65% of Mi Casa’s pre-launched units sold

65% of Mi Casa’s pre-launched units sold

By Wei Keng/Lynda,

SINGAPORE: Although private residential property prices saw one of the worst declines in the first quarter of this year, analysts noted that the mass market segment is still well supported by HDB upgraders.

This can be seen by the sales of units at Mi Casa, the first private condominium in Choa Chu Kang Town Centre in eight years.

It has been one week since the developer pre-launched 200 units, and 65 per cent of these units have been sold. Eighty per cent of the buyers were HDB upgraders.

Chief operating officer of Far East Organisation, Chia Boon Kuah, said most of the buyers were people who were upgrading, but there was also a significant number of investors. “We are expecting to inch up our prices as we continue to sell steadily,” he added.

- CNA/yt

Source : Channel NewsAsia - 05 April 2009

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More expats fall prey to rogue property agents

More expats fall prey to rogue property agents

Many caught in rental scams unable to get back their deposits

By Elizabeth Soh

Mr Jones took his claim to the Small Claims Tribunal, which ruled in his favour but he still has not been able to recover his money. — PHOTO: WONG KWAI CHOW

More expatriates have become victims of tricky landlords, dodgy tenancy agreements, disappearing deposits and other rental snares.
According to the Consumers Association of Singapore (Case), foreigners lodged 32, out of a total of 365, complaints against real estate agents from last October to March this year.

This was a 23 per cent increase from the 26, out of 516, complaints within the same period a year earlier .

The Institute of Estate Agents itself has received five complaints from foreigners since last October. None of the agents mentioned was registered with it.

Case executive director Seah Seng Choon said that most of the complaints it received concerned rental agreements.

Commonly cited were overcharging and failure to honour agreements, especially with regard to refunds.

The onset of the economic crisis, with many retrenched foreigners terminating their leases early, may be a push factor for rogue agents.

Mr Chris Koh, a director at realty company Dennis Wee Group, said: ‘There are probably dishonest agents acting alone, desperate to collect their full commission, who resorted to underhand tactics to withhold deposits.’

American technician Robert Jones, 36, and Mauritian IT professional Ashwin Ramdeehul, 29, spoke to The Sunday Times. They claimed they were cheated out of their deposits by the same person they had separately contacted.

Both had sought an HDB flat to rent, and had contacted an ‘agent’ through his advertisement.

When taken to view their prospective units, they were introduced to the ‘landlord’, a 40-year-old woman.

In Mr Jones’ case, he signed a tenancy agreement with her on Feb 20 to rent a four-room HDB flat in Woodlands for $1,050 a month. He wanted to move in without delay as his wife was due to give birth to their first child soon.

He said that in his haste to rent, he did not pursue the fact that the owner was listed as someone else, but the ‘landlord’ on the documents was listed as the woman.

After paying her $5,250 (the deposit plus four months’ rent), he then found he was unable to contact her. Anxious, he approached the owner’s family at the Woodlands flat on Feb 23 and was told that the unit was being rented to the woman from March 7.

The owner assured him that he could move in as agreed on March 20.

He later went to the flat again, just to be sure, but was told that the woman had found another tenant. ‘I was offered another flat in Ang Mo Kio, which I rejected,’ said Mr Jones, who then asked for a full refund from the woman.

However, he was told he would get only $4,200, or four months’ rent, as $1,050 was being forfeited because he ‘backed out’ of the agreement, a contention he disputed.

When contacted by The Sunday Times, the woman said: ‘The owner did not want to rent to him because he was a nuisance who harassed them even before he was allowed to move in.’

She said she was acting on behalf of the owner, and produced a written agreement that was signed by the owner.

To date, she said, she has refunded Mr Jones $1,889 and added she would repay him $4,200 eventually.

However, Mr Jones wants all his money back. ‘I paid $5,250, never got the house, and now she wants to return me $1,050 less?’ he said.

He made a police report on March 5 and furthered his case at the Small Claims Tribunal on March 25, where he was granted a money order to collect the full amount from her. However, he has yet to get the money as she has remained uncontactable.

Like Mr Jones, Mr Ramdeehul paid a deposit in December last year to the same woman after signing a tenancy agreement for a two-room flat in Ang Mo Kio. He said she even provided a set of keys.

But he claimed she later told him the owner no longer wanted to rent out the flat and offered to find him a similar unit. When he refused, she returned only $550 of his $3,200 deposit, he said.

He made two police reports after he used the keys she had given him. ‘When I opened the door, I saw a family who told me that she never gave them my deposit like she had promised,’ he said.

He, too, filed a complaint at the Small Claims Tribunal and was issued a money order to collect the full amount but, like Mr Jones, has been unable to contact her since.

A check by The Sunday Times found an advisory on the Chinese Embassy’s website which said that since many cases of rental disputes involve the sublease of property estates handled by that woman, ‘the embassy would like tenants to stay alert when working with her’.

The Sunday Times spoke to other foreigners here who found themselves involved in complicated rental disputes or were allegedly cheated of money.

