ONE shophouse the size of a quarter of a basketball court was partitioned into nine rooms.
Each was as small as a bathroom, with a double-decker bed squeezed in. There were insufficient air-conditioners for all the rooms.
Yet, there were ready tenants. The reason: The landlord charged only $300 a month for each room.
It was one of the worst cases that Mr Mohamed Ismail, chief executive of real estate agency PropNex, has come across.
He said: ‘The shophouse is in Serangoon with good food and amenities nearby. The low rental attracted foreigners on work permits.’
Mr Ismail does not know if the URA came to know about the shophouse, but he has heard of schemes where people rent a whole apartment and make profits of as much as 100 per cent by subletting the rooms to many tenants.
He said: ‘From my experience, property owners tend to be more cautious because at the end of the day, they are responsible for removing the partitions if URA finds out.’
Last year, URA investigated 400 such cases, most of which involved illegal refurbishment of dwellings for use as workers’ dormitories.
Partitioned rooms likely illegal
This year alone, URA has investigated more than 500 such cases. Continue reading
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