The embracive property cooling measures that introduced last Friday on January 11 cover almost all aspects of the property market, including HDBs, ECs, private residential and industrial properties.
To be fair, the government also makes it a point not to miss out any segment of buyers, namely Singaporeans and non-citizens; individuals and companies; 1st time and subsequent buyers; HDB loan and bank loan borrowers.
Many say they are caught by the government’s unexpected tough measures.
How can that be? Over the last three years, new restrictions have been announced every few months. Recently, a week can hardly go by without the local papers reporting new highs in property prices, followed by complaints from netizens and comments by the government.
If you have read my earlier post on ‘Property cooling measures – any more to come?‘, you would know that I have been expecting the next round of cooling measures to come.
The question is: will it come in the form of thanksgiving turkey, Christmas present, Chinese New Year red packet, or weekend surprise on a Friday?
Our Deputy Prime Minister confirmed my thinking, “We’ve been studying this for a few months now … We had a package ready several weeks ago, but waited for the last quarter’s numbers to come out. Once the numbers out last week, we felt we had to move.”
Now we know the ‘immediate cause’ is the release of figures on last quarter’s property prices and sales volumes.
But I still don’t get the timing and rationale behind the new rules on Executive Condominiums (ECs).
1) The maximum strata floor area of new EC units directmedicationsonline.com will be capped at 160 square metres.
News of the CityLife@Tampines 4,349 sq ft mega penthouse selling at $2.05 million only broke out last week. If the layout and pricing of CityLife have obtained government approval before the launch, why the knee-jerk action in such a short time?
Now, in order to avoid being the odd one, should the developer subdivide the controversial penthouse into three units, come up with a 530 sq ft roof terrace in each of the new 1,450 sq ft “mini penthouse”, and market them at $700K each?
I hope we don’t need a new rule to respond to every individual case; otherwise, the government would have to announce new cooling measures every other month!
2) Sales of new dual-key EC units will be restricted to multi-generational families only.
Developer Qingjian Realty had planned 100 dual-key units for a EC site in Punggol it was just awarded. Now they have to reduce the number of such units for fear of low demand. As dual-key units can be marketed at higher prices, their original bid price might be different if the unlucky developer had known the new restriction.
Another question is: When buyers place a deposit to book an EC unit, how do they know that their extended family will stay together when they can only collect the key after three to five years? Anything can happen between now and then. After the TOP of the dual-key EC units, is the government going to check every unit to ensure the compliance of the new rule?
check with u , last time, u say u buy a foreclosure property that sell below valuation , are u able to finance it from bank ? if yes , how many % loan u get ?
Yes, I got 80 percent loan from the bank.