How HDB’s New Penalty Is Changing The BTO Game Have you ever held a seat for a friend in a crowded food court? You know, the type of buddy who tells you “I’ll come back in a few minutes,” so you chope their seat despite the grumbling of people… 15 Oct 2023 4 min read 2
A Story Of A Singaporean’s Overseas Property Investment Gone Wrong (But Saved By The Law) Sellers at property seminars are more accountable than many would suspect. One of the criticisms I tend to hear about property seminars – both from investors and local realtors – is that there’s a lack of accountability. Caveat emptor applies,… 8 Oct 2023 5 min read 0
Are You Having Difficulty Achieving A RECORD-BREAKING PRICE For Your Home? The resale market isn’t the only thing that can overheat. From what I saw on Reddit, some property agents’ flyers are also raising the heat: Perhaps blatantly advertising your skills in raising home prices isn’t a great idea right now…. 1 Oct 2023 6 min read 0
6 Under-The-Radar Future Residential Land Plots To Look Forward To In Singapore As much as Singapore seems to be built up and perhaps even overcrowded in places, there are also still many interesting plots in and around that are yet to be developed. You may even have walked/driven past many of these,… 28 Sep 2023 7 min read 0
These Homes Costs About The Same As A Toto Ticket: But Here’s Why Singaporeans Wouldn’t Buy Them Anyway They’d need a very different marketing strategy to make Singaporeans buy dollar-homes abroad. For those who don’t know, Japan isn’t the only place with super-cheap homes. Italy also has homes going for a single euro, and cities like Detroit in… 24 Sep 2023 5 min read 0
How Buying A Condo With This Agent Resulted In A Huge $380k Loss For This Buyer After all these years, the Option To Purchase still terrifies me. If there’s a reason I’ll never be a property agent (besides having the persuasive power of a neurotic pigeon, that is), it will be the Option To Purchase (OTP)…. 17 Sep 2023 4 min read 0
Why Are There So Many Millon Dollar HDB Flats Still? We’ve broken the record for million-dollar flats again, as of August 2023. Well, they did say National Day is a time to reflect on what makes us Singaporean; and at this point, million-dollar flats are on par with chicken rice,… 10 Sep 2023 5 min read 0
This “Unpopular” Scheme May Be The Secret To Retiring In Your HDB: What The Lease Buyback Scheme Is All About In a recent Straits Times report, it said that more senior citizens are using the Lease Buyback Scheme (LBS). About 2,860 seniors used the scheme in 2022, up from 2,790 the year before. To be clear, these are still rookie… 4 Sep 2023 2 min read 0
How Property Developers Use Gold To Sell Property In China Get a gold bar with your property purchase in China Imagine you’re in China right now, where the real estate bubble just popped. A bunch of companies have gone under, and the government is pretty nervous. They’re afraid that if… 3 Sep 2023 4 min read 0
How Property Valuations Quietly Dictate Singapore’s Housing Prices I like to think of property valuation as a sort of fortune telling. Sometimes, I think property valuation is less like a science, and more like throwing a deck of tarot cards at a ceiling fan, and then reading whatever… 27 Aug 2023 6 min read 3
Why The New Prime, Plus & Standard HDB Classification Makes Sense And How It Impacts Singaporeans The big news for the National Day Rally 2023 is the new classification of HDB flats, to prime, plus, and standard. This will replace the old system of mature versus non-mature estates, which we’ve used since around 1992. More importantly… 21 Aug 2023 4 min read 5
10 Foreigners Owning 105 Properties: What Happens Next? I could never sell a superlux property to anyone. By this I mean the cream-of-the-crop properties, like Good Class Bungalows (GCBs) and penthouses and the like. Even if I were a realtor, and I had a shot at such deals,… 20 Aug 2023 5 min read 0
Is The Property Market Going To Slow Down? 5 Reasons Why Only 53 New Units Moved This Weekend For home buyers, at least, the weekend following National Day may be a happy one. New launch sales for three properties, on the 12th and 13th of August 2023, were at a crawl. According to more than one realtor, at… 16 Aug 2023 2 min read 0
This Man Created A Nice Community Corner In An HDB Void Deck, And It Was Shut Down. Why? HDB projects becoming the “elevator music” of residential properties. You know the type of songs: you hear them playing in lifts, or call-waiting devices, or on any album by a boy band between 1990 to 2010. Music that’s pleasant, inoffensive,… 13 Aug 2023 5 min read 0
Is It Still Worth Investing In A Condo Given The High PSF? I was looking at some regrets on getting a condo on a Reddit thread lately, about whether a condo is still a good investment. You can see it here. And reading through it, I noticed a few good points, but… 6 Aug 2023 7 min read 0
Is Singapore’s Property Market Slowing Down? What Top Developers Are Hinting When buyers spy developer caution, they know their time is coming. If you are looking out for a home and want to get an insight into the market, one of the best ways is to look at what the developers… 30 Jul 2023 5 min read 0
The Fascinating Story Of How We Ended Up With So Many Trees In Singapore How Singapore became a garden city I came across this excerpt that was posted from Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs, where he talks about how the emphasis on trees came about in Singapore. He visited both Paris and London, and was… 23 Jul 2023 6 min read 0
The Rise Of Young Condo Owners: The Great Wealth Transfer In Singapore While property prices seem to be on the high, I’m noticing something else that’s low – the age of condo buyers. 20-something condo buyers I initially chalked up as “crypto-millionaires” that I still see despite that scene having died down…. 16 Jul 2023 6 min read 0