Tag Archives: Singapore Property

Do the criteria reflect reality?

Posted on 5 Sep 2009 | Comments Off on Do the criteria reflect reality?

I REFER to Monday’s letter by the Housing Board, ‘How HDB keeps it affordable’.

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The HDB states that flat prices are determined by willing buyers and willing sellers. In land-scarce Singapore, the notion of ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ has little practical meaning.

Suppose I want to buy a flat in Ang Mo Kio to live close to my parents but the HDB is not building any new flats there. I have no choice but to buy from Ang Mo Kio resellers.

Suppose too, I need to set up a family now and cannot wait for the build-to- order scheme to kick in, what choice do I have but to buy from the resale market?

So ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ is not a realistic picture of what is happening now.

If there are sufficient new flats available for people to choose from, where and when they like, who would be ‘willing’ to buy from the resale market? Continue reading →

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Posted in HDB, Property Price

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Preventing a property market bubble

Posted on 5 Sep 2009 | Comments Off on Preventing a property market bubble

THAT the government is sending a second signal in the space of two months that it is watching developments in the property market underscores its unease over the current real estate boom. And this time, the government has upped the ante a notch, after the earlier caution appeared to have made little impact on the market.

On Wednesday, Minister for National Development Mah Bow Tan said that there is a ‘definite possibility’ that the government will re-introduce land sales through its confirmed list system from next year – thus increasing the potential supply of homes – and that it was ‘a question of how much we put on the confirmed list’. Sale of state land under the confirmed list was suspended for the first half 2009 Government Land Sales Programme to help stave off oversupply risk as the property market here was then on a downtrend. This came after Mr Mah warned earlier in late July that speculation was trickling back into the property market. The government was watching the situation closely, he said then, and will take action should the market overheat. But that seemed to have made little impression on sentiment, and was followed by several ‘hot’ property launches where queues formed and units were snapped up immediately. Continue reading →

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Posted in Property Market / Real Estate, Property Price

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