Property Market Sentiments

[brattzz]

would be great if gov. continues to sell land for more ECs!

Give up-graders a chance!

[Temperament]

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/real-est...-purchases

Blackstone said to be in due diligence for bulk residential purchases
Paterson Suites and 21 Anderson bulk purchases expected to be effected through the sale of shares

By
Kalpana Rashiwalakalpana@sph.com.sg@KalpanaBT
BT_20141104_KRSALES4A_1349928.jpg Blackstone is said to be in talks to buy the balance 18 units in Paterson Suites (above) and the whole of 21 Anderson Royal Oak Residence. A bulk sale could be brewing at 111 Emerald Hill. PHOTO: THE STRAITS TIMES
4 Nov5:50 AM
Singapore

GLOBAL investment and advisory giant Blackstone is said to be keen on bulk purchases of high-end residential units in Singapore. It is understood to be doing due diligence for a potential acquisition of 18 four-bedroom apartments at Paterson Suites as well as an en bloc purchase

How come? Is market turning? Or is it cheap now?

[brattzz]

maybe Blackstone is timing the bottom... hehe!

[cfa]

Believe they can get a big discount for this bulk purchase.

[specuvestor]

Vested interest talking... if policy makers listen to them we will be doomed.

“I don’t think there was a bubble so there was no need for such measures,” Fisher said. “It’s rational pricing for real estate in Singapore because the country is getting richer and their isn’t much land around.”

Champion HF manager. It's like arguing big countries' property prices don't rise because so much land.

Billionaire Enclave Prices Plunge on Singapore Property Curbs
2014-11-05 17:00:00.0 GMT


By Pooja Thakur
Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Australian hedge-fund manager Stephen Fisher says he was lucky to have bought his luxury home on Sentosa, a Singapore resort island that has attracted the wealthy, in 2005, before property curbs kicked in.
“I would be very wary of buying a second property in Singapore as I would have to pay higher taxes, which makes it less attractive,” Fisher, 50, chairman of First Degree Global Asset Management, said in a phone interview.
Sentosa, where Australia’s richest woman, Gina Rinehart, and telecommunications billionaire Bhupendra Kumar Modi have homes, is losing its appeal. Taxes as high as 18 percent on foreigners purchasing property introduced in 2013 have depressed prices and sales.
Condominium prices in the residential enclaves that line the seafront with sweeping views across the Singapore Strait are near their lowest levels since the end of 2006 based on 15 transactions, according to Maybank Kim Eng Securities Pte. Some bungalows are being sold for more than 50 percent below the peak in 2012, Urban Redevelopment Authority, or URA, data show.
Singapore has been trying to rein in the property market since 2009, with the toughest measures, including stricter lending, introduced last year. The island-state is unlikely to ease the curbs until “a meaningful correction” takes place, Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said Oct. 28.
“The way prices have fallen is like during the crisis time” in 2008, Alan Cheong, a Singapore-based director at broker Savills Plc, said, referring to values on Sentosa Island.
“The measures have impacted demand and we are seeing a diversion of interest by foreigners away from here.”
Home prices on Sentosa have fallen about 40 percent since 2012, compared with a 28 percent drop in 2008, Cheong said.

Luring Foreigners

Among the government’s curbs have been a cap on debt at 60 percent of a borrower’s income and higher stamp duties on home purchases. Additional taxes for foreigners buying residential property were raised to 15 percent in 2013 from 10 percent, on top of the basic buyer’s stamp duty rate of about 3 percent. All home sellers need to pay 16 percent in levies if they sell within the first year.
Singapore home prices reached a record high in the third quarter last year amid low interest rates. They have fallen every quarter since, sliding 3.8 percent in the longest stretch of declines since the global financial crisis in 2008.
In 2004, the island-state eased rules to allow foreigners to buy land for development on Sentosa, luring buyers from Australia to Russia. Sentosa Cove, home to marinas and sprawling houses, became the first location where foreigners were allowed to own stand-alone homes with easy approval from the Singapore Land Authority.

