The Housing and Development Board (HDB) will build about 12,000 new Build-To-Order (BTO) flats this year, if demand is sustained.

National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan said this would be supplemented by flats under the Design, Build and Sell Scheme as well as executive condominiums.

In reply to a Parliamentary question, Mr Mah said HDB is committed to ensuring a sufficient supply of new flats.

Last year, the housing board sold 13,500 new flats, half of which were launched in the last quarter to meet strong demand.

Mr Mah said HDB will continue to monitor changing demand and will make necessary changes to the BTO programme, to ensure that there is adequate supply of affordable public housing for the various income groups.

Source: Channel News Asia, 13 Jan 2010

Property consultant Colliers International said Singapore’s industrial property sector will recover by the second quarter of this year.

It said the industrial property price index is poised for recovery in the fourth quarter of 2009 at the earliest or by the second quarter of this year at the latest.

Colliers cited several reasons for its assessment.

Historically, the industrial property sector lags the residential property market by one to three quarters. Since the residential property market has already bottomed out in the third quarter last year, Colliers expects the industrial property sector to follow suit soon.

Moreover, Colliers noted that there has been a return of investors to the industrial strata market, which is a sign that demand is returning.

Another factor is that the Government Land Sales (GLS) programme is picking up steam.

Source: Channel News Asia, 13 Jan 2010

HDB flat owners who sub-let rooms in their flats will, from next month, have to register with the Housing Board within seven days of doing so.

They are also required to notify the HDB when they renew or terminate the sub-letting of rooms, and when there are changes to their sub-tenants’ particulars.

While there has been no need to seek prior approval for sub-letting of rooms, the latest move supports ongoing efforts by the Home Affairs Ministry to eradicate loan-sharking activities, and comes amid changes made to the law to better deal with the problem.

The HDB noted in a statement yesterday that some people used their old addresses to borrow from loan sharks while they rented a room in another HDB flat.

This resulted in the new occupiers of the flat being harassed by loan sharks instead, while the borrowers were untraceable as they moved without updating their addresses.

‘Through this new rule, HDB will be able to capture the particulars of those who rent rooms in HDB flats. With information on the addresses of owners and subtenants, the Ministry of Home Affairs will be able to trace the movements of borrowers,’ the statement said.

In Parliament yesterday, Associate Professor Ho Peng Kee, who is Senior Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs, said the move will make it harder for borrowers to remain untraceable when they rent a room in an HDB flat.

In tandem with the HDB’s move, the National Registration Act and Immigration Act will also be amended to empower the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority to obtain information from the HDB to administer and enforce the new requirements more effectively.

Source: Straits Times, 13 Jan 2010

A RANGE of HDB housing options is available for the elderly, from studio apartments for those who prefer to live alone, to paired-unit flats that let them live separately but next door to their children and grandchildren.

At the same time, HDB estates are designed to be barrier-free and with social spaces for different generations to interact.

The overriding aim of these efforts is to allow the elderly to live an active and independent lifestyle while not isolating them, said Senior Minister of State for National Development Grace Fu.

Ms Fu was replying to Nominated MP Paulin Straughan, who had asked about the multi-generation living scheme at SkyTerrace@Dawson.

The scheme – which pairs a studio flat with an adjacent four- or five-room flat – has been oversubscribed, with 408 applications for 65 paired units.

Ms Fu said the HDB will study the response and consider public feedback to decide if the scheme should be extended to future projects.

She noted that it complements HDB’s existing policies that encourage young couples to live near their parents.

Currently, those intending to live with or near their parents have double the chances in balloting for a new flat. And those buying a resale flat can apply for a higher Central Provident Fund grant of $40,000. The grant is otherwise $30,000.

SkyTerrace@Dawson will have facilities catering to both the young and the elderly, such as a children’s playground, an elderly fitness corner and a taiji court.

However, some elderly folk prefer to live alone or in a town they are familiar with, noted Ms Fu. ‘So even though the children may have grown (up) and moved away, they are not prepared to move to a new flat.’

So, both stand-alone studio apartments and studio apartments paired with flats have been built.

Associate Professor Straughan said she had heard ‘from the ground’ that young Singaporeans did not want to live in estates where studio apartments for the elderly predominated.

She did not elaborate on the reason, but past reports have suggested that such estates are sometimes targeted by thieves and con men.

Replying, Ms Fu said it was ‘part and parcel’ of living in an HDB estate to have neighbours from a wide range of backgrounds.

‘We would not want to see an enclave of elderly,’ she said.

