Date: 21 January 2014 Venue: The Grand Hyatt Interviewee: Steve Melhuish, Co-Founder and CEO, PropertyGuru Q&As: PS = Property Soul Steve = Steve Melhuish PS: What do you think about the property market in 2013 and what is going to happen in 2014? Steve: 2013 is an important year with the cooling measures showing their impact on the reduction of transaction volumes in … [Read more...]
Property market in 2013-2014: A watershed year or a transitional setback?
The property market in 2014 starts with a series of bad news from the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and the Housing and Development Board (HDB). How bad are the numbers? On 2nd January, HDB announced that the HDB Resale Price Index continued to drop in 4th quarter 2013. The 1.3 per cent decline was the worst since eight years ago in 2005. Coincidentally, URA released … [Read more...]
Who are affected by the new property cooling measures?
The objective of the comprehensive package of property cooling measures, according to the government, is "to ensure a stable and sustainable property market". Government intervention can definitely delay the onset of a bubble burst, making the market 'sustainable' for the time being. As for 'stable', I don't think this is what investors/speculators or real users want. … [Read more...]
The timing of the 7th round property cooling measures
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 … [Read more...]
New property cooling measures on loan restrictions
A new round of government measures to cool the property market was announced on Friday: 1) With effect from 6 October 2012, mortgage tenures of HDB flats and private properties are capped at 35 years. 2) Loans longer than 30 years have a borrowing limit of 60 percent of the property price. 3) If the >30-year-loan goes beyond the borrower’s retirement age of 65, and … [Read more...]