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Sydney is very pricey & no public house,a SG just found out

  • lionnoisy

    i find it strange that Oz Reserve Bank's Foreign Reserve drops very fast

    http://www.rba.gov.au/Statistics/Bulletin/index.html

    read A4

     

  • lionnoisy

    OMG!It look like Oz is just the same as USA in sub prime

    or,i call it is over lending.At least A$251 billion of

    security back loan sold!!

    pl read my above posting for news in April 2008

    But in the current market, afflicted by the credit crisis, no mortgage-backed securities have been sold this year after investor confidence in these products dropped dramatically - packaged home loans worth $45 billion were sold in the first half of last year(2007) and in the second half the figure was just $6 billion.

     

    As at end 2006,Oz get A$200 billion in The Australian securitisaton market.

    http://securitisation.com.au/asf.html

    ie about 200 % of GDP!!

    ''Australian Securitisation

    The Australian securitisaton market has enjoyed rapid growth over the last 10 -12 years. The size of the market, based on the values of securities outstanding by Australian securitisation vehicles, has increased from $10 billion in March 1995 to over $200 billion by the end of 2006.(lion note:ie there is at least  251 billion at end of 2007)

    Part of the growth of the Australian securitisation market has been driven by the growth of specialist mortgage originators.

    The types of assets that have been securitised to date in Australia include:

     

    • Residential mortgage loans
    • Vehicle and equipment loans and leases
    • Credit and charge card receivables
    • Trade receivables
    • Collateralised loan obligations
    • Net interest margin (income streams)
    • Commercial mortgage loans and lease''

     

     

  • SingaporeTyrannosaur

    En bloc sales cause collective trouble

    THE residential property boom in Singapore has been characterised by a peculiarly Singaporean phenomenon known as en bloc or collective sales.

    Last year, 109 such deals were done, totalling $S13.3 billion ($10.5 billion).

    An en bloc or collective sale occurs when owners in an apartment block agree to sell the entire block for redevelopment.

    In its wake, Singapore's en bloc fever has produced instant multi-millionaires, but has also spawned legal challenges and untold bitterness among minority owners forced to sell.

    A High Court hearing due next week will be closely watched - and could unravel the many pending en bloc sales.

    At least 10,000 apartments will be demolished for new developments, leading to even more expensive apartments, over the next two years or longer.

    Renters, particularly expatriates, are the pawns in the high-stakes game as their favourite suburbs, districts 9, 10 and 11, are where most of the en bloc sales are taking place.

    They face rising rents and uncertainty of tenure.

    An Australian who works with an investment bank in Singapore, said: "We knew in May that we would have to move out of our flat because it has been sold in a collective sale.

    "We have another year to go before the end of our lease. Then to add insult to injury, our landlord doubled our rent for the remaining months of our lease."

    Stories like this are common among expatriates, most of whom rent. It is not unusual for rentals to rise 150 per cent.

    Placed in an equally unpalatable predicament are owners who have been forced to accept the collective sale of their building, only to find that the market has streaked ahead.

    The settlement for their apartment will not be sufficient to buy into a comparable new flat in their own suburb, and they often have to downgrade to smaller accommodation.

    Collective sales take up to a year to settle. In the meantime, property prices continue to rise, creating a widening gap between the apartment sale price and the cost of a new one.

    Singapore's strata title laws allow an en bloc sale if 80 per cent of the owners agree to it.

    The remaining 20 per cent must accept the deal.

    CB Richard Ellis investment sales executive director Jeremy Lake said opposition by minority owners increased sharply in the second half of last year. The main reason was the substantial increase in land values since deals were concluded in the first half of 2007.

    Objectors take complaints to the Strata Titles Board, which had 68 objections for 60 collective sales applications in 2006.

    Last year, complaints to the board increased dramatically.

    In the past six months, the board had rejected "two or three" sales on technical grounds or for "lack of good faith", Mr Lake said.

    Owners have started to challenge the board's decisions.

    Next week minority owners in the controversial Horizon Tower en bloc sale expect Singapore's High Court to begin hearing their appeal against a decision in December by the board to approve the en bloc sale.

    These unhappy owners say the board erred in law by approving the sale and ordering minority owners to be bound by a sale and purchase agreement signed by the majority owners.

