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The Singapore Land Authority (SLA) has put up two more schools for tender - the former Lee Kuo Chuan Primary School and the former Moulmein Primary School.

Both properties can be used either for educational or office purposes.

SLA said in a press statement yesterday that the two properties can help to meet the need for international schools in Singapore.

The tender for the former Lee Kuo Chuan Primary School, on Ah Hood Road in the Balestier area, closes on Aug10. The site has a land area of 17,635 sq m and a gross floor area of about 11,176 sq m.

It comprises a four-storey building and two single-storey ones.

Allowable uses include commercial school, private funded school, foreign system school and office.

The former Moulmein Primary School, on Jalan Rajah, has an estimated land area of 13,927 sq m and a gross floor area of about 9,094 sq m. It houses a four-storey building. It can be put to use as an office and commercial school or foreign systems school.

SLA said two other state properties, also former schools, were earlier put up for tender.

The former Rosyth School is now available for rent under the Authority’s RentDirect Scheme. Allowable uses include commercial school, foreign system school, arts, dance or drama studio, and childcare or student care kindergarten.

The former Tanjong Katong Girls’ School was recently awarded to the Canadian International School.

The tenure is on an initial term of three years and is renewable on terms up to 2015.

SLA has been offering an increasing number of state properties for use as commercial schools, kindergartens and childcare centres.

As at June30, 105 properties were being used for these purposes.

Source : Business Times - 28 Jul 2007

JTC Corporation - Singapore’s biggest industrial landlord - will temporarily suspend the sale of its flats under its scheme to house foreign talent, and will, instead, retain them as one of the rental housing options for employment pass holders, it said yesterday.

‘This is to help meet the current strong market demand for rental housing,’ the company said.

Source : Business Times - 28 Jul 2007

Big hike due to slew of collective sales, but still 21% lower than 1996 high

ALL private home owners have good reason to celebrate these days, but landlords should really pop the champagne - while their tenants should drown their sorrows.

Rents rose at an unprecedented rate in the April to June period, outpacing home prices which were far from sluggish.

Official figures showed yesterday that rents jumped 10.4 per cent in the quarter, trumping the 7.6 per cent rise in the first three months of the year. They are now 31.2 per cent higher than a year ago.

This is the highest quarterly and yearly growth since the Government made rental data public, said property firm Knight Frank. It is also the first time private home rents have shown double-digit growth in a quarter, it added.

Rents this year have gone up 18.7 per cent, compared to only 14.1 per cent in the whole of last year, added consultancy CB Richard Ellis.

More important, rents rose across the board, according to new Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) figures yesterday.

Although the core central region still led the pack with a 12 per cent jump over the first quarter, the rest of Singapore was not far behind.

Rents in the city fringe areas went up 10 per cent while those in suburban districts were just behind with a 9.4 per cent rise.

Knight Frank’s latest data shows that homes in the East Coast, Thomson and Bishan areas saw rents rise by 10 to 12 per cent, matching the pace in the prime districts.

But while landlords enjoy the bubbly, their tenants are far from happy with surging rents becoming a source of concern among foreign companies bringing in growing numbers of expats.

To help tenants get a better idea of the market, the Government yesterday released data on median home rentals, breaking it down for the first time by project.

This allows potential tenants to compare median rentals - that is, the level at which half the rentals are higher and the other half lower - of individual condominiums.

The figures showed that The Pier at Robertson, for instance, commands a median monthly rental of $6.30 per sq ft (psf), or $3,150 for a 500 sq ft unit. At the other end of the spectrum, Neptune Court has median monthly rentals of $1.56 psf, or $1,560 for a 1,000 sq ft apartment.

This new data is available on the URA website. The agency also took pains to point out that while median rents overall rose to $2.17 psf per month, there were ‘a significant number of properties which were rented out at below $1.50 psf per month’.

Also, while rents are soaring, they are still some 21 per cent lower than the 1996 high, said Knight Frank.

The key reason for the rental rebound is the slew of collective sales, said experts. And as more and bigger estates are torn down, rents can be expected to surge further as displaced owners and tenants look for hew homes.

Similarly, private home prices are set for a good run.

They jumped 8.3 per cent in the second quarter to hit a level not seen since 1997. But what raised eyebrows was that prices of non-landed homes in the city-fringe areas outpaced those in red-hot prime districts.

Even in suburban areas, prices climbed 7.2 per cent - well above the 2 per cent rise in the previous quarter.

Perhaps most significantly, prices of completed homes rose more than those of uncompleted ones for the first time in at least two years.

This is a sign that the strong price rebound is due to genuine buying demand, said property consultants. Traditionally, prices of uncompleted homes tend to lead price increases because more people want to buy new homes.

Source : Straits Times - 28 Jul 2007

HDB data, to be published every quarter, gives buyers detailed market info

It’s been a long time coming, but the HDB market is on the upswing after many years in the doldrums.

Prices shot up 3 per cent in the three months to June 30 - the biggest jump since 1999 - and well up on the 1.25 per cent rise in the first quarter.

