Johor’s Horizon Hills attracts foreign buyers - Malaysia

Johor’s Horizon Hills attracts foreign buyers- Malaysia

60% of buyers are from overseas; more than half of whom are Singaporeans
By EMILYN YAP

WITH a golf course set within a residential township, the resort-style Horizon Hills in South Johor is attracting considerable overseas interest - more than 60 per cent of buyers in launched precincts are foreigners.

 
Home is a golf retreat: Mr Chow (above) says that Horizon Hills offers a resort lifestyle and investment value which have attracted the attention of foreigners who are working in Johor Baru and Singapore 
Here in town yesterday to promote the project, Malaysian developer Gamuda Land also noted that Singaporeans make up more than half of the foreign buyers. The rest come from countries as far as Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom, South Africa, the US, Japan and India.

Horizon Hills is located in Nusajaya, a flagship zone within South Johor’s Iskandar Malaysia, which is slated to become southern peninsular Malaysia’s economic corridor. Spanning 1,200 acres, the township comprises 13 precincts with bungalows, semi-detached, cluster and terrace homes.

Two precincts - The Gateway and The Golf - were launched last year. Ninety per cent of The Gateway’s more than 400 residential units were taken up.

A 200-acre 18-hole designer golf course and a club house are also integral parts of Horizon Hills. Costing RM30 million (S$12.5 million) and RM50 million respectively, the golf course and club house were completed this month.

Bungalows with golf course frontage went for RM2 million on average, while semi-detached units cost around RM900,000.

‘The homes in Horizon Hills are very affordable,’ said Gamuda Land’s managing director Chow Chee Wah. ‘The resort lifestyle and investment value which Horizon Hills offer have attracted the attention of foreigners who are working in Johor Baru and Singapore.’

Home prices in Horizon Hill have risen by about 15-20 per cent in the last one and a half years, Mr Chow pointed out. The uptrend is likely to continue as construction costs in Malaysia increase. Costs have swelled by some 35 per cent in Malaysia in the past year, he said.

Managing director of Savills Singapore Michael Ng also expected to see land prices in the area rise due to development and growing foreign investment in Iskandar Malaysia. Savills Singapore is the marketing agent for Horizon Hills in the region.

Source : Business Times - 22 July 2008

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Singapore Govt to review growth forecast next month

Singapore Govt to review growth forecast next month

S’pore not facing stagflation, though pace of growth has slowed: Iswaran
By CHUANG PECK MING
SINGAPORE’S economy has held up well despite challenging global conditions, but the government will revisit the 4-6 per cent full-year economic growth forecast it made in May.
 
Relief in sight: Mr Iswaran expects inflation to ease in the current half ‘as the effects of the GST increase wash out and food prices peak’
‘We will review this forecast in August after we have compiled all the relevant data for the first half of 2008,’ Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry S Iswaran told Parliament yesterday.

Responding to questions from Lily Neo (Jalan Besar) and Penny Low (Pasir Ris-Punggol), Mr Iswaran also said Singapore is not facing stagflation, though the pace of economic growth has slowed recently because of softer conditions worldwide.

The economy grew 4.3 per cent in the first half of this year, according to the latest advance estimates for Singapore’s gross domestic product, said Mr Iswaran.

‘This is within our medium term potential rate of growth of 4-6 per cent.’

 
‘We have allowed the Singapore dollar to appreciate against the US dollar. Since 2004, the Sing dollar has risen 23% against the US dollar.’
 
- S Iswaran, 
Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry 
 
 
 
The job market is healthy - producing more than 73,000 jobs in the first three months of the year - and the jobless rate has stayed low, he said.

But the global economy is tipped to remain weak in the second half of the year, with the US still bothered by a credit crunch and Japan and Germany being dragged down by high energy prices and weak consumer spending.

China’s economy expanded 10.6 per cent in the first quarter, while the Indian economy grew 8.8 per cent. But both are afflicted by record inflation and have moved to cool expansion, Mr Iswaran said.

On the positive side, Singapore has a strong pipeline of foreign investments and tourism projects, including the Formula One motor race in September, he said. These ‘will provide a certain amount of support to the economy for the rest of this year’.

