Tag Archives: Singapore Property

Whopping $5m subsale loss for St Regis unit

A UNIT at St Regis Residences chalked up the biggest subsale loss in the first eight months of this year: a massive $5 million.

St Regis: The top loss-incurring unit, on the sixth floor, was sold in May for $7.98m. It had previously changed hands at almost $13m, at the market peak in July 2007.

But on the flip side, it was also a unit at the same 999-year leasehold development which raked in the biggest gain of $1.39 million. The fifth floor unit was transacted in July at $9.5 million – up from the $8.1 million original purchase price. The seller had bought the unit direct from the developer in June 2006.

The loss-incurring unit, on the sixth floor, was sold in May. The transacted price was $7.98 million, compared to the nearly $13 million at which the apartment previously changed hands in July 2007, during the peak of the luxury housing market.

Interestingly, the $7.98 million subsale price for the property in May is not far off the $8.16 million that the apartment had been originally sold by the project’s developer in June 2006.

Another St Regis apartment, this time on the 11th floor, was transacted at $7.8 million in June – $2.7 million lower than the $10.5 million the developer had sold the unit for in April 2007.

All three transactions were picked up in Savills Singapore’s analysis of URA Realis caveats as at Aug 28.

Overall, in percentage terms, the most profitable subsale transaction this year yielded a 103 per cent gain.

It involved the sale of a 34th level unit at Southbank, located at North Bridge Road, for $1.64 million ($1,250 per square foot). The transaction last month is nearly double the $807,600 or $615 psf that the developer sold the unit for in July 2006.

The largest percentage loss of 41 per cent accrued to the seller of a unit on the 55th level of The Sail @ Marina Bay. The unit sold for about $1.89 million or $1,600 psf in January – lower than the nearly $3.2 million or $2,700 psf it was previously transacted at in June 2007.

Source : Business Times – 22 Sep 2009

Property: Govt has learnt from history

THE last thing the Government expected to do in this recession year was tackle a budding housing bubble, the second to appear in three years. But on Tuesday, four state bodies – the Ministries of National Development, Finance and Law, as well as the Monetary Authority of Singapore – came together to do just that.

They unveiled measures to cool the downturn-defying ‘exuberance’ of the property market, revealing in the process how much the Government has learned about pricking property bubbles since the epic housing bubble of 1996.

What stood out about Tuesday’s announcement was that it was timely and generally light-handed. Some measures were even widely anticipated, such as the reinstatement of regular, scheduled sales of state land through the confirmed list.

Back in 1996, the Government acted only after home prices had been rising for 10 straight years, including the surges of 1993 and 1994. And just two years ago, when the Government removed the deferred payment scheme in October 2007 to deter speculation, the move came only after private home prices had jumped 23per cent in first nine months of 2007, on top of a 10per cent rise in 2006.

This time, the anti-speculation steps were announced just as the bubble was forming. Indeed, National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan said the measures were designed to ‘pre-empt any speculative bubble’. Continue reading