The price surge reflects increased activity in the resale market, which recorded 8,700 transactions in the quarter - 38 per cent up on the first quarter.

In the second quarter, 70 per cent of the homes sold were at prices above their official valuation.

Prices rose for most flat types and towns.

The HDB also released a slew of information on median resale prices, rental rates and cash over valuation (COV) to help keep buyers up to speed on the market.

The data - on the HDB’s website www.hdb.gov.sg - is broken down into the 26 HDB towns.

This comes after industry experts complained that the previous sales figures were grouped by region and not so effective given the way flat prices differ from one town to the next.

The new figures show median values for resale prices, COV figures and rental rates - a first for the HDB.

A median price means half of the units sold or rented above that value, half below.

It used to release average rents each quarter, but average prices can be misleading as a single large transaction can distort the overall picture. The new figures show that median rental prices are still far below some of the ‘headline’ prices reported in the media recently.

A four-room flat in Bukit Merah, for example, was recently reported to have been rented at $2,200 a month, but the HDB data shows the median for such flats is $1,400.

One tenant Mr S.T. Leng, 41, whose landlord recently hiked the rent of his three-room flat from $900 to $1,500 due to ‘market rates’, said the new information will give tenants and buyers more negotiating power.

‘This will help everyone be more realistic, and has definitely come at the right time,’ he said.

The figures also paint a more accurate reflection of COV values for each town.

Take Clementi. Previous figures for the western region put the COV at $8,800 for an executive flat. The truer figure contained in the new data puts it well above - $65,000.

This is more accurate, and useful for both buyers and sellers, say industry players, who welcomed the new data.

‘Consumers will increasingly want such fine-tuned data and transparency will become more crucial in the market,’ said PropNex chief executive Mohamed Ismail.

C&H Realty managing director Albert Lu said he was not surprised by the HDB market’s good performance last quarter, and expects prices to keep going up, at least for the rest of the year.

HDB’s new figures will now be published every quarter.

Source : Straits Times - 28 Jul 2007

Private homes the biggest winners, but HDB resale prices also up 3 per cent

The property boom is now ringing across the country, with all segments, including the HDB market, recording rising prices.

The biggest winners were private homes, with prices up 8.3 per cent in the April to June quarter. This is on top of a 4.8 per cent increase in the first three months of the year.

The number of new homes sold hit a record 5,129 units in the second quarter, 7 per cent up on the first quarter.

Landed homes, which have not moved much over the past year, also sprang into life and registered price rises of 7.1 per cent, up from 2.9 per cent in the first quarter.

And resale prices in the HDB market rose 3 per cent, up from a 1.25 per cent rise in the first quarter.

‘The benefits of the improving economy are now being seen more widely across the board, demonstrated by the mass market increases and a higher number of HDB upgraders,’ said property firm Jones Lang LaSalle’s regional managing director, Mr Chris Fossick.

Government figures also show that demand is pushing up private home prices in most parts of the country.

Prices in central Singapore, the city fringes and suburban areas rose between 7.2 per cent and 8.1 per cent in the second quarter.

‘The even performance across all regions…is a positive as it implies that there is now greater uniformity in wealth creation across all segments,’ said Ms Tay Huey Ying,of property consultancy Colliers International.

The wealth of data released yesterday by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) - it included new information on housing rentals and office rents - also revealed some notable developments in the roaring market.

One was the bigger jump in prices of completed homes over uncompleted ones.

In the central core region - where the most expensive housing is found - prices of completed homes rose 8.5 per cent, compared with 7.1 per cent for uncompleted ones.

Usually, glamorous launches of prime homes attract higher prices than completed ones. But the huge number of displaced en bloc sellers looking for a roof over their heads has boosted demand for existing property.

Consultants said that because of strong leasing demand - in part contributed by owners and tenants displaced by en bloc sales - completed properties have become more attractive for investors, too.

Indeed, rents have been soaring, with some owners demanding a doubling of rent or more - and getting it.

The new figures have also cast more light on property speculation. In the second quarter, owners’ sales of uncompleted homes amounted to less than 10 per cent of the total deals done.

But there was a hike in the prime central core region, where such sales accounted for 19.4 per cent of deals done. This is up from 12.4 per cent in the first quarter.

By contrast, in the second quarter of 1996 - when speculation was rife - subsales accounted for about 28 per cent of all deals.

On the supply side, 43,018 - mostly flats but with about 3,000 houses - will be built between now and 2010, the URA said. About 76 per cent of these will be completed in 2009 and 2010.

Overall, private home prices are now about 18.5 per cent below the 1996 peak and at a level similar to that in the second half of 1994.

Also yesterday, the HDB released more information on sales, including median resale prices, rental data and the amount of cash-over-valuation (COV) that buyers are paying.

It shows, for example, that the median COV for a five-room flat can reach $60,000 in Bukit Timah town, but is zero in Woodlands.

 Source : Straits Times - 28 Jul 2007