Archive for June 13th, 2012

June 13, 2012

How much should you pay?

How do you know how much to pay for a piece of property? Do you have a method, or do you go by your gut? Oftentimes, it’s not as simple as finding out the psf data of deals done in the same project or in neighbouring projects. From unit to unit, from project to project, and area to area, there can be big differences in terms of facing, view, facilities, fittings etc. To make things worse, a lot of these criteria are subjective. So how do you determine how much is a fair price?

Here’s the step-by-step of how I generally do it:

1. First determine what is your base price. Basically the question to ask here is this: if I were to buy a property in this general area, how much would I pay per square foot? Alternatively, if you don’t really have an answer to that question, you can take a sampling of the psf prices of similar units in the same area. Doing this will help you establish a benchmark for the subsequent step.

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June 13, 2012

A Time for Prime

Michelle Tan’s article in today’s Business Times highlights a trend that I’ve been mulling over the past few months – New suburbans now at prime resale prices.

Real estate pundits often have differing views that will adjust and vary as market situations unfold, but the familiar mantra “location, location, location” is a cardinal rule that transcends practically all differences of opinion and changing market sentiments.

So why is it that buyers have been snapping up brand-new homes in the suburbs or non-core districts, and paying more for these mass-market leasehold units than they’d necessarily pay for a freehold prime district property in a more mature development? I put it down to Singapore’s obsession with the bright, new and shiny.

I am hard-pressed to think of another country as enamoured with “newness” as Singapore. Where else is it a norm for cars to be scrapped by the time they turn 10? And I dare say Singapore must be the only place in the world where people look at an old building and are more likely to think “can enbloc or not?” rather than marvel at how well the architecture has withstood the test of time.

Singapore even has its own drama series revolving around an enbloc, that’s how mainstream this real estate phenomena is!

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