Modi, Rinehart

“The curbs were to help the Singaporeans, but in the process they are also curtailing the growth prospects of the country,” Modi, who estimates his net worth at $2 billion, said in a phone interview. “The government needs to differentiate between global and local citizens.”
Modi owns two properties in Sentosa, which means peace and tranquility in Malay.
Rinehart, Australia’s richest person in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, owns two apartments in the Seven Palms Sentosa Cove project, Rinehart’s closely held Hancock Prospecting Pty confirmed. A company associated with Rinehart bought the apartments for S$57.2 million ($44 million), The Business Times reported in July 2012.

Tourism Attraction

Sentosa, connected to Singapore by a 710-meter (0.5 mile) causeway, was once a military base and housed a prisoners-of-war camp during the Japanese occupation in World War II.
In the 1970s, the Singapore government decided to develop the 500-hectare (1,236-acre) island into a holiday resort to boost tourism. Resorts World Sentosa, built by Genting Singapore Plc for S$7 billion in 2010, houses one of the city-state’s two casinos and Southeast Asia’s only Universal Studios theme park.
The curbs have made home buying prohibitive for foreign investors, said Donald Han, managing director of Chestertons, a real estate broker in Singapore.
Homes larger than 2,000 square feet that cost between S$4 million and S$5 million have been hit the hardest by the stamp duties on purchases and sales, Han said.

Prices Slumping

Prices of some condominiums slumped as much as 45 percent from 2007, when they were first sold, at auctions earlier this year by banks that repossessed them, according to Maybank Kim Eng.
A bungalow on 11,280 square feet of land on Treasure Island in Sentosa Cove was sold for 53 percent below the peak this year, while a 7,341-square-foot property on Paradise Island was priced 39 percent below the record S$3,214 per square foot, URA data showed.
Homes purchased after 2006 and sold in the last 12 months lost between 5 percent and 21 percent of their value, Ng Wee Siang, a Singapore-based analyst at Maybank Kim Eng estimates.
“It’s now taking two to three months longer to sell,” Mok Sze Sze, head of auctions in Singapore at broker Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., said.
Apartment prices on Sentosa have dropped about 43 percent from two years ago, data compiled by real estate research firm StreetSine Pte showed. Two units at Turquoise, a high-end condominium on the south side of the island, changed hands at 45 percent discounts to their initial prices in the second quarter, as banks sold them off in auctions, Maybank Kim Eng said.

Wait, Pick

A couple of units at the Marina Collection, a premium project, were put up for auction earlier this year by banks which repossessed the properties after the owners couldn’t make the mortgage payments, Jones Lang LaSalle’s Mok said.
Secondary home sales in Singapore have been slowing, hitting the lowest since 2003 in the first quarter, before recovering, according to the URA.
High-net-worth buyers “will wait and pick and choose the right time to enter the market,” Mok said. “They have other alternatives overseas, so that’s pulling away funds.”
Fisher the hedge-fund manager questions the need for the property curbs.
“I don’t think there was a bubble so there was no need for such measures,” Fisher said. “It’s rational pricing for real estate in Singapore because the country is getting richer and their isn’t much land around.”

For Related News and Information:
Top Stories:TOP<GO>
Singapore Home Prices Fall for Fourth Straight Quarter on Curbs NSN NCQRKT6S972G <GO> Singapore Home Sales Drop as Rates Poised to Rise: Mortgages NSN NAAI3F6TTDTU <GO>

--With assistance from Klaus Wille in Singapore.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Pooja Thakur in Singapore at +65-6311-2496 or pthakur@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Andreea Papuc at +852-2977-6641 or
apapuc1@bloomberg.net
Tomoko Yamazaki

[CityFarmer]

Vested interest talking... if policy makers listen to them we will be doomed.

“I don’t think there was a bubble so there was no need for such measures,” Fisher said. “It’s rational pricing for real estate in Singapore because the country is getting richer and their isn’t much land around.”

