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Is HBD valuing its flats artificially high to prevent property bust?
- Thread starter 2standards
- Start date
How long can HDB keep pushing up the valuation? Recession is in. Retrenchment is in. Valuation have to come down. Very very soon. 
I was young once, so I understand
Today, I will not dare take a loan of more than 200k, and 20 years (actually 20 years no choice, old already, banks won't give more :o)
You were not wrong because up to the S-E Asia financial crisis in 1997, employment was secured and increments were given year after year plus 13th month bonuses.
Not anymore after 1997. The whole employment landscape has changed. It calls for more prudence in taking huge loans when companies are constantly restructuring their operations to compete at a much higher intensity globally.
CEOs of banks will still get their golden parachute if the banks fail.
That means nothing but worse news to the low level employees who are barely getting $24k annually. If they lose their jobs, and the other banks, all at the same time, also retrench a lot of low level staff, they are screwed twice.
And if they hear that the outgoing CEOs locally get S$5m for doing badly, it's just more salt to the wound.
Dollar for dollar, US apartments of the similar sizes to our flats are selling lower than ours.
US homes: 'Less is more'
LOS ANGELES - WHEN the US housing market hit the skids, homebuilders like KB Home that thrived by offering large homes and expensive amenities began to rethink their home designs with an eye toward making smaller, less costly homes.
Three years into the downturn, that trend appears to be intensifying, as many builders scramble to make their wares palatable and affordable to first-time buyers and compete with a trove of preowned homes and deeply discounted foreclosed homes on the market.
Los Angeles-based KB, which builds homes to order, began downsizing some of its floor plans last year.
'That worked for a time, but the market continued to move away from us,' Chief Executive Jeffrey Mezger said recently.
The company initially pared down 316 sq m homes that sold for around US$450,000 (S$667,530) to smaller, 223 sq m homes selling for around US$300,000.
Now, the builder is shrinking floor plans again. It recently launched a new line of homes in foreclosure-ravaged Southern California that start at 114 sq m and are priced a little over US$200,000.
Other builders, including Warmington Homes and John Laing Homes, have taken similar steps, as the industry seeks to stem losses due to falling home prices, tighter mortgage lending standards and skittish buyers.
New home sales fell in August to the slowest pace in 17 years, while the median sale price fell 5.5 per cent to US$221,900.
The trend in smaller homes is a reversal of more than two decades of expanding floorplans, during which median size single-family went from less than 149 sq m to more than 204 sq m.
That steady drive by builders to erect increasingly bigger homes peaked during the housing boom. Derided by some as McMansions, these supersized homes packed with amenities helped drive up home prices even more.
Beyond competing with preowned homes on the market, declining home prices have also made it less profitable to build large homes, said Mr Nishu Sood, a Deutsche Bank analyst.
'The only way to respond to the lower price environment ... is to make the home smaller,' Mr Sood said.
'As you kind of reduce the floor plan size, we're getting back to more the way things were historically, kind of undoing the excesses, not just from a price perspective but home size and (fewer amenities).'
KB Home began to rollout its most recent iteration of smaller homes earlier this summer in Beaumont, California, as part of a development dubbed Highland Vista.
The homes are 114 sq m and have three to five bedrooms.
Previous KB Home developments in the Beaumont area were built with homes in the 279 sq m range.
'We really looked at what can the first-time buyer afford based on the median income for those markets and that's kind of how we designed our house to meet that price point that would attract those buyers,' said Mr Steve Ruffner, president of KB Home's Southern California Coastal Division.
The company plans to roll out more of these smaller floor plans nationwide beginning next year.
The homes, while smaller, feature large open spaces, a so-called great room often linking the living room and dining room area that might have previously been walled off. The homes also have a two-car garage standard and storage space.
'The square footage isn't the focus, it's really the utility and efficiency and flexibility of the home that is our focus,' Mr Ruffner said.
'You could have a three-bedroom, 232 sq m single-story home and all you had was wide hallways and bigger rooms. It wasn't really giving (buyers) the utility.'
'The trend definitely is going to be, I think, getting back to the basics: What people can afford is the type of home they're going to buy.'
That's the driving thought behind Warmington Homes' Summer Park Estates development in Galt, California.
At Summer Park, the company is building out the third phase of the development with homes that are markedly smaller than previous phases.
The older homes averaged 325 sq m and typically sold in the mid to high US$500,000 range. In contrast, the newer homes average 204 sq m and will be priced in the low US$300,000 range.
'We will continue to build smaller houses and that's a function of price, because financing is more difficult to get today,' said Mr Allen Morris, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Warmington Homes, which is based in Costa Mesa, California.
Homebuyers' tastes, possibly influenced by tighter mortgage lending, are also helping drive the changing trends in new homes.
