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, is poised to list a real estate investment trust (Reit) in Singapore that could hold up to S$4 billion in assets, a top executive said.

CEO Hiew Yoon Khong said yesterday the listing of the Reit would take place when stock-market conditions improved.

‘The management team is ready, and the filing process is really a two-month job,’ Mr Hiew told Reuters in an interview. ‘We were actually preparing for the IPO 16 to 18 months ago but the market turned.’

He said Mapletree planned to launch a Vietnam property fund and an Asian industrial property fund in the next 12 months and hopes to raise between US$500 million and US$1 billion for each.

Mr Hiew, who is also senior managing director (special projects) at Temasek, said Mapletree’s strategy going forward is to become ‘a real estate capital management type of business’, managing listed and unlisted funds for outside investors. He said over the next three to five years, Mapletree hoped to grow its property assets to at least S$20 billion.

Mapletree currently owns or manages nearly S$12 billion in real estate assets in several Asian countries, including China, Vietnam and Malaysia. Continue reading →

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