Mr Iswaran conceded that inflation in Singapore has shot up since the middle last year to hit 7.5 per cent in May 2008, due largely to jumps in global prices of food and fuel. He expects inflation to ease in the current half ‘as the effects of the GST increase wash out and food prices peak’.

But don’t expect the rate of inflation to return to previous levels any time soon, he said, even though ‘the government has put in place several measures to dampen inflation and to help Singaporeans cope with the higher cost of living’.

‘We have allowed the Singapore dollar to appreciate against the US dollar. Since 2004, the Singapore dollar has risen 23 per cent against the US dollar,’ said Mr Iswaran, who cautioned against sparking a domestic wage-price spiral. ‘We must take care that wage growth does not exceed growth in productivity,’ he said.

Businesses should upgrade their capabilities and sharpen their competitive edge, which ‘will give our companies the necessary capacity to withstand the challenges of slower growth as well as to capitalise on market opportunities when growth recovers’.
Source : Business Times - 22 July 2008

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New float in Temasek property fleet?

Condo sales in Singapore hit by bad news from US

Condo sales in Singapore hit by bad news from US 

By Fiona Chan, Property Reporter 
 
THE bad news coming out of the United States last week took its toll on property sales in Singapore over the weekend.
Two newly released projects sold fewer than 20 units each, as homebuyers’ caution deepened after the collapse of US bank IndyMac and the forced rescue of mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

CapitaLand’s Wharf Residence in Tong Watt Road, which started taking bookings over the weekend, sold just over 10 units, sources said.

The 173-unit condominium off River Valley Road is priced between $1,500 per sq ft (psf) and $1,900 psf. Unit sizes start at about 1,000 sq ft, so a two-bedroom unit costs $1.6 million to $1.7 million.

Meanwhile, Frasers Centrepoint sold about 19 of the 48 units it released at Woodsville 28 near Potong Pasir MRT station.

But the developer, which priced the units at an average of $880 psf, said it was ‘quite encouraged by the take-up rate’.

 
‘It was above our expectations, given the general sentiment in the market,’ said a spokesman.

Woodsville 28 has two- and three-bedroom units, starting from 829 sq ft, with an average two-bedder costing about $755,000.

Sales also continued at a snail’s pace at other condos that have recently been launched, despite reports of large crowds at showflats.

OLA Residences in Mountbatten Road has sold only about 10 of its 50 units since sales began three weeks ago.

‘There are a lot of walk-ins but offers from buyers are coming in too low,’ said a property agent. The freehold project is priced at about $1,200 psf on average.

Two smaller projects, The Scenic@Braddell in Braddell Road and Jubilee Residence in Pasir Panjang, have sold about 10 units each in the last few weekends, putting them at the halfway mark in sales. The Scenic is priced at $820 psf to $850 psf, while Jubilee is going for $900 psf.

Cheaper projects are seeing better sales. Buyers have picked up more than 60 of the 212 units at Beacon Heights in St Michael’s Road for an average price of $800 psf, agents said. The 999-year leasehold condo developed by Kim Eng Securities started sales two weekends ago.

‘Buyers are still waiting to see if prices go down further, and this will continue until the US situation stabilises,’ said Mr Ku Swee Yong, director of marketing and business development at property firm Savills Singapore.

‘There are definitely buyers with enough money to buy new properties, but they are doing their homework these days.’
 
Source : Straits Times - 22 July 2008

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Hope in sight for Singapore Tampines Court sale?

Hope in sight for Singapore Tampines Court sale? 

Majority owners’ last-ditch bid to push through collective sale may bear fruit

By Jessica Cheam 
AIRING OF VIEWS: Tampines Court residents leaving the Strata Titles Board’s headquarters at Maxwell Road, where objectors to the collective sale had their say yesterday. — ST PHOTO: WANG HUI FEN
 
AN ELEVENTH-HOUR bid by the owners of Tampines Court to save their collective sale from petering out seems to be paying off.
The deal was in danger of collapsing after the sales committee delayed seeking mandatory Strata Titles Board (STB) approval for the sale.

The STB had scheduled to hear the case only next month, but the sales agreement with Far East Organization and Frasers Centrepoint expires this Friday. The two property giants do not look keen to grant an extension.

As a result, the sales committee last week applied successfully to the High Court to have the STB hear the case earlier.