‘That, in a way, is the value of HDB estates – that we see this real integration of different segments of Singaporeans, whether age- or income-wise. I think Singaporeans have come to accept this as part of HDB estate living.’

Source: Straits Times, 13 Jan 2010

The bank will give up the space it occupies at Suntec, Six Battery Road

The flight to newer office buildings continues. Marina Bay Financial Centre (MBFC) is close to clinching another tenant, Nomura Singapore.

The Japanese bank, which acquired the former Lehman Brothers’ operations in Asia in late 2008, is expected to lease about 100,000 square feet in MBFC’s Tower 2, which is slated for completion around the middle of this year.

BT understands that the signing rent is slightly below $9 per square foot (psf) a month. Market watchers suggest that the headline rent, which appears to be high for a space this size, could be due to Nomura planning to begin its lease late – sometime after Tower 2 is complete.

Nomura is expected to give up the space that it is leasing at Suntec City Tower 5 and Six Battery Road – said to total about 90,000 sq ft – and move to MBFC either later this year or early next year.

Sources suggest that it would occupy the middle stack of floors in the 50-storey MBFC Tower 2.

Other tenants in the block include Australian resources giant BHP Billiton, which has leased 231,000 sq ft on the top 11 floors.

Macquarie, Servcorp and Murex South East Asia have also leased space in the tower, which has a total of one million sq ft net lettable area (NLA) of offices.

Tower 2 forms part of MBFC’s first phase, which is being completed this year. Next door, the 33-storey Tower 1, with about 620,000 sq ft of offices, is fully let. The major tenant is Standard Chartered Bank; other tenants include French bank Natixis and Wellington International Management Company.

The development’s third office tower, a 46-storey block with 1.3 million sq ft NLA, will be anchored by DBS Bank, which has inked a 700,000 sq ft lease.

Tower 3 is slated for completion in 2012 under MBFC’s second phase.

Market watchers are cheered by the pick-up in leasing activity since Q4 last year but point out that the bulk of leasing activity currently involves replacement demand, that is, tenants moving from older office blocks to newer ones.

This means that older buildings will continue to come under pressure on rents and occupancy.

Jones Lang LaSalle said last month that the rental gap between newly completed Prime Grade A and other existing Grade A buildings is likely to widen over the next few years.

It has also predicted that for new Prime Grade A properties that have been well received by the market, rents may bottom out as early as H2 2010. However, rents in existing office blocks may continue to slide until the end of the year.

CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) data shows that the average monthly Grade A office rental value eased about 8 per cent quarter on quarter to $8.10 psf in Q4 2009 – the smallest drop in five quarters of declines.

For the whole of 2009, the decrease was 46 per cent; the latest Q4 number is also 57 per cent below the peak of $18.80 psf scaled in Q2/Q3 2008.

The Grade A vacancy rate rose from 4.2 per cent in Q3 2009 to 6.2 per cent in Q4, while the islandwide vacancy rate stayed at 12.2 per cent, according to CBRE.

Office rents are expected to ease further this year, although at a slower pace than in the past 15 months, as the economy recovers, boosting demand for offices, office industry players say.

Source: Business Times, 13 Jan 2010

THE recent sharp rise in private home prices here is not yet indicative of a bubble and prices could increase further, DBS Group research head Timothy Wong said yesterday.

‘In the mass market, what you are seeing is real end-user demand that is catching up,’ he told reporters at a briefing to present the group’s economic outlook and investment strategy for the year.

‘If you look at affordability levels, the average cost to service a mortgage taken against the median wage is about 30 per cent, which is fairly stable. When it moves up to 50 per cent, you know you have a bubble forming.

‘So we’re not really at a bubble stage yet. I think the last time we had a major bubble was probably in 1995-96, when queues were forming outside showflats and people were buying three or four properties at one go.

‘This time, it’s more circumspect – there are some speculators out there, but by and large people are genuinely buying homes to upgrade and move into,’ Mr Wong said.

‘Rental yields have come down, because they were exceptionally high at about 4-5 per cent, now they’re about 3-3.5 per cent. If they got down to one per cent, I would say that represents a bubble.’

The group’s research team expects high-end private home prices here to rise a further 10-15 per cent this year, while mid-tier home prices are expected to rise 5-10 per cent. It expects any increase in the price of mass-market private homes and public housing to be relatively muted.

Source: Business Times, 13 Jan 2010

A two-room flat in Chinatown was sold for $245,000 recently, creating a new record for the re-sale price of HDB two-room flats.

