The government is not considering developing a retirement village at Pulau Ubin. Senior Parliamentary Secretary for National Development Maliki Osman said this in Parliament on Tuesday, in response to a suggestion made by Non-Constituency MP Lina Chiam. There is currently no development plan for Pulau Ubin and the goverment's intention is to keep the island in its rustic state for as long as...
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Media group Singapore Press Holdings plans to raise at least S$523 million by spinning off some of its property assets via a real estate investment trust (REIT), according to a preliminary prospectus filed on Tuesday. Called SPH REIT, the trust's assets will include the upmarket Paragon mall on the prime shopping belt of Orchard Road and the suburban Clementi Mall. SPH expects gross proceeds of...
The Westin hotel is making a comeback in Singapore after a 10-year absence. Its owner Starwood Hotels and Resorts is aiming to double its footprint in Asia in the next three to five years. The group has about 160 new hotels in the pipeline for Asia, one of them - The Westin Singapore - is due to open this November. It is looking to fill 300 job vacancies, amid the tight labour...
Ecopolitan, the latest executive condominium in Punggol, has attracted more than 1,000 applications for its 512 units at the close of e-applications on Sunday. This is the highest number of applications received this year for an EC. The eight-block residential development, located along Punggol Way and Punggol Walk, is the first project to be affected by new EC development rules. Ecopolitan features...
With the drop in resale flat transactions, the number of units with high Cash-over-Valuations (COVs) has fallen too. According to data from the Singapore Real Estate Exchange, in the first quarter of 2013, there were 56 flats with COVs exceeding S$100,000. The figure dropped some 20 per cent to 44 in the second quarter. In the first quarter, the top five towns with most flats commanding COV values...
If you are looking to take a loan to buy some real estate or a new car, you may want to do it sooner rather than later. That's because some analysts expect interest rates to start rising as soon as September. Singapore's interest rates are closely tied to those in the United States. And the Federal Reserve has made it clear that if the US economy continues its upward trend, quantitative easing...
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam on Sunday said that the latest home loan rules are not another round of property cooling measures, and that the market is showing signs of stabilising. Mr Tharman said the new Total Debt Servicing Ratio Framework is a long-term rule to get banks to start practising prudence when it comes to total debt. Under the new framework, banks...
Cash-over-valuation (COV) premiums for Housing and Development Board (HDB) resale flats have fallen to the lowest level in more than two years as the latest property cooling measures continued to work their way through the market. The median overall COV fell to S$24,000 in June, down S$3,000 or 11.1 per cent from the previous month, according to the Residential Property Flash Report released yesterday...
Developers are expected to put the brakes on home sales for the rest of the year after government curbs to rein in prices sapped demand, according to BOCOM International Holdings and Centaline Property Agency. “The pace of sales will remain slow unless there’s something encouraging developers to turn over assets faster,” said Mr Alfred Lau, a Hong Kong-based analyst at BOCOM. He added that they...
Analysts said the sales activity in the landed property market has slowed in recent years as a result of the government's many cooling measures. Property agency HSR Property Consultants said the total number of transactions in the first half of this year was 737, a fall of nearly 49 per cent on-year as of June 14. However, the proportion of buyers with HDB addresses has stayed fairly stable at around...