Additional buyer’s stamp duty (ABSD) of 35 per cent now will apply on any transfer of residential property into a living trust occurring on or after May 9, the Ministry of Finance (MOF) announced on Sunday (May 8). ABSD will be payable even if there is no identifiable beneficial owner at the time the residential property is transferred into a trust, MOF said in a media release late on...
The Law Society plans to insert a clause into its widely-used property transaction agreement template to make mediation the first port of call for parties to resolve disputes. Gregory Vijayendran, president of the Law Society, said at the recent opening of the legal year in early January that the organisation intends to revise the Law Society's Conditions of Sale 2012 to include a rule that requires...
Ten people - including property agents, sellers and a lawyer - will be charged in court on Tuesday (Dec 3) for their alleged involvement in a housing loan cashback scam involving S$11.4 million. Investigations by the Commercial Affairs Department unravelled a scheme where the suspects reportedly inflated the selling price of three properties and forged income documents, tricking one bank into disbursing...
A 35-year-old woman living at Pacific Mansion condominium tried to bribe two security guards at the River Valley development into keeping quiet about her Airbnb guests. Li Yilin was sentenced on Thursday (Nov 28) to one week's jail for corruption. Li, a tenant at the condominium, had sublet her rental apartment to a group of tourists for five days and four nights via Airbnb, the Corrupt Practices...
Scammers are targeting property buyers by impersonating their lawyers handling the transactions - then fraudulently asking for funds to be transferred to them. Two law firms recently encountered such scam in quick succession, one of which had a client who fell for the ruse and ended up with unspecified losses, the Law Society revealed at a press conference on Friday. It said the scammers' modus...
Two directors and shareholders of Profitable Plots were on Monday (June 9) convicted of conspiracy to cheat investors of about S$979,000. Timothy Nicholas Goldring was handed a seven-year jail term, while another director, John Andrew Nordmann was given eight years' jail. Nordmann's wife, Geraldine Anthony Thomas, was acquitted. District Judge Chay Yuen Fatt found that Goldring and Nordmann had...
Two former real estate salespersons have been convicted and sentenced for offences including referring their clients to moneylenders. They are 52-year-old Mustafa Kamal Seri and 39-year-old Ghazali Bin Mohamed Rasul, both Singaporeans. The Council for Estate Agencies (CEA) said in a statement on Friday that Ghazali is also the first salesperson it has prosecuted for money-lending offences. Mustafa...
A Singaporean couple suing a condominium developer for fraud over 20 square metres of space is being sued in turn. Poh Her Chiew and Ling Mee Chow, both in their 40s, claim the developer misled them into thinking they were buying an executive condominium unit with a floor area of 167 square metres at Blossom Residences. They said the actual area should be 147 square metres, as there is 20 square...
Another unregistered estate agent has been sentenced. 48-year-old Lim Beng Kwang is the third unregistered salesperson to be sentenced this year under the Estate Agents Act. Lim was fined S$6,000 for holding himself out as a salesperson, when he was not registered with the Council for Estate Agencies (CEA). Another count of him doing estate agency business without a licence was taken into...
From 1 January, the Singapore Land Authority's Electronic Payment Instruction (ePI) service will allow lawyers to electronically notify banks of details of conveyancing money paid into conveyancing accounts, instead of using hard copy forms. The Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore will also accept electronic stamp duty payments via the ePI service. The Ministry of Law on Thursday said these moves would...
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