Tag: Property market

An idea to explore if you’re renting (Part II)

Posted on by Centauri78

By Centauri78

If there’s part I, there must at least be a part II, right? Of course!! If you’ve been waiting for this sequel, sorry I’ve kept you waiting for so long. I hope I pack enough of a punch here to be worth your waiting time!

So anyway, some of you out there may be thinking that you’re nice and comfortable living in your rental place and moving’s such a hassle. However, property ownership still sounds like a good option to hedge against rising rentals. Well, certainly, you can do both! However, there are a few options, and correspondingly, there are a couple of questions you have to ask. Continue reading “An idea to explore if you’re renting (Part II)” →

What is really happening in the Singapore property market, as told by the Heat Map

Posted on by Centauri78

Over the last 4 weeks since we restarted The Straits Times Property News Heat Map, news flow has actually been pretty slow. With 53 articles talking about the property market in 4 weeks, that’s an average of 13.25 articles per week or 1.89 articles per day. In Season 1 (9 Sep 12 – 19 Jan 13), there were 273 articles in 19 weeks, or 14.37 articles per week, or 2.05 articles per day on average.

 Week of  Negative  Neutral  Positive  Total
13/5/13  1  6 3 10
20/5/13  2 6  3 11
27/5/13  2  13  5 20
3/6/13  2 8 2 12

The proportion of articles that were positive, neutral or negative is also instructive. We had 7 negative (13%), 33 neutral (62%) and 13 positive (25%) articles in the last 4 weeks. In Season 1, we had 10% negative, 49% neutral and 40% positive. Continue reading “What is really happening in the Singapore property market, as told by the Heat Map” →

Property market crash? – what you should be asking

Posted on by Natasha Goh

If I had a dollar for each time I’m asked the golden question “is it the right time to buy?”, I’d have accumulated a tidy sum by now.

Similarly, if I were blessed with such prophetic vision, I’d probably be dictating this blog post to a personal assistant whilst sipping cocktails on some idyllic island resort in the Caribbean.

The thing is, a property bubble will mean very different things to different people, so it’s not so much a question of where the property market is headed (which nobody will be able to tell you will absolute certainty), but where are YOU headed?

Do you dream of bubbles? (Image courtesy of http://anchiix.deviantart.com/)

The Home Buyer

So much has been said about speculators who flipped properties they could ill-afford for fast profits in the heady days of 2007, but what of the other form of property market speculators that aren’t normally recognised as speculators – those that hold off their home purchases indefinitely in the hopes of a property market crash? Is it wise to hold off getting a permanent roof over ones head in the vague hopes of buying in “cheap”? Continue reading “Property market crash? – what you should be asking” →

Is the Singapore Property Market in Trouble? Part 1

Posted on by Centauri78

Recently, I’ve been hearing a lot of speculation in the newspapers, blogs and forums about new cooling measures for the property market and how domestic lending has gone through the roof and may precipitate in property crash etc. The common thread in all the rumours and commentaries is that the property sector is not going to be good. I’d like to list out some of these topics to just discuss how bad the situation is, or if the speculation is unfounded.

It looks like it’s going to be quite a long discussion, so I’m going to break it up into a few posts to make it more readable.

Risk 1: More cooling measures

With housing prices continuing to rise, are we going to need new property market cooling measures? Before I try to answer that, here is a quick overview of the 5 rounds of property market cooling measures that the government has already implemented over the last few years:

Continue reading “Is the Singapore Property Market in Trouble? Part 1” →