At yesterday’s hearing, those who objected to the sale had their say, clearing the way for lawyers for majority and minority owners to submit closing statements in writing by Thursday.

The STB had initially set yesterday’s hearing for Aug 7, but that would have killed the $405 million collective sale as it would come after the July 25 deadline.

The deadline fix stemmed from the sales committee’s decision to delay seeking mandatory STB approval for the deal until Jan 7, although all the necessary conditions had been met as early as July 25 last year.

It wanted to wait until the board had ruled on the Gillman Heights sale. Any ruling could have had a bearing on the fate of the Tampines Court deal as both are former Housing and Urban Development Company estates.

The squeeze on dates became potentially disastrous when the STB dismissed an appeal to bring forward the Aug 7 hearing, forcing majority owners to appeal to the High Court last week.

Lawyer N. Sreenivasan, who represents the minority owners, said yesterday the High Court did not explicitly order the STB to rule by Friday. But the board’s deputy president, Mr Alfonso Ang, said it was likely to, in the ’spirit’ of the court’s order.

Sales committee chairman Mathew Lee, who spent the most time on the witness stand yesterday, was grilled on whether he had acted in the owners’ best interests on the issue of the estate’s valuation and the method of distribution of sale proceeds.

The lively session also drew a few laughs, particularly when Senior Counsel Andre Yeap, who represents the majority owners, said Mr Sreenivasan was ‘highly intelligent’, to which the latter interjected: ‘No, I am not.’

Resident Niamh Choo, who also took the stand, told The Straits Times later that one of the minority owners’ biggest concern was that some of the proceeds would be distributed unfairly.

In his closing statement, Mr Yeap said there was insufficient evidence that the sale lacked good faith.

Mr Sreenivasan will make his closing statements to the board today.

Source : Straits Times - 22 July 2008

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Singapore Index, bank and property contracts active from rally

Singapore Index, bank and property contracts active from rally 
 
A RALLY yesterday drew investors into fresh positions for warrants linked to key regional indexes and blue-chip Singapore stocks.
Investors were buoyed by Citigroup’s second-quarter results last Friday that showed its losses were not as bad as most analysts had anticipated.

Markets were also boosted by the downward spiral in crude oil prices.

Bargain hunters went on a buying spree, driving up Singapore stocks to their biggest one-day surge in nearly two months.

The Straits Times Index (STI) rose 71.48 points to 2,919.21.

Call warrants that tracked the STI rose, while put warrants suffered a rare mauling.

Topping the day’s most active charts was a Hang Seng Index put warrant, offered by Macquarie Securities, expiring on Aug 28 with a strike level of 21,000 points.

The warrant plunged 8.5 cents to 19 cents on a turnover of 34.7 million units.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng surged 3 per cent to 22,532.9 points in its biggest single-day gain since early April.

Next on that list was a DBS Group Holdings call warrant offered by Macquarie.

That contract, which lapses on Dec 3 with a strike price of $19.80, saw 28.01 million units traded. It closed 2.5 cents up at 20.5 cents.

DBS shares ended 52 cents higher at $19.18.

Other contracts that were active yesterday included those of Cosco Corp, CapitaLand and City Developments (CDL).

Cosco shares closed nine cents up at $3.12, while CapitaLand shares surged 28 cents to $5.87.

Shares of CDL ended 34 cents higher at $10.86 after rising to as much as $11.18.

Investors for put warrants, on the other hand, had a dismal day.

A call warrant lets an investor buy into a stock or index at a pre-set price over a period of three to nine months.

A put warrant allows an investor to sell the stock or index at a pre-set price.

Dealers expect the buying momentum to continue today, driving the market higher.

Source : Straits Times - 22 July 2008

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Four-way push to raise S’pore birth rate

Four-way push to raise S’pore birth rate 

Focus on helping singles to socialise, work-life balance, childcare options and parental aid

By Li Xueying 
 
THE Government will announce next month the measures it will take to boost new births.
It is now finalising details in four areas to create a more pro-family environment, Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng disclosed in Parliament yesterday.

They are:
To help singles socialise and hook up;

To offer greater financial support for parents;

To ensure a better work-life balance at the workplace; and
To provide viable childcare options.
Mr Wong, who is also chairman of the National Population Committee, is tasked with addressing the challenge of growing Singapore’s population.