Both are right, but from different perspectives. One from public interest, and another from corporation point of view.

As you always highlighted, Housing, especially public housing policies, should never be handled by purely corporation POV.

[specuvestor]

U missed my following comment

"Champion HF manager. It's like arguing big countries' property prices don't rise because so much land."

I don't think he is right at all, even from an analysis point of view. This is a long term statement so he shouldn't even be bothered of short term policy moves. If Buffett bought it on this view, he would say he prefers burgers to go cheaper.

[brattzz]

don't understand why these multi-millionaires are harping on these millions dollars homes... don't buy if you think it's expensive for you lah..
some other long term value buyers will swoop in when the price is right!

[Temperament]

don't understand why these multi-millionaires are harping on these millions dollars homes... don't buy if you think it's expensive for you lah..
some other long term value buyers will swoop in when the price is right!

Ha! Ha!
Remember he said he bought in 2005. Now 2014 he means he has not made enough why the G want to introduce many "restrictions" for him to make more money lah. i would say the same if i was him.

[greengiraffe]

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/real-est...ths-report

Luxury home prices in Singapore fall 10% over 12 months: report
By
Anita Gabrielanitag@sph.com.sg@AnitaGabrielBT
33123045.jpg Luxury home prices in the world's leading cities rose an average of 4 per cent over the 12 months ended September 2014 but the outcome was starkly different in Singapore, where prices plunged the most: 10 per cent. PHOTO: REUTERS
7 Nov5:50 AM
Singapore

LUXURY home prices in the world's leading cities rose an average of 4 per cent over the 12 months ended September 2014 but the outcome was starkly different in Singapore, where prices plunged the most: 10 per cent.

Singapore was one of seven cities out of 33 that saw prices for high-end homes fall over the one-year period, according to Knight Frank's latest Prime Global Cities Index report.

None of the other cities saw prices drop as much as in Singapore. In Hong Kong, prices in the luxury homes space slipped 1.1 per cent while the other cities (all in Europe) saw prices dip 2.5-8.7 per cent with the weak macro backdrop.

Home prices in Singapore are falling on the back of protracted property curbs aimed at stabilising real estate prices - which had risen some 30 per cent over the last five years before the curbs kicked in.

"The muted sentiment in Singapore's luxury residential market remains inherent with falling transaction volumes and buyers anticipating further price adjustments," said Alice Tan, Knight Frank Singapore's director and research head.

While some home owners have lowered their asking prices due to the softening market, others are holding out for more given the "exclusivity" of their assets and expectation that things could improve with Singapore's long-term prospects, she said.

In the US, all four cities included in the index - Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and New York - saw annual prices rise between 6.7 and 16.3 per cent, positioning them in the top 11 rankings for annual growth.

The disparity with Europe's cities is stark. Luxury home prices rose 10.5 per cent on average across North American cities over a 12-month period compared with an average of only one per cent across European cities.

The index - which tracks movement in luxury residential prices to help investors and developers monitor and compare the performance of prime residential prices across key global cities - also discovered that prices in the prime residential space rose a meagre 0.2 per cent in the quarter ended September. This would be the index's weakest performance in two years. Here, too, Singapore underperformed, with prices falling 4.1 per cent over the period.

Ms Tan said transaction volume in Singapore is likely to be thin in Q4 with the year-end holiday season. She expects average prices to moderate over this period with a 3-5 per cent decline on a quarterly basis.

According to the report, the overall moderate increase in prices over the quarter was partly due to the fact that the third quarter (for much of the world at least) is dominated by the summer break, which often sees sales activity click at a lower pace.

Despite the prime index's muted performance in Q3, luxury prices continue to outperform their mainstream counterparts. To back this point, the report said the average price of a luxury home on the index is 36 per cent higher than it was at the index's lowest point in Q2 2009 while the average price of a mainstream property has risen 14 per cent over the same period.

Read the full research report at BTInvest (http://www.btinvest.com.sg/property)