TODAY: Enjoy the convenience of living in the CBD

Guys! Call me if you fancy owning/renting the SOHO-styled units at this exciting newly completed condominium. Many choice units available.


Enjoy the convenience of living in the CBD

Aug 27

Lumiere, BS Capital's latest residential property, welcomes high-flying executives who want the convenience of living in Singapore's Central Business District.

Located in the Shenton Way strip, the 45-storey development boasts 168 units. The freehold apartment complex consists of 33 studio units from 506 square feet each, 99 one-bedroom with study units from 624 sq ft each and 33 two-bedroom units from 969 sq ft each. The other three units are a penthouse and two duplexes.

The property sits on a site of about 15,000 sq ft. Facilities include an infinity pool, a jacuzzi, a tennis court, a basketball half-court, a floating gym and a sky garden on the 34th floor.

Lumiere is situated right behind Tanjong Pagar MRT Station and is a few minutes' walk from Marina Boulevard and Marina Bay Sands.

TODAY: The key to investing in homes

Totally in agreement with Colin, he usually have a rather neutral-bearish leanings in his articles.

Some points I would like to highlight:

• your own home should be treated as an investment, I know some who sold their home earlier this year thinking the market has topped and is now renting, facing a
The key to investing in homes

• timing is everything in life, the old adage that if you can hold it will eventually go up, remember '97, some properties are just recovering to that price right now! Its been a good 13 years, almost half the time of the tenure of the mortgage loan.

• when done right, rolling the proceeds forward and accumulating properties and generating cash flow is amazing. But done wrongly, leverage can kill. Double-edged sword that is very sharp. Know where you stand, your balance sheet, reserves etc learn from the banks in the financial crisis.

Enjoy the article...
by Colin Tan | Aug 27

Most of us have heard it all before from the experts. Investing in homes is one of the safest and surest forms of investment. If you cannot re-sell the property for a good profit within a couple of years, you can always hold it for the long term because it will always appreciate.

But if everyone follows this advice, will it still work? Surely it is a recipe for disaster. If everyone is going to earn it the easy way, who will do all the hard work?

Given today's price levels, the vast majority of Singaporeans who own their homes are sitting on large paper profits. Many are paper millionaires; for them to become real millionaires, they would have no roofs over their heads.

Nevertheless, it is hard to argue against such a track record. In fact, the earlier the property was purchased, the greater the capital appreciation.

Most of us have bought our homes to live in, rather than as a get-rich-quick investments. When you buy for owner occupation, you have a guaranteed tenant - yourself. Instead of rentals, you are paying monthly mortgage payments.

It is a vastly different scenario when you are buying for investment. You do not have a guaranteed occupier. If you are not able to sell your property before its completion, you will have to look for tenants.

You will need to look at the yields and compare that with other forms of investments. You will need to assess the overall housing demand-and-supply situation. You will need to know how the economy is doing - now and in the future.

This means that you will need to do your homework and not go by herd instinct. The herd never gets it right all the time - hence economic and property cycles.

When an owner-occupier times his purchase right, he has one fewer big worry in life.

When an investor gets it right, he gets a windfall and lives the good life, but it never stops there, does it? The euphoria of earning big in a short few months or over one to two years what he could not earn in 10 or 15 years is intoxicating, to say the least. The profits will be re-invested in, what else, but property.

We read of success stories of people starting with a single property and having a string of them within a decade or two. How do they do it? We see many advertisements these days offering courses that will teach us how to make it big by investing in property. It is not a big secret: It is called leveraging - using other people's money to work for you.

When the value of your home rises significantly, as they always do during an up-cycle, you can secure a loan from banks by pledging your home as collateral. This is because your property's market value is much more than your outstanding loan.

You can use this loan to re-invest in property. In Singapore, buying a property under construction allows the investor to maximise his leverage. Since only a 20-per-cent down payment is required upon purchase, the investor can, in theory, play with an asset which is worth five times his initial capital.

Some people can own a number of properties in a short time because they are fully invested and fully leveraged. Profits are almost immediately re-invested. Like a person who buys his furniture on hire purchase, it looks like he is the owner, but the furniture is not yet fully his, even though no one else knows that.

This brings me to my last point. When an owner-occupier mis-times his purchase, he spends his whole working life paying for it. When a fully-leveraged investor gets it wrong, like in the real estate board game Monopoly, he becomes a bankrupt and retires from the game.

The writer is head of research and consultancy at Chesterton Suntec International.

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Roubini Says Third Quarter Growth in U.S. to Be ‘Well Below’ 1%

Yes, we all know that economic growth in the third, and likely, fourth quarters will be anemic. The question is how will 2011 be? Any soothsaying economist want to put your head out and give us your take?


Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist who predicted the global financial crisis, said U.S. growth will be "well below" 1 percent in the third quarter and put the odds of a renewed recession at 40 percent.

Roubini, chairman of Roubini Global Economics LLC, said his forecast assumes the government will lower its estimate for growth in the second quarter to an annual rate of 1.2 percent "at best."

"All the growth tailwinds of the first half of the year become headwinds in the second half," he said in an e-mail message, including the government's $814-billion stimulus plan, hiring for the census, and incentives such the cash-for-clunkers program and tax credits for first-time home buyers.

In the best scenario, he said he expects an "anemic, sub- par, below-trend U for many years given the need and process of deleveraging" by households, governments and the financial system.

"With growth at a stall speed of 1 percent or below, the stock markets could sharply correct, and credit spreads and interbank spreads widen while global risk aversion sharply increases," he said. "Thus a negative feedback loop between the real economy and the risky asset prices can easily then tip the economy into a formal double-dip," he said, referring to two recessions in a quick succession.

The Commerce Department may report revised figures in two days showing the economy grew at a 1.4 percent pace in the second quarter, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. That's down from an earlier estimate of 2.4 percent, because of a widening trade deficit, a smaller buildup of inventories and weaker construction.

TODAY: Still hungry for land

Still hungry for land

by Ephraim Seow | Aug 25

SINGAPORE - A residential site on Miltonia Close, next to the Orchid Country Club, attracted seven bids by the close of the public tender yesterday, in an indication that property developers still have a healthy appetite for land, property analysts said.

Hoi Hup Realty and Sunway Developments jointly submitted the highest bid of $165 million, which translates to about $406 per square foot per plot ratio. This is about 31-per-cent higher than the next highest bid at $126 million submitted by Master Contract Services.

The remaining bids, ranging from $97.9 million to $125.3 million, came from developers like Allgreen and MCL Land unit Superport.

On Hoi Hup's bullish top bid, Ngee Ann Polytechnic real estate lecturer Nicholas Mak said the developer had failed at least eight times in other tenders since the beginning of the year and hence might have had a greater need to build up its land bank.

The Miltonia Close site was launched by the Housing and Development Board (HDB) on July 2. The land parcel spans 291,000 sq ft and can yield a maximum gross floor area of about 407,000 sq ft.

With a 99-year lease term, the site can be developed into strata landed housing, condominium housing or flats.

Mr Leonard Tay, director of CBRE Research, noted that the site's good location beside the Orchid Country Club Golf Course would offer an unblocked view of Lower Seletar Reservoir. It is also close to Yishun HDB town.

He added the winning developer would likely develop a five-storey low-rise condominium.

Mr Tay said the top bid reflected a breakeven cost of around $700 to $750 psf should a low-rise condominium be built.

"Condominium units in this new project could possibly sell above $800 psf," he said.

This would put it at the higher end of recently transacted prices in the area from April to this month. Units in The Estuary, which was launched in April, sold for $650 to $850 psf, Mr Tay said.

Singapore Bond Sales Beat Record as Economy Fires, Costs Plunge

Good news for those with variable mortgages, looks like rates will remain low for 'an extended period of time'.

Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Singapore bond sales are accelerating as companies on an island vying for the title of world's fastest-growing economy exploit the lowest funding costs in at least two decades to finance expansion.

Temasek Holdings Pte. and CapitaLand Ltd. led borrowers that raised $14.1 billion this year, topping the record $13.2 billion of notes sold in 2001, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The benchmark three-month interbank lending rate was last at 0.54889 percent, the lowest since 1987, when data on the Monetary Authority of Singapore's website starts.

"Singapore is going through an outstanding period of economic growth with most sectors performing well," Aaron Russell-Davison, head of Asia debt syndicate at Standard Chartered Plc, said in a phone interview from the city-state. "In this context it makes sense that companies are looking to borrow longer-dated money at historically attractive levels."

The economy of Singapore, Asia's second-smallest country after the Maldives, may be the world's fastest-growing in 2010 after ballooning demand for goods and services prompted the government to raise forecasts three times since January. Gross domestic product increased 17.9 percent in the first half, ahead of the trade and industry ministry's full-year prediction of between 13 percent and 15 percent and surpassing India's expectations of 8.5 percent growth and China's of 9.5 percent.

Leisure Visitors

Companies added about 63,000 jobs in the six months to June 30, according to the Ministry of Manpower, a year after Singapore exited its worst recession since independence in 1965. Monthly tourist arrivals exceeded 1 million for the first time in July after Las Vegas Sands Corp. and Genting Singapore Plc opened the city's first casino resorts.

Property developers, shopping mall operators and hoteliers accounted for 26 percent of Singapore's 113 bond issues this year, Bloomberg data show.