He sketched the trends behind Singapore’s fertility rate of 1.29 last year, far below the 2.1 replacement rate: More are not getting married; more are marrying later; and more are having children - and fewer of them - later.

Dr Ahmad Magad (Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC) and Madam Halimah Yacob (Jurong GRC) wanted to know what is being done about this.

Responding, Mr Wong revealed that the Government studied countries with high fertility rates, such as Denmark, Sweden, Finland, France and Britain.

‘The Nordic countries, in particular, have generous family benefits to support couples in having and raising children. They have provided some useful learning points,’ he said.

They have combined birth rates of above 1.8 with high female labour force participation rates of between 65 per cent and 75 per cent, he noted.

‘In Singapore, people generally want to work and have children too, but we have not been as successful in this regard compared to other countries,’ Mr Wong said.

But he added that Singapore will not be able to import these schemes wholesale.

It needs to be ‘mindful of the differences in the political, economic and social environment and the tax regimes between Singapore and these countries’.

For instance, the Nordic countries have a high tax regime. Denmark has a personal income tax rate of up to 63 per cent and a value-added tax rate of 25 per cent.

At the same time, the Nordic countries are operating in a homogeneous high-cost region in Europe that is characterised by high social spending funded by very high taxes.

‘These countries are able to adopt the same socio-economic structure as they are competing against one another on a level footing,’ he said.

Singapore, on the other hand, is in a fast-growing and competitive region where operating costs are generally much lower.

‘If we’re to offer the same generous levels of social subsidies as in the Nordic countries, we will have to raise our taxes very significantly,’ Mr Wong said.

‘But to do so would also mean that we price ourselves out of the Asian market. Well-educated Singaporeans will leave and businesses will shift their operations overseas. We simply can’t afford to lose them.’

Thus, Singapore has to decide what can work for it, ‘based on what we can afford and our local context’.

At the end of the day, he said, societies that want to prosper must place strong emphasis on children and family life.

Whether it is in fathers playing a more active role in child-rearing, or supporting mothers to return to work, Singaporeans must want to encourage marriage and parenthood, Mr Wong said.

‘Such a societal mindset is necessary before any measure can take effect.’

Source : Straits Times - 22 July 2008

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Singapore Govt property vacant for years

Singapore Govt property vacant for years 

Auditor-General’s annual report raps agencies for not ‘maximising usage’ of state-owned buildings

By Liaw Wy-Cin 
 
GOVERNMENT chalets left to go to seed and unleased for over 14 years and other buildings and tracts of land left empty for years on end - these have come to light in the Auditor-General’s annual report.
Mr Lim Soo Ping has taken to task some ministries and statutory boards for letting this happen to properties under their charge.

In his latest report released yesterday, he urged these agencies to manage their properties better ‘to maximise their usage for the public good’.

He also recommended a review of how government properties pending development are allocated and reserved.

‘This is to minimise the opportunity cost arising from unnecessarily long holding and reservation,’ he said.

Among the buildings his office found under-utilised were staff apartments belonging to statutory boards, left vacant for four to 10 years. Some had vacancy rates as high as 80 per cent.

In his report, Mr Lim also took the Singapore Tourism Board to task for spending $1.51 million over seven years on feasibility studies, maintenance and reinstatement works to turn Capitol Theatre into a performing arts venue, only to find that it was not a viable project.

The building stood vacant until it was returned to the Singapore Land Authority last year. Mr Lim reckoned the rental revenue foregone to exceed $280,000 a year.

The report also highlighted the lack of transparency in the calls for tender bids and irregularities in payment.

One such irregularity was serious enough to have been referred to the police for investigation.

Acting on an anonymous tip-off alleging favouritism in the awarding of contracts to redevelop the Singapore Discovery Centre (SDC), the Auditor-General’s Office found irregularities in 92 per cent of the contracts awarded to one contractor and another company with links to the contractor.

As the SDC - which promotes national education here - is related to the Ministry of Defence, Mindef referred the matter to the police in April.

Contacted last night, Mindef said investigations were still underway.

Asked to comment on the loss of rental revenue from buildings left standing empty, director of research and consultancy at real estate company Knight Frank, Mr Nicholas Mak, said that if the vacancy rate is high, the agency overseeing the building should consider marketing it better ‘or maybe it should relook at whether it really still needs the apartments’.