Located at Jalan Kukoh, the flat is on a higher floor of block 10, and is about 40 years old.

Home owner Mr Tan, a 43-year-old advertising executive, bought the unit with his wife two years ago at about $145,000. They decided to sell as they want to move to a larger flat.

“We bought this unit because we wanted to live in Tiong Bahru, but could not afford a four-room flat in this area. Now, we want to upgrade to a larger flat. We also find it too noisy as it is near the highway,” he told Shin Min Daily.

According to OrangeTee property agent Mr Adrian Wee, 28, the new flat owners are a young couple with one child. Besides the central location, the flat is also near to where their parents stay. As they also like the simple, open layout of the flat, they did not object to the noise from nearby traffic.

The flat’s floor area of 53 square metres includes a living room and one bedroom; an additional storeroom was added by the former home owners. The price of $245,000 is about $45,000 above valuation.

Mr Tan says that although he made a tidy profit from the sale, the price over valuation of his new four-room flat is also quite substantial, so it is just enough to cover his costs of buying a new home.

According to HDB figures, the average price of a two-room flat in Tiong Bahru was about $190,000 to $220,000.

ECG Property CEO Mr Eric Cheng says that the price is high, but still reasonable for the prime location.

“Some couples prefer flats in mature estates as they are near the city and they can save time and transport costs,” he told Shin Min.

PropNex CEO Mr Mohd Ismail said that many of the home owners are elderly, and most of them have no intention of selling their flats, so it can be hard to find one on the market.

“For this price, a young couple can get a new four-room flat in Punggol,” he said.

Source: AsiaOne, 13 Jan 2010

An underground pedestrian walkway will link City Hall MRT station to the future development at the Capitol Theatre site, on the other side of North Bridge Road.

National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan said the underground link will be constructed by the developer of the site, as part of the site tender requirements under the Government Land Sales Programme.

From the Capitol Theatre site, pedestrians will be able to use the existing network of covered walkways to reach the other buildings in the area.

Along North Bridge Road, the Land Transport Authority is also building a covered linkway to provide a sheltered connection from City Hall MRT Station to the two bus stops along North Bridge Road adjacent to St. Andrew’s Cathedral.

Mr Mah said the Urban Redevelopment Authority will look into ways to expand the network of underground pedestrian links in the locality to connect more buildings seamlessly to the City Hall MRT Station.

He said Singapore has been planned as a pedestrian-friendly city, with an extensive network of covered and underground walkways.

The Minister was replying to a parliamentary question from Nominated MP Teo Siong Seng.

Source: Channel News Asia, 13 Jan 2010

The Housing Development Board (HDB) remains committed to keeping flats affordable, Minister Mah Bow Tan said.

He provided figures and examples in response to West Coast GRC MP Mdm Ho Geok Choo’s question regarding how the proliferation of housing options will impact HDB in terms of policy, eligibility criteria and pricing.

The minister said that HDB’s offerings across different locations, flat types, designs and prices cater to different segments of flat buyers with varying preferences and budgets within the $8,000 income ceiling, which includes almost 80 per cent of households in Singapore.

He noted that about eight in 10 new flat buyers service their housing loans entirely using CPF monies without any cash outlay.

“This is possible due to our generous subsidy system. All new flats come with a generous market subsidy. Households earning less than $5,000 monthly can apply for Additional CPF Housing Grants of up to $40,000. HDB also offers concessionary loans to eligible households. First-timers can also enjoy a CPF Housing Grant of up to $40,000 when they buy a resale flat, DBSS flat or EC,” he said.

For those with higher income and aspirations, there are premium flats under the Design, Build and Sell Scheme (DBSS), and one-off special projects in mature estates such as the Pinnacle@Duxton. Households earning up to $10,000 per month can buy Executive Condominiums (EC).

He also asked flat buyers to play their part in exercising prudence, and buy within their means.

“Let me illustrate. A family with monthly household income of $3,000 who spends 30 per cent on housing can buy a flat of up to $250,000. This covers all the new 3-room flats in HDB’s most recent BTO projects in Choa Chu Kang and Hougang in Jan 10. They also have a selection of the 4-room flats, where prices start at about $230,000. At $4,000 monthly income, a family can afford up to $333,000 without spending more than 30 per cent every month.”

In 2009, HDB sold 13,500 new flats, half of which were launched in the last quarter to meet strong demand. This year, taking into account the expected demand, HDB will launch about 12,000 new BTO flats if demand is sustained. These BTO flats will also be supplemented by DBSS flats and ECs.

Source: AsiaOne, 13 Jan 2010