Mrs Nadya Begum, 37, and her engineer husband from Manchester, England, said they have been cheated not once but thrice in their seven years here.

‘The first time, we were ignorant and did not ask for the agent’s personal details. We ended up paying a deposit for a flat which had already been ‘rented’ out to four other couples, also foreigners.

‘The second time, the agent cut off his phone line after he collected our deposit. The last time, in November 2008, we were smart enough to get the details of the agent and all the paperwork, but the landlord absconded with the money and is still uncontactable.’

ERA Reality associate director Eugene Lim said: ‘Some unethical agents prey on the ignorance of foreigners, especially those who cannot speak English or Chinese and face a language barrier.’

South Korean housewife and study mama Kim Ae Ran, 46, said she was cheated of a $6,000 housing deposit by a real estate agent who claimed to be working for PropNex agency.

When she decided on Dec 9 last year to terminate her lease early and return to South Korea because her husband’s business in Seoul was ailing, she gave two months’ notice via e-mail to her landlord through her agent.

The landlord replied, also via e-mail, that he would refund her the full deposit of $6,000 with the ‘expiry or lawful termination’ of her lease.

But it has been 11/2 months since she and her two children moved out. They are now staying with a friend and she has not received any of the promised money.

When contacted by The Sunday Times, the agent said that Mrs Kim had ‘unlawfully terminated’ her lease and was not entitled to her deposit. He added that he was ‘only an agent, not responsible for the sum’, and that the landlord was away in China and uncontactable.

When PropNex was contacted, it investigated and found that the agent had already left the company when he signed the tenancy agreement with Mrs Kim.

It also found that the tenancy agreement he drew up stated that commission would be paid to an agent of ‘PropNex Reality’, rather than ‘PropNex Realty’.

PropNex has since lodged a police report against the man.

Meanwhile, industry players say the recent announcement in Parliament to review and regulate agents could not have come sooner.

Mr Koh of Dennis Wee Group said: ‘At the moment, only about one-third of real estate agents here are CEHA-certified.’

CEHA is the Common Examination for House Agents started in 1996 to raise the standards of real estate agents here.

He added: ‘The industry badly needs both regulation and proper training, as well as penalties for rogue or scamming agents - it should be a two-pronged approach.’

Source : Straits Times - 05 April 2009

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The majority-turned- minority: Mixed feelings

The majority-turned- minority: Mixed feelings

In January 2007, a buyer was finally found for Horizon Towers in what seemed like a pretty good deal.
Unit owners were told, when they signed the collective sale agreement, that the reserve price of $500million would give them 80 per cent more for their apartments than if they were to sell them individually. At the time, the price would also make Horizon Towers the biggest collective sale in Singapore’s history.

In any case, it looked as though the estate’s owners did not have many options. The first four bids for the estate had all come in below the reserve price and the bidders refused to pay any more.

So when a consortium led by tycoon Ong Beng Seng’s Hotel Properties agreed to pay $500 million, the sale committee rushed to seal the deal.

But even as the ink was drying on the collective sale agreement, the reserve price was losing its lustre as the property market emerged from its long slumber and roared back to life. With the values of individual units suddenly soaring, the collective sale premiums that had been promised to the owners started to disappear.

The committee was aware of this but decided not to go back and consult the owners as that would delay the sale, the Court of Appeal found. It also did not actively pursue another higher offer of

$510 million that had been made by a Hong Kong firm, Vineyard Holdings.

The Horizon deal started to look more and more unattractive to the sellers, especially when they realised that property prices were rising so quickly that a replacement home would cost much more than their collective sale gains.

Now that the sale has been scrapped for good, it is likely that these majority owners-turned-minority supporters have mixed feelings. While they get to keep their homes, they have missed out on the whole property boom.

Fiona Chan

Source : Straits Times - 05 April 2009

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The majority sellers: Stuck with their units

The majority sellers: Stuck with their units

By Fiona Chan

When a group of Horizon Towers owners came together more than three years ago to discuss selling their estate en bloc, they had no way of knowing that they would end up among the biggest losers in the whole deal.
Owners Arjun Samtani, Wee Hian Siew, Henry Lim and Tan Kah Gee mooted a collective sale in October 2005 and kicked off the process. All four were eventually appointed to the sale committee, with Mr Samtani as chairman and Mr Wee as secretary.

By July 2006, they had launched the sale, formed a sale committee, appointed a marketing agent and obtained the necessary 80 per cent consensus from their neighbours for the sale.

But what the other owners did not know was that Mr Samtani and Mr Tan had bought extra units of Horizon Towers just a few months previously, relying on bank loans to do so, according to the Court of Appeal.

If the collective sale had gone through, each of the 199 owners of the 99-year leasehold condominium would have received about $2.3 million and the 11 penthouse owners, at least $4 million.

Now that the sale has failed, the owners who had wanted to sell their units are stuck with them in a plummeting property market. Some had even gone ahead and bought a second home on the assumption that the sale would succeed.

