Has anybody seen a mutant camel with three humps? Well, the Private Property Market Index of Singapore looks a bit like that as it registered a 45 percent bust from Q2 of 1996, a 40 percent boom from Q4 of 1998, a 20 percent bust from Q2 of 2000, and a 58 percent rise from Q1 of 2004, with the most recent figures in this year’s Q2 plummeting to lower than the second hump.
Still National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan stated on 2 September 2009 that “as far as (private home) prices are concerned, we want to make sure… there is no excessive speculation.”
With a “three-hump” trend of boom-busts-boom in a span of 13 years, at what juncture is speculation considered “excessive?” When a plethora of sub-sale advertisements make their appearances on soft launches and people own kettles for over five years, yet five years or less of owning a property may not be “property trading,” that’s unmistakably a mockery of property tax laws.
Presently in land-deficient Singapore, there are 4.84 million residents with a 6,814 people per square kilometre population density and a 6.5 million projected population 40 years from now. As savings in the Central Provident Fund are mostly locked away in residential ownership, the home-selling sector goes way beyond the shrewd wheeling and dealing of Mr. Market. To shed a different light on this topic, it can be likened to the harvesting of rice in Vietnam as the country’s agro-economy, albeit Singapore is in constant drought.
Minister Mah advocates Three Thinks in buying property: “think carefully, think long term, think about the unexpected.”
I did all Three Thinks before purchasing a condo unit. Today, I can’t even do One Thing (let alone One Think) if my neighbours put the roof covering me and my family’s heads up for sale.
When it comes to property, proper timing and location are the only key. Retirement wealth is up for grabs. Can Minister Mah follow the laws in South Korea and do just One Thing for Singapore: Opt for “Sell one, return one” rather than “Double the price or half the size” in property sales?