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Six new industrial sites were put on the Government’s land sales list yesterday.

The sites, with a total area of 11.7ha, will be released in the second half of this year.

Two of the plots are on the confirmed list, which means that they will be put up for sale on a pre-determined date.

The first, a 5.1ha site in Sin Ming Lane, will be released in August. Another 2.1ha site in Jalan Tepong will follow in September.

The remaining four sites will be made available on the reserve list. To trigger a public tender for them, a developer will have to submit an acceptable minimum bid to the Government.

The sites comprise a 0.8ha site in Toa Payoh at the former Playfair Primary School, a 1.5ha plot at Yishun Avenue 6, a 1.2ha parcel at Ubi Avenue 4, and a 1ha site at the junction of Pioneer Road and Tuas Avenue 11.

In general, these four plots ‘appear more attractive than the two confirmed sites’, said Ms Tay Huey Ying, director of research and consultancy at Colliers International.

This is because they are mostly smaller, more centrally located and more suitable for general business uses. All four sites on the reserve list can be partly used as substitutes for office space.

She added that the Toa Payoh and Ubi parcels are particularly appealing.

But she also said it is unlikely that these plots will help alleviate the current office shortage.

‘By the time they are sold and completed, they are likely to coincide with the completion of the Business and Financial Centre as well as all the other office redevelopments,’ she said.

‘By then, the office supply crunch would have ceased somewhat.’

Source : Straits Times - 28 Jun 2007

The proposed 20 per cent levy by Indonesia’s Karimun province on its granite bound for Singapore may not come to pass, a senior Indonesian official told The Straits Times yesterday.

Mr Muhammad Lutfi, who chairs Indonesia’s Investment Coordinating Board, said he would meet Karimun’s governor and mayor next Monday specifically to thrash out with them the levy, which could amount to S$9.50 a tonne at the current price of S$60 a tonne here for granite.

He said: ‘Let me put it this way - we would like to give our investors good, smart policies.

‘We would also like to maintain the 3,000 workers working in the granite mines of Karimun.’

So, he stressed, it would not be smart if such a levy lost his country a vital market for the rock.

After all, he added, the whole point of Indonesia’s new pro-business drive, which he is steering, was to create jobs and lift at least 19 million Indonesians out of poverty by 2010.

Ironically, news of the levy came just a day after he told reporters at the World Economic Forum here that he was looking to ease Singapore’s importing of granite, perhaps even scrapping checks on Singapore-bound shipments.

Singaporean investors had queried him on the levy during a closed-door meeting at the Economic Development Board’s headquarters here yesterday morning.

Karimun’s planned levycame to light recently in a statement from building materials supplier Hong Leong Asia to the Singapore Stock Exchange.

Indonesia banned Singapore from buying its land sand in February and, in April, detained 12 of its granite-bearing barges on suspicion of sand-smuggling.

But on Monday, the Building and Construction Authority said all 12 barges had been released.

Source : Straits Times - 28 Jun 2007

MR MADHO Prasad Shroff’s letter, ‘Condo residents hit by club lights” (Online forum, June 26), raises the interesting issue of whether a swimming, golf or country club is liable for the tort of nuisance if the well-being of residents in an adjoining condo is adversely affected by excessive lights emanating from the club.

The Latin phrase, ’sic utera tuo ut alienam non laedas”, means that one must use one’s property in such a fashion so as not to disturb your neighbours.

Nuisance is divided into ‘public nuisance” and ‘private nuisance”, depending on the extent of the harm or annoyance.

If the harm is suffered by one or a particular group of people, it is a private nuisance. A public nuisance is one where citizens generally, or a substantial number of members of the public, are harmed or unreasonably inconvenienced.

Private nuisance is a tort where the defendant has unreasonably and substantially interfered with the plaintiff’s reasonable use and enjoyment of his land.

Such nuisance includes the malfunctioning of sewage systems, excessive noise, directing your CCTV at your neighbour’s gate or pointing your floodlights into your neighbour’s compound for an extended period of time .

A court would normally assess the reasonableness of any nuisance based on what would be found tolerable by the ordinary occupier of reasonable fortitude.

The standard is the ordinary man which means abnormal sensitivities may prevent a claim if the nuisance would not have otherwise unreasonably interfered with an ordinary occupier.

It is not necessary to prove fault on the part of the defendant. The court would weigh the inconvenience to the plaintiff against the usefulness of the defendant’s conduct under the prevailing circumstances.

In private nuisance, the interference must be substantial, not trivial. For example, the building of a hospital next to a person’s land was held not to be a nuisance. However, courts have found dust from a sawmill, noise from racing boats or even funeral parlours as nuisances to neighbours.

Nuisance is a tort of strict liability. This means that once the damages and causation have been proven, it is no defence to argue that you have taken all reasonable precautions. The remedy for a nuisance is either an injunction or monetary damages.

In our HDB estate, the lights at the basketball court are switched off at 10pm and all residents are expected to put up with the noise of bouncing balls which is deemed to be reasonable.

If the club in question has seriously interfered with the quiet enjoyment of the condo residents by the emanation of excessive lights that have gone past the boundaries of their property for an unreasonable length of time and the gravity of the harm (causing residents to suffer from insomnia) outweighs the utility of the conduct of the defendant, the plaintiff may make a claim in nuisance.

