More Shopping centres, more Land sales, Less jobs

• robertteh

  22 Dec 05, 22:27

  With so many economists and scholars employed in the government, can't they realise their major mistakes in pushing land sales.
  
  By pushing major land sales by the URA, they are not helping to create jobs at all.
  
  The shopping areas are simply overcrowded. More land sales at Orchard Road and CBD will only lower the success of existing shopping centres due to over-supply. Shopping per capita is now too high. It will be a zero sum game by pushing for more shopping centres to be built and existing shopping centres will face lesser demand and lowering of productivity.
  
  The same major mistake is happening in pushing more property land sale. Why keep pushing for more and more vacancy in property occupancy? It is another zero sum game. More residential lands flooding the market will lead to greater vacancies and greater depressed pricing. No wonder Singapore property indices are declining for the 7 straight years as compared with HongKong and other Asian Tigers.
  
  Instead of pouring more monies into concrete which is sucking monies into unproductive use, they should find ways to generate more jobs by fueling technology start-ups. Go and talk to all the entrepreneurs and get them to invest on easy loans from the idle monies with easy rules....and relaxed conditions....More jobs will be created instead of more concrete arches and more spending on concreted sales...
• pat33

  22 Dec 05, 22:53

  I think the rental of shop premises are too expensive in Singapore. We can't always compare rental with London, Paris, Tokyo and New York BUT also with Bangkok, KL and HK too.
• robertteh

  22 Dec 05, 23:10

  Originally posted by pat33:

  I think the rental of shop premises are too expensive in Singapore. We can't always compare rental with London, Paris, Tokyo and New York BUT also with Bangkok, KL and HK too.

  Businesses are determined by overall supply and demand. Rental can be high because of demands. If demands exist, rentals can be high and yet affordable. Overall supply and demand is closely watched by occupancy ratio and this ratio is now very miserably low for most property types due to over-supply. In an over-supply situation, why flood the market with more supply? Will the extra shopping spaces released by URA lead to more jobs? The larger issue is: will more concrete projects create jobs. By putting the same amounts of concrete investments into new factories and new technology start-ups such projects might create more jobs for the retrenched and more new graduates too can be employed.
• claudetnt

  23 Dec 05, 16:57

  As long as there is a demand the gov will supply. Its not the gov fault, in this case, if the business people are willingly to pay either by way of rental or purchase why should the gov interfere?
  
  the same thing that happened to HDB - too many houses no takers- will happen to shoping centres soon, when the business people will realise the blunder they had got themselves into!
• yoongf

  23 Dec 05, 17:51

  A large segment of the working population are related to the construction and building related industries, be it suppliers, delivery ppl, supervisors etc. These ppl entered the industry in during the HDB and MRT construction boom periods.
  
  Investing into high tech R&D and startups will benefit mostly the talented and the motivated, and I believe this will not take care of the large pool of existing ppl already in the construction and building related industries.
• Cindyfeh

  23 Dec 05, 17:54

  A similar analogy can be applied to commercial properties.
  
  I work in the CBD area and know that many offices are empty and thus the recent news that CDL is planning to convert some old office blocks into residential units.
  
  Dispite being empty, constructions of new office blocks are still going on. Why?
  
  It is to prop up the construction industry.
  
  And you know who own the construction/property developing companies.
  
  Another piont to consider, with all these new shopping centers and office blocks construction, how much singaporean jobs are they going to create? 50?
• dragg

  23 Dec 05, 17:55

  there are already so many unrented space.
  
  but again who cares?
  
  all they care about is make more money for the coffers.
  
  
• pat33

  23 Dec 05, 21:05

  I think the govt is getting more creative in the art of demand and supply.
  
  Last quarter, new HDB flats four rooms at Sengkeng going for 110K, same price as resale 1 room flat in city area. But this comes after "wait long long ppl also don't bait" high price.