But Mr Mak said the solution was less clear-cut in the case of redeveloping a building for commercial use, such as the Capitol Theatre.

‘If you are talking about renting it out, sometimes, you have to wait for the right time to enter the market. Or you have to do a lot of upgrading first to redevelop it,’ he added.

 
Lapses found elsewhere
THE annual report by the Auditor-General’s Office (AGO) also noted other lapses in ministries and statutory boards:

Costs incurred in a bad purchase:
The next time the Ministry of Foreign Affairs searches for a property meant for use as an overseas mission, it will not just consider the location, but it will also consult security experts first.

A property which the ministry bought in 2005 was found to be unsuitable due to security concerns in the neighbourhood.

The property was left unoccupied for 21/2 years before it was sold this year - and this was after $406,000 was spent on renovation, commissions and other fees.
In-vehicle units too ugly:
The Land Transport Authority (LTA) found itself saddled with 66,520 F-brackets - devices designed to hold the in-vehicle units for motorcycles and scooters - which had been deemed too ugly by motorcyclists.

They cost $1.77 million.

LTA told the AGO that motorcyclists preferred to install their own brackets ‘for aesthetic reasons’.
Unused carpark barriers:
Barriers were installed to restrict illegal entry and parking in the carparks on the Temasek Polytechnic campus, but the barriers were kept up through the day.

The unused barriers cost $30,000 a year to maintain, in addition to the installation cost of $435,000.

The school told the AGO that the system could still capture information about vehicles entering and leaving the premises in emergencies and in the event of a terrorist threat.

But the AGO was not convinced that the cost served the objective that the funds were approved for.

LIAW WY-CIN

Source : Straits Times - 22 July 2008

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Singapore MPs say security agencies need to be more alert

Singapore MPs say security agencies need to be more alert
 
By Jeremy Au Yong 

FOUR MPs stood up yesterday to voice their concerns over the recent string of high-profile security lapses here.

Dr Teo Ho Pin (Bukit Panjang), Ms Indranee Rajah (Tanjong Pagar GRC) , Non-Constituency MP Sylvia Lim and Nominated MP Siew Kum Hong each took turns to say their piece on the issue at the end of yesterday’s Parliament session.

That it came after other law-making matters had been dealt with, instead of during the 90-minute question time at the beginning, was due to Dr Teo.

He said he applied for the session on security lapses to be moved to the end of the day because what he wanted to say could not be properly fleshed out in a question.

‘During question and answer time, you get to ask a question but you don’t have a chance to speak and express the views on the ground,’ he said.

When his chance came, Dr Teo highlighted three lessons which he said could be learnt from the mistakes.

These were on the need to instil more discipline among officers in complying with operating procedures; the design of security facilities; and the need for more ground supervision and audits.

On his last two points, he suggested the setting up of audit bodies within the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to provide independent checks.

To Dr Teo’s three lessons, Ms Indranee added one more - the need for security officers to have better ‘antennae for danger’ as well as ‘mental robustness’.

She said the three lapses were in part due to officers who had assumed that nothing would go wrong.

‘Our security agencies cannot proceed on the assumption that nothing will go wrong,’ she said. ‘Instead they should proceed on the assumption that if something can go wrong, it will.’

Up next was Mr Siew, who said that public confidence in MHA had taken a serious knock. He called on the ministry to apologise for the lapses.

He said: ‘I believe that a clear, unreserved, unqualified apology is a necessary first step towards the restoration of public confidence in the Home Team because it demonstrates that the ministry is squarely confronting the issue.’

Ms Lim, a former inspector in the police force and chairman of the Workers’ Party, asked if local security forces were overstretched.

In his reply (see other story), Second Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam devoted one part of his speech entirely to this point, while focusing on a call to take the lapses in perspective.

Contacted by The Straits Times after the speech, Mr Siew said he remained dissatisfied. He noted that his call for an apology was not addressed. Neither was his question asking if subsequent security audits of detention facilities had addressed the risk of human error.

Dr Teo, chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee on Home Affairs and Law, however, lauded the minister’s remarks.

‘Singapore must be more appreciative of its security officers. They are human beings too. What is important is that we learn from mistakes.’
 
Source : Straits Times - 22 July 2008

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