Month: December 2019

The City Developments Limited (CDL) has recently called for an extension to the existing timeline for the sale of property in the face of low demands in the market.

As of September 30, 2019, the Urban Redevelopment Authority recorded an estimated 32,000 unsold private residential units in Singapore. Currently, there is a policy in effect which mandates that developers complete construction and have all units sold within a timeline of 5 years of acquiring the land. Failure to do so results in levying hefty fees on the firms concerned.

Given the lull in the current demand for residential units in the market, there is a call for amending the existing policy and to extend the deadline to a time period of seven to ten years for selling off all units in a project.

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On December 13, 2019, a report from Nomura Holdings revealed that the coming year may be a better one for Singapore economically. The country is expecting to see a faster growth in its annual GDP rate in 2020 than it had this year.

The speculation is that the growth rate for the country’s economy is likely to rise by 1.3 per cent overall. The growth in GDP has only been an average of 0.5 per cent this year.

Though not a huge margin, the rise is looked forward to with much anticipation. A worldwide innovation upswing, including growing international interest for semiconductors, is expected to keep the country’s electronics sector flourishing in the global market. This will also give the Government an opportunity to even out some of the country’s pertinent market risks.

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As per the modified regulations of the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), the process of application for a white site situated in Kampong Bugis and a hotel site right at the heart of River Valley Road has been initiated for the Government to put it up on the reserve list. Interestingly, the sites that were enlisted in the reserve list for the second half of 2019 of the Government Land Sales (GLS) program has been pushed to the former half of the upcoming year.

The primary objective underlying the release of the Kampong Bugis site located at the mouth of the Kallang River to a master developer is to open doors for its architectural developments followed by the implementation of several modern solutions and car-lite ingenuities across the entire district. If reports are to be believed, the circumscribing area of Kampong Bugis that is nearly about 8.2ha can bear up to 4,000 houses and a maximum of 50,000 square meters for miscellaneous purposes including communities, offices, retails and serviced apartments. Taking all of this into consideration, the entire Gross Floor Area (GFA) of the site sums to 390,000 sq. m.

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As per the reports submitted on Monday, buyers who are looking forward to securing properties in the region of AMK are hurrying into the race to procure the bigger and better version of the Build-To-Order flats through the Housing Board Sales Exercise. Ang Mo Kio is hailed as the largest unit-type that has ever been rolled out in the estate and includes an area that can support about 235 four-room flats, and considering the surging demand of the assets, the process has witnessed applications from more than 13 first-time applicants. However, compared to these larger units, the look-out for the smaller three-room flats was incredibly low and drew only two applicants each.

In Tampines, the statistics were quite similar with around 11 applications registered for the 218 five-room flats and 193 five-room flats; nevertheless, in the case of the three-room flats, they did not attract more than three applicants each for the 90 units held up for sale. The newly-flourishing flats of Tengah town too are experiencing an analogous plea where the four and five-room flats were welcomed by two applications for each and the average bid for the three-room units summed to about 0.7, meaning, all the applicants will, without a doubt, receive individual flats.

Apart from this, the other flat units which mostly comprised of two-room Flexi flats couldn’t invite the desired subscriptions and qualified to an average of 0.3 in both Tampines and Ang Mo Kio and 0.1 in Tengah. Therefore, to encourage people to enroll for the two-room Flexi flats, the elderly citizens will be provided with the flexibility to even choose their lengths of the lease. Additionally, applicants who are past 55 years of age can lease the flats for a period of up to 15 to 45 years with periodic increments every five years. Also, on last Tuesday, the BTO released 4,571 flats for sale and was thus undoubtedly qualified as the last and largest BTO sales operation of 2019.

Ruling out the grants for the four-room and five-room flats in Ang Mo Kio and Tampines is expected to start from $451,000 and $508,000 respectively. Another pointer that must be surfaced here is that the sales exercise in concern offered 3,599 units designated under the Sale of Balance Flat scheme that is distributed amongst 14 mature towns including that of Clementi and Bishan and 11 non-mature towns such as Punggol and Bukit Panjang. Even though this sale followed the legacy of National Development, it was accompanied by larger grants and enhanced income ceilings for first-time buyers.

The fundamental reason behind this disparity of demand is now nothing but obvious; because the income ceilings have been stretched, it means now more people will be equipped to procure these flats and hence will naturally resort to the choices that come with larger spaces and enriched comfort. This tendency is also supported by the amount of time made available to the people to make a choice, a factor which is distinct from the previous sale.

For mroe details, visit the page below.

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/housing/buyers-make-a-beeline-for-bigger-bto-flats-in-amk-tampines

Taking into consideration the present political discrepancies that the country is going through, the plunge of the prices for private homes in Hong Kong for the fifth month straight in October shouldn’t come as a surprise to however readers; however, the silver lining in this configuration appears to be the rate of fall which is slower when compared to the earlier months. In October, the prices of the flats dropped by 1.3 percent in what is considered to be one of the world’s most expensive property markets while in September, it underwent a fall rate of 1.7%. According to the predictions of Mr. Thomas Lam who is the executive director of property consultancy branch at Knight Frank, the present social and economic status of Honk Kong will reflect themselves in the dipping prices in November and December, but, if lower interest rates are capitalized upon sincerely, it may lend some support to the statistics.

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The famous One Holland Village being developed at Holland Drive is going to feature mixed-use spaces, including community buildings, office, retail, 255 serviced units, and 296 residential apartments. Note that the sale for these residences will be launched by November 30th, Saturday.

In this development, the retail store space has been assigned to some big brands, including pharmacy chain Guardian, supermarket Cold Storage, movie theatre The Projector, and a non-profit art as well as culture organization – The Rice Company.

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