Mr Samtani and Mr Tan, with their extra financing burdens, are probably among the worst off.

The other owners are also said to be considering the option of suing them and the other members of the original sale committee for breach of duty.

Source : Straits Times - 05 April 2009

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Horizon Towers owners ready to move on

Horizon Towers owners ready to move on

Some are considering more legal action but most are just glad that the case is finally over
By Jessica Cheam

The 199 owners of the 99-year leasehold estate would each have pocketed about $2.3 million, while the 11 penthouse owners would each have received $4 million to more than $6 million.

Majority owners at Horizon Towers are considering their next step following last Thursday’s surprise decision by the Court of Appeal to throw out the collective sale.
The owners will meet their lawyers on April 16 to discuss their options, including the possibility of suing the original sale committee for breaching its duties.

The committee bore the brunt of severe criticism in the Court of Appeal ruling.

It cited the committee’s hasty agreement to sell Horizon Towers, its failure to follow up on a higher offer, and its negligence in not disclosing a possible conflict of interest.

This centred on two owners who bought additional units just before they were appointed to the estate’s sale committee.

The ruling brings to an end the long saga of the collective sale of the Leonie Hill estate.

The sale was mooted in October 2005 and the owners agreed to a reserve price of $500 million the following year.

A deal was signed in January 2007 when the majority owners accepted a price of just below $850 per sq ft of gross floor area from Hotel Properties and its two partners.

The 199 owners of the 99-year leasehold estate would each have pocketed about $2.3 million, while the 11 penthouse owners would each have received $4 million to more than $6 million.

A series of court challenges followed. Some majority owners turned against the deal when they saw how the soaring market had made their sale price look like a giveaway.

The property market has since slumped.

A handful of the minority owners who objected to the sale fought their case all the way to the Court of Appeal.

Meanwhile, some residents had gone on to buy second properties on the assumption the deal would likely go through, and are now feeling short-changed.

But lawyers said that owners will find it hard to make a case in court as it was the individual’s decision to buy before the sale was signed and sealed.

An owner who spoke on condition of anonymity said she had bought a second property because she thought she had to move out.

The housewife said she will live at Horizon Towers and will rent out the other flat.

She added that legal action against the sale committee was ‘one of the options’ some residents had talked about.

But they also felt the chances of success were slim because of certain clauses in the collective sale agreement which may indemnify the committee.

Then there is the question of cost.

Each majority owner has had to cough up $15,000 for legal fees so far, said the owner.

This puts the total cost for the 173 who signed the sale agreement at about $2.6 million.

As the minority owners won the case, it is likely that the majority owners will have to foot their legal bill too - reported to be about $1.5million for owners who fought all the way to the Court of Appeal.

Reclaiming some of these legal fees will be discussed at the April 16 meeting.

One sale committee member, Ms Mamata Kapildev Dave, said the committee will honour the court’s decision and is now waiting for its ruling on how to award costs.

Another owner, Mr Bharat Mandloi, 50, spoke of the mood in the estate: ‘The general feeling is people are tired of this. I don’t think people are in the mood to point fingers. Everyone’s thinking, ‘Thank God it’s finally over.”

Source : Straits Times - 05 April 2009

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Mindy Yong

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Collective sale impetus fizzles out

Collective sale impetus fizzles out

By Joyce Teo and Jamie Ee Wen Wei

The once fever-hot collective sale market is now stone-cold, and property experts predict it will take at least five years for transactions to reach the pitch seen before.

At the height of the property boom in 2007, 116 collective sales were completed. This figure was whittled down to just eight last year, after the onslaught of the global economic crisis.

There was no collective sale done in the first three months of this year.

Industry players expect the market to stay dormant in the coming months as developers remain mindful of the lukewarm response to new residential launches and have also to contend with high construction costs and tighter credit measures.

Mr Steven Ming, Savills Singapore’s director for investment sales, said: ‘At this point, developers are not on an acquiring mode, not until they have cleared their inventory of apartments bought over the last few years.’

Most collective sale sites put up for tender late last year have closed without any bids.

They include Spanish Village in Farrer Road, Villa delle Rose off Holland Road and Elizabeth Towers in Mount Elizabeth.

Two months ago, developer Jewel 1 pulled out 20 days before a planned $44 million purchase of Cairnhill Heights. It cited ‘difficult, uncertain and deteriorating market conditions’ for its decision.

Property experts, however, said low- to mid-range properties may be the one bright spark in the property market.

Mr Ming said the popularity of recently launched ‘mass market’ condominiums like Caspian and Mi Casa showed that there was still a healthy demand for cheaper, suburban projects.

Mr Karamjit Singh, managing director of Credo Real Estate, noted that the eight collective sale projects which found buyers last year were of lower value.

The experts agreed that any return to the collective sales peak in 2007 was not possible for now.

Mr Ming said: ‘Right now, I don’t see any return of significant interest in en bloc sales, not until the economic outlook becomes more certain.’

Source : Straits Times - 05 April 2009

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Mindy Yong

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