CapitaLand, Southeast Asia's biggest developer, sold S$1.25 billion ($917 million) of bonds this month in maturities ranging from four to 10 years. The company paid a 4.3 percent coupon when it sold S$350 million of 10-year bonds at par on Aug. 17 compared with 4.4 percent when it sold S$100 million of eight- year notes in 2003, the data show.

"Our approach has been to grow the orchard not squeeze the orange," said Olivier Lim, CapitaLand's chief financial officer. We "nurture the group's access to markets and raise money when markets are conducive, not when we need the funds."

Lower Coupons

Temasek is Singapore's most prolific borrower this year after it issued notes in British pounds and Singapore dollars with maturities of between 10 and 40 years, according to Bloomberg data. The state-owned investment company is paying a 4.2 percent coupon for its 40-year notes, 10 basis points less than the 4.3 percent it paid for 10-year money in 2009.

Temasek sells bonds "as public markers of our credit quality," spokesman Jeffrey Fang said in an e-mailed response to questions. As well as improving capital efficiency and funding flexibility, they "foster the discipline of engaging with both international and Singapore bondholders," he said.

"With reasonable growth coming back into Asia, locking in a low coupon for the next 10 years is a pretty smart thing to do," said Sean Henderson, Hong Kong-based head of Asia debt syndication for HSBC Holdings Plc, the No. 3 arranger of Singapore bond sales this year. "Singapore borrowers tend to be rare and very high quality names, so investors have been comfortable about extending durations in order to get a bit of extra yield."

Smaller Sales

When Singapore's AAA rated Housing & Development Board sold S$500 million of three-year bonds in July it paid a 1.15 percent coupon, according to Bloomberg data. No Singapore borrower has paid more than 7.5 percent this year, the data show.

Olam International Ltd., the Singapore-based commodities trader, paid 7.5 percent this month when it sold $250 million of 10-year bonds, its longest-maturity notes. The bonds traded at 101.13 cents on the dollar to yield 7.338 percent yesterday, according to Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc prices. Olam declined to comment in an e-mailed response to questions.

While companies can typically borrow larger sums in the U.S. dollar bond market, according to HSBC's Henderson, they pay slightly less to sell bonds in Singapore. Companies completed 35 U.S. dollar-denominated sales that raised $500 million or more in Asia excluding Japan this year compared to nine corporate sales of at least S$500 million.

Interbank Costs

The Singapore interbank offered rate that banks charge each other to borrow U.S. dollars was last at 0.31944 percent, its lowest in at least 23 years. The rate rose to as much as 5.7775 percent during the global financial crisis as banks hoarded capital after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Borrowers sold $2.5 billion of bonds in the city in 1999 and issuance ranged between about $5 billion and $7 billion a year for much of the last decade, Bloomberg data show.

"The regulators in Singapore have been working hard to make this market appealing to both investors and issuers," said Clifford Lee, head of fixed-income for DBS Group Holdings Ltd., the top-ranked underwriter of Singapore dollar bond sales. "There's no withholding tax and the approval process for foreigners to sell bonds is simple and quick if it's just an offering to accredited investors," he said.

VTB Group, Russia's second-largest bank, raised S$400 million from two-year notes this month. It was the only Russian issuer to target Asian investors apart from Moscow-based gas company OAO Gazprom, which sold yen-denominated bonds in 2007.

Agricultural Bank of China Ltd., China's biggest lender by customers, sold $50 million of floating-rate notes through its Singapore unit in April. The lender has offices in the city- state as well as in Hong Kong, London, Tokyo, Seoul, Frankfurt, Sydney and New York, according to its website.

"We are seeing an increased maturity and sophistication in the Singapore capital markets," Standard Chartered's Russell- Davison said. "2010 is set to be a big year, reflecting the confidence of both issuers and investors."

To contact the reporter on this story: Katrina Nicholas in Singapore at knicholas2@bloomberg.net

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Properties near MRT appreciate in value

(C) mypaper - Monday August 23, 2010

For the full article, please visit Page A6 of http://myepaper.mypaper.sg/ebook/web_php/fvbrowserjs.php?urljs=http://myepaper.mypaper.sg/ecreator/sphopf/mya230810cnd_opf_files/mya230810cnd.js&ver=Gen

Decrease in default rate

I find it hard to agreed with those who say a market crash is imminent.

"The number of mortgagors defaulting on their property loans has reduced over the last two years, according to DP Credit Bureau (DPCB). It said in a report that the average default rate across all age groups fell to a low 0.43% in March 2010, down from the 0.89% in March 2008. DPCB general manager Lincoln Teo said this represents an improvement in the property market, leading to more positive sentiment which indirectly drives better payment behaviour."

Read more at http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1076643/1/.html