Heng Cho Choon

Source : Straits Times - 28 Jun 2007

Govt may move some public organisations out of CBD to free up space for private sector: sources

Office rents in Singapore will be higher than those in Hong Kong by the end of next year as supply here remains tight, a property firm said in a study released yesterday.

Steep

And industry sources said the overall rise in prime office rents may be serious enough for the government to see if it is worth moving some public organisations out of prime space in the Central Business District (CBD) so it can be freed for the private sector.

The move would also ease the upward pressure on rents and help Singapore stay competitive, the sources added.

Office rents in Singapore have been climbing at a fast clip and are set to overtake those in Hong Kong in about 18 months, according to property firm Savills.

Simon Smith, Savills’ senior director for regional research and consultancy, expects the average rent in Singapore’s ‘core’ areas - Raffles Place, City Hall, the Marina area, Shenton Way, Robinson Road, Tanjong Pagar and Orchard - to hit US$7.89 in the fourth quarter of 2008, up from US$5.10 in Q1 this year.

Average rents in Hong Kong’s core locations, on the other hand, are expected to drop from US$6.61 in Q1 2007 to US$6.15 in Q4 2008. Savills defines Hong Kong’s core areas as its CBD, Wan Chai and Causeway Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui.

Office rents in Singapore’s non-core locations are also expected to be higher than those in non-core areas of Hong Kong.

Mr Smith said the supply of office space in Singapore is expected to be tight until at least 2009, whereas in Hong Kong about 4 million sq ft of space will come on stream next year.

‘Singapore will not have any more major new Grade A office space this year,’ he said. ‘And all the activity driving up the demand for space - such as IPOs, M&A activities and private wealth management activities - are expected to continue growing.’

Demand for office space became more broad-based in the first half of 2007 after having been dominated by the financial and banking sector in the early part of the year, says property firm CB Richard Ellis (CBRE).

This has also put pressure on rents, it says. ‘Tenants from the shipping, energy, oil-trading, law and IT sectors have been taking up office space in the core CBD area of Raffles Place, Marina Bay and Marina Centre. There are precious few office options for large occupiers over the next couple of years.

Market watchers say having higher office rents than Hong Kong could dent Singapore’s competitiveness when it comes to drawing international firms, but point out that the overall cost of doing business here is still likely to be cheaper than in Hong Kong.

‘When you consider overall costs, such as residential and transportation, Singapore is still cheaper than Hong Kong,’ said Mr Smith.

The government is also aware of the space crunch and is doing its best to ease the problem. Besides seeing whether some operations can be moved out of the CBD, in May, the authorities called a halt to all conversion of offices in the central area to curb depletion of existing stock.

‘The government policy reaction is now in full swing and we expect will pay dividends in redressing the supply-demand imbalance in the medium to long-term,’ said Moray Armstrong, executive director for office services at CBRE.

Source : Business Times - 27 Jun 2007

Ten years after the Asian financial crisis, Asia’s real estate markets are bubbling again, led by Singapore. Given the key role overheated property played in that crisis, it bears asking, to what extent the current exuberance is a cause for concern this time around.

According to the Global Property Guide, Singapore experienced Asia’s highest residential property price increases last year, with housing prices rising 9.5 per cent in real terms (although this masks higher percentage increases in prime market segments). Quite likely, it will be a similar story this year as well. Real estate markets in China, India, Korea and the Philippines have also witnessed sharp run ups - and in those countries too, prime segments have seen double digit price increases in percentage terms. Indeed, more and more real estate funds and other institutional investors are pouring money into Asian property. Some element of speculative activity is also evident.

How much should we worry about all this? In a study on Asia’s real estate markets in April, the IMF took a generally sanguine view - although with qualifications. It pointed out that while property prices have been rising more rapidly than inflation, most Asian countries ‘are not experiencing unusually rapid housing price hikes’. It noted that in many cases, the increases follow on the heels of extended declines (about eight years, in the case of Singapore). Moreover, housing prices have not risen exceptionally, compared with other asset prices. On average, housing price increases have run ahead of income gains in about half the 12 countries covered, but these average prices might mask affordability problems for some segments of the population.

Apart from income gains, there are other reasons for property price run-ups: the proliferation of mortgage products and a rise in mortgage credit - especially in China and India; higher non-speculative foreign demand for housing and commercial space (which is true in Singapore as well) as well as an element of speculative capital inflows - though less than in the 1990s.

Given that the run-up in real estate prices represents a rebound after several years of decline or stagnation, it does not, as yet, create cause for concern. The fact that institutional investors are far more active players in Asia’s (and particularly Singapore’s) property markets this time than they were in the 1990s is also reassuring. They introduce an element of stability and resilience because they have greater financial holding power than individuals, and are less likely to engage in panic selling.

However, all that said, policymakers and banking regulators across the region need to be vigilant to ensure that lending standards do not become overly relaxed and that housing lenders are adequately provisioned against what the IMF calls ‘a reasonable worst-case scenario of falling house prices’. The degree of household indebtedness - particularly in those segments of the population who are vulnerable to income shocks - is also an indicator that bears watching. But as of now, it is difficult to make the case that there are sufficient danger-signs to warrant government intervention in the market aimed at bringing property prices down.

Source : Business Times - 27 Jun 2007