    They also say the then sales committee failed to do its duty to obtain the best price.

    Most of the owners agreed to sell the apartment block for $500million to a consortium led by Hotel Properties Ltd, which includes US investment bank Morgan Stanley.

    The buyers have threatened to sue the owners for $1 billion if they default on the sale.

    Credo Real Estate achieved the highest price for an en bloc sale, of $S1.33 billion or an average of $S2.1 million for each the 618 owners in an apartment block in Farrer Road.

    Credo executive director Tan Hong Boon said owners got a higher price for selling collectively to a developer.

    The block was sold to a CapitaLand consortium that included US-based Wachovia Bank, which plans to build 1500 units on the site.

    Mr Tan said the break-even price for the new units was at least $S1.8 million. To make a reasonable profit the price would have to be between $2.2 and $2.8 million each.

    The en bloc phenomenon began in the 1994 property boom.

    In 1993, the Government published a master plan for development in Singapore, which outlined zoning and plot ratios for suburbs, Mr Tan said.

    "Property consultants saw the potential for redevelopment with higher density in areas where land was underused."

    The en bloc momentum would slow only if there is an economic down turn, Mr Lake said. The first en bloc cycle ended in 1997 with the Asian financial crisis.

    Collective sales picked up again in 1999 but petered out in 2001 when the dotcom bust put a dampener on residential sales.

    The current cycle began in 2006, setting records for en bloc sales, turning owners of once-humble apartments into multimillionaires. Since the second half of last year, with the unfolding of the US sub-prime crisis, price rises had eased and it would take longer to get transactions off the ground, Mr Lake said.

  • SingaporeTyrannosaur

    Housing Woes in Singapore

    Over the last six months since the proposal, we’ve managed to obtain most of the wedding services we need like venue, wedding boutique, photographers and even secured the help of a well respected (and our favourite!) surgical professor to solemnize our matrimonial vows. Everything has been pleasantly smooth sailing but one stand-out problem remains unsettled and that is the most basic issue of housing.

    Property in $ingapore as we all know is broadly divided to cheaper public Housing Development Board (HDB) flat apartments and expensive private properties in the form of condominums and landed housing. In the typical scenerio, private property is financially beyond reach of a young couple starting out (sans generous parents & blank chequebooks), so the singular choice is only public housing. Now while our award-winning public housing policy has managed to allow most $ingaporeans to at least own their own roof, it is a flawed system that is an omnipotent ulcer in every young salaried $ingaporean couple.

    There are two methods of obtaining a HDB flat - either a new flat from the HDB or 2nd hand resale from a previous owner. Paradoxically an old resale flat is more expensive than a new flat due to the standing policy to match resale market prices to private sector sales. On top of that, older flats are usually found in established mature towns and resulting high demand, thus causing the prices to shoot up to unrealistic values. Though there is a policy to subsidize new couples buying expensive resale flats, the subsidy comes with many stipulations and is usually insufficient to offset the high prices demanded from the previous owner.

    The more favourable path is to buy a new flat that is not only brand new but also cost efficient. The catch is that purchasing a new flat requires you to toss your name in a hat to ballot with the rest of the country and the odds of success is usually 1 in 5 (we’ve personnally tried more than 5 attempts over the past 1 year and the trend is recurrent disappointment). New flats also take about 3-5 years to build which means unless you start looking for a flat once you start dating, chances are you’ll be standing right in my homeless shoes now. There is another option of privately-build public flats which take an accelerated 2 years to finish building but again, they seem priced for profit of the construction companies rather than policy of cheap housing for the citizens.

    What this all means is that our options are: 1. Take up a high loan to buy a ready resale flat. 2. Take up a high loan to buy a private-contract flat 3. Keep waiting for a new cheap flat and bunk in with your parents in the meantime, inviting ridicule and over-crowding tensions of the family. 4. Keep waiting for a new flat and pay exorbitant rentals in another place temporarily 5. Don’t get married at all. Okay the last point is pretty irreverent.

    We are currently still exploring our options between a point 1 to point 4. Even though there is still more than year before our actual wedding, this problem is like a invisible mini-bomb constantly ticking at the back of our minds. Some days, just some days, you wish you had richer parents.