Singapore Expats

We all know USA federal rate may be increased by end of this year or sometimes next year.

And Singapore government does not have the intention to lift up cooling measures such as TDSR.

When do you think it is the best year to do property investment In Singapore ?

US will increase interest rates only mid of next year or after.

Good time to enter SG market depends on what your aim is. If you want to make money from property, then the best time may not come for a long long time. There are better alternative investments.

If you need a place to stay then now is also a good time. Prices may slide down slowly by max 20% over a period of 2 years. So take that as the worst case scenario and buy if you want to stay.

PIS.SG wrote:We all know USA federal rate may be increased by end of this year or sometimes next year.

And Singapore government does not have the intention to lift up cooling measures such as TDSR.

When do you think it is the best year to do property investment In Singapore ?

you need to be more specific. time horizon, at least?

As the old adage goes...

'It's time in the market, not timing the market'.

I've followed property investment forums where people have been screaming from the rooftops that property is about to crash (year after year after year). The basic flaw being that this opinion is invariably what would personally suit their circumstances the best.

Meanwhile others get on with their lives. Buy a place (or a few and give landlording a go), get married, have children. Prices might fluctuate but in the scheme of things that is irrelevant.

And meanwhile the same old naysayers even 10+ years on are screaming 'It REALLY has to crash now, you're all MAD!', and meanwhile they're still paying rent each month on their rented home...

JR8 wrote:As the old adage goes...

'It's time in the market, not timing the market'.

I've followed property investment forums where people have been screaming from the rooftops that property is about to crash (year after year after year). The basic flaw being that this opinion is invariably what would personally suit their circumstances the best.

Meanwhile others get on with their lives. Buy a place (or a few and give landlording a go), get married, have children. Prices might fluctuate but in the scheme of things that is irrelevant.

And meanwhile the same old naysayers even 10+ years on are screaming 'It REALLY has to crash now, you're all MAD!', and meanwhile they're still paying rent each month on their rented home...

How true. We bought a place here last spring, no regrets. My husband's friends have all set around the table here and proclaimed that prices will tumble further etc etc. Meanwhile they have been paying rent for the past 5years at least. Will prices here tumble further? No idea. I have never bought and sold any properties here, so I have no previous knowledge.
However, the govt here has a tight grip at the cooling measure, so it can be easily adjusted upwards or downwards. Furthermore, like London, SG seems to attract an awful lot of washing machine money as well as flight money. It will keep it going for awhile.
Like anything else it is all about location location location and if the property is price to sell correctly, it will go.

Picking up on this earlier topic, as I came upon this today -

'Policymakers are changing tack on property cooling measures (12 Mar – SBR)
The Singapore Business Review featured an article on property consultants’ views about policymakers’ change in opinion regarding Singapore residential market.

Alan* said, "Over the course of the past 21 months since the Total Debt Servicing Ratio (TDSR) took effect, we seem to sense a nuanced shift in the way policy makers look at the residential real estate market. Initially, the tone was more in tune with a need to see price decline significantly. However, presently, we appear to be hearing a more conciliatory tone in wanting real estate prices to stabilise… We would believe that henceforth, if no crisis occurs, looking for that certain price decline milestone to be met before the measures are modified could be unproductive."

* 'Alan Cheong, head of research at Savills Singapore'

Nice Article:

http://www.btinvest.com.sg/personal_fin ... of-condos/

The road to riches isn't just paved with keys of condos

...Statistics on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) website compiled from Bloomberg show that if you take a 10-year view from 2005 to 2014, property, as measured by the URA Private Property Price Index, has returned an average of 6.1 per cent a year. Blue chip Singapore stocks, as measured by the Straits Times Index (STI), returned 5.3 per cent a year, which is slightly lower. Both indices exclude rent or dividends.

Yet the property figures might be skewed. The mid-2000s saw a long period of stagnation for Singapore property. By taking 10-year returns now, we are benchmarking returns from a low base. By contrast, the STI had begun rising from their 2003 lows by 2005.

Measure property returns from the last major market top at end-1996 to end-2014, and returns will average just under 1 per cent a year. Measure them after the Asian financial crisis, at end-1998 to end-2014, and property returns average 4.6 per cent a year.

Meanwhile, on a shorter, two-year time horizon, the STI comes out ahead. It returned 3.1 per cent a year on average, while property has lost 1.5 per cent a year in 2013 and 2014.

Yet the STI lost to pretty much every developed or Asian market. The S&P 500 index returned 25.1 per cent a year in Singapore dollar terms, the FTSE 100 returned 7.6 per cent, the Nikkei 225 returned 14.3 per cent, India's Nifty index returned 15.4 per cent, and the top 50 A-shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, 18.3 per cent.

If you had spent a fortune buying a private property in Singapore two years ago, you would have regretted it. You bought at a temporary top. If you had put the money in US stocks, you would have made over half your money back....

We completed in April 2013, does that mean be bought at the top of the market? No idea.
I dont think so. Husband viewed the house when we first arrived in March 2012. It was above our budget. A year later, its asking price dropped 20%. For D10 at $1200 per square feet, I still think it was a good buy. It is freehold and foreigner eligible too. Although we are property speculators, we would like to make a decent profit when we are ready to sell but that's in another 10years. At the moment, it is our home.

Primrose Hill wrote:We completed in April 2013, does that mean be bought at the top of the market? No idea.
I dont think so. Husband viewed the house when we first arrived in March 2012. It was above our budget. A year later, its asking price dropped 20%. For D10 at $1200 per square feet, I still think it was a good buy. It is freehold and foreigner eligible too. Although we are property speculators, we would like to make a decent profit when we are ready to sell but that's in another 10years. At the moment, it is our home.

That sounds like a decent buy. I got into freehold 1500 ft2 at $680/ft2 in D14 and have no regrets (I got in before the ABSD and bank regs tightened up). My only concern is the damn MC chairman wants to try do an enbloc next year and if it succeeds I have to find a new place (with ABSD and the new TSDR issues to deal with) and I just don't think what I want will be easy to find, finance and pay for - although my wife is a US citizen so I might be able to knock off 1/2 of the ABSD if we buy in both names. It took me 2 years to find my current place (327978 post code).

PNGMK wrote:

Primrose Hill wrote:We completed in April 2013, does that mean be bought at the top of the market? No idea.
I dont think so. Husband viewed the house when we first arrived in March 2012. It was above our budget. A year later, its asking price dropped 20%. For D10 at $1200 per square feet, I still think it was a good buy. It is freehold and foreigner eligible too. Although we are property speculators, we would like to make a decent profit when we are ready to sell but that's in another 10years. At the moment, it is our home.

That sounds like a decent buy. I got into freehold 1500 ft2 at $680/ft2 in D14 and have no regrets (I got in before the ABSD and bank regs tightened up). My only concern is the damn MC chairman wants to try do an enbloc next year and if it succeeds I have to find a new place (with ABSD and the new TSDR issues to deal with) and I just don't think what I want will be easy to find, finance and pay for - although my wife is a US citizen so I might be able to knock off 1/2 of the ABSD if we buy in both names. It took me 2 years to find my current place (327978 post code).

Contrary to beliefs, I find it extremely difficult to find the "right" place. After all it is our biggest asset and purchase. I dont want to get it wrong. I would go view all these places and whilst all seemed nice enough, each place comes with their own compromises and at the end of the day its the one with the least compromises, I guess and its the one that I would want to reach into my wallet.
We bought it when it was 5% stamp duty + ABSD and no TDSR. This place took us a year to find. We shortlisted this place and another further down Holland Rd, Ulu Pandan really. That was a bigger space but it had too many negatives for us. For the same money as our current home, it do not have covered parking in front of our own house, the entire house needed updating and gutting out. The family that lived there had 4 kids now all grown up and back to Blighty. The house looked like it had been renovated back in the late 80s with exposed brickwork in the kitchen. Had tall ceilings downstairs which was great, with a great skylight but it doesnt quite closed all the way which was weird. All the bedrooms needed re-partitioning as it was a 4bed house which they sub-divided it into 6/7 small bedrooms. Needed new kitchen, 5 new bathrooms, skylight that closes properly and re-partitioning of the bedrooms and fitted wardrobes in all the bedrooms. Plenty of space, it was over 3600 sq feet of house, great patio/back garden. I was swayed by the enormouse eat-in kitchen which opens up to the back garden. Instead we went for another house further up the road at the other side of Holland Rd, which needed less work. We put half the master ensuite bathroom back inside the bathroom, no idea why half the ensuite was outside, trendy, I guess. We closed the air well/stair well and created a utility space off the wet kitchen.
The only thing left to do now is the kitchen.

Quite a dire report:

http://www.todayonline.com/business/28- ... arket-peak

http://sgre.com.sg/st-regis-penthouse-b ... 5-8m-loss/

THE owner of a penthouse at St Regis Residences booked an eye-popping loss of $15.8 million when he sold the apartment last month. It is the biggest loss ever made on an apartment sale here.

The two-storey unit in Tanglin Road, with a swimming pool on the upper floor and views of Nassim Road's greenery, first made headlines in 2007 when Japanese billionaire Katsumi Tada shelled out a record-smashing $28 million - or $4,653 per sq ft (psf) - for it.

Mr Tada's generous offer back then gave the lucky seller a profit of $12.77 million, but it has turned out to be an astonishingly bad investment and underscores how fortunes have turned in the high-end property market, where more instances of loss-making transactions are surfacing.

The new owner is Andy Chua, who owns Yun Nam Hair Care. He snapped up the 6,017 sq ft apartment at the 173-unit project in a cash transaction of $12.2 million, or $2,028 psf, according to records lodged with the Singapore Land Authority.

Wd40 wrote:http://sgre.com.sg/st-regis-penthouse-b ... 5-8m-loss/
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I don't think the guy who sold at that amount of loss would worry that much ...

With that many zeros ...

Just saying

Yeah, but think about it, if he is thinking its better to sell at a loss and get out then stay invested, he knows a better way of making money than leaving it in Singapore property.

Also its a case of foreign investor exiting and selling to a local, which means capital outflow.

L

Wd40 wrote:Yeah, but think about it, if he is thinking its better to sell at a loss and get out then stay invested, he knows a better way of making money than leaving it in Singapore property.

Also its a case of foreign investor exiting and selling to a local, which means capital outflow.

Yes, I do agree ....For scaremongers.. it's sensational news ...

For individuals selling at a loss may mean more than ditching a sinking ship .. maybe he has other cash flow problems ..