Big formal entries, high ceilings and lavish light fixtures are also not as high a priority among many buyers these days, said Ms Linda Mamet, vice president of sales and marketing for Irvine, California-based John Laing Homes.
Mr Morris said fewer buyers are opting to upgrade from a standard laminate kitchen countertop to a granite countertop.
The builder also has downgraded the level of amenities and finishes built into its showcase homes, to reflect the base price of homes.
'With move-up buyers, for a long time everybody wanted the biggest house on the biggest lot with the best view and all of the options,' Mr Morris said.
'What we're doing is we're building homes today that have a lot fewer options.' -- AP
US homes: 'Less is more'
LOS ANGELES - WHEN the US housing market hit the skids, homebuilders like KB Home that thrived by offering large homes and expensive amenities began to rethink their home designs with an eye toward making smaller, less costly homes.
Three years into the downturn, that trend appears to be intensifying, as many builders scramble to make their wares palatable and affordable to first-time buyers and compete with a trove of preowned homes and deeply discounted foreclosed homes on the market.
Los Angeles-based KB, which builds homes to order, began downsizing some of its floor plans last year.
'That worked for a time, but the market continued to move away from us,' Chief Executive Jeffrey Mezger said recently.
The company initially pared down 316 sq m homes that sold for around US$450,000 (S$667,530) to smaller, 223 sq m homes selling for around US$300,000.
Now, the builder is shrinking floor plans again. It recently launched a new line of homes in foreclosure-ravaged Southern California that start at 114 sq m and are priced a little over US$200,000.
Other builders, including Warmington Homes and John Laing Homes, have taken similar steps, as the industry seeks to stem losses due to falling home prices, tighter mortgage lending standards and skittish buyers.
New home sales fell in August to the slowest pace in 17 years, while the median sale price fell 5.5 per cent to US$221,900.
The trend in smaller homes is a reversal of more than two decades of expanding floorplans, during which median size single-family went from less than 149 sq m to more than 204 sq m.
That steady drive by builders to erect increasingly bigger homes peaked during the housing boom. Derided by some as McMansions, these supersized homes packed with amenities helped drive up home prices even more.
Beyond competing with preowned homes on the market, declining home prices have also made it less profitable to build large homes, said Mr Nishu Sood, a Deutsche Bank analyst.
'The only way to respond to the lower price environment ... is to make the home smaller,' Mr Sood said.
'As you kind of reduce the floor plan size, we're getting back to more the way things were historically, kind of undoing the excesses, not just from a price perspective but home size and (fewer amenities).'
KB Home began to rollout its most recent iteration of smaller homes earlier this summer in Beaumont, California, as part of a development dubbed Highland Vista.
The homes are 114 sq m and have three to five bedrooms.
Previous KB Home developments in the Beaumont area were built with homes in the 279 sq m range.
'We really looked at what can the first-time buyer afford based on the median income for those markets and that's kind of how we designed our house to meet that price point that would attract those buyers,' said Mr Steve Ruffner, president of KB Home's Southern California Coastal Division.
The company plans to roll out more of these smaller floor plans nationwide beginning next year.
The homes, while smaller, feature large open spaces, a so-called great room often linking the living room and dining room area that might have previously been walled off. The homes also have a two-car garage standard and storage space.
'The square footage isn't the focus, it's really the utility and efficiency and flexibility of the home that is our focus,' Mr Ruffner said.
'You could have a three-bedroom, 232 sq m single-story home and all you had was wide hallways and bigger rooms. It wasn't really giving (buyers) the utility.'
'The trend definitely is going to be, I think, getting back to the basics: What people can afford is the type of home they're going to buy.'
That's the driving thought behind Warmington Homes' Summer Park Estates development in Galt, California.
At Summer Park, the company is building out the third phase of the development with homes that are markedly smaller than previous phases.
The older homes averaged 325 sq m and typically sold in the mid to high US$500,000 range. In contrast, the newer homes average 204 sq m and will be priced in the low US$300,000 range.
'We will continue to build smaller houses and that's a function of price, because financing is more difficult to get today,' said Mr Allen Morris, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Warmington Homes, which is based in Costa Mesa, California.
Homebuyers' tastes, possibly influenced by tighter mortgage lending, are also helping drive the changing trends in new homes.
Big formal entries, high ceilings and lavish light fixtures are also not as high a priority among many buyers these days, said Ms Linda Mamet, vice president of sales and marketing for Irvine, California-based John Laing Homes.
Mr Morris said fewer buyers are opting to upgrade from a standard laminate kitchen countertop to a granite countertop.
The builder also has downgraded the level of amenities and finishes built into its showcase homes, to reflect the base price of homes.
'With move-up buyers, for a long time everybody wanted the biggest house on the biggest lot with the best view and all of the options,' Mr Morris said.
'What we're doing is we're building homes today that have a lot fewer options.' -- AP
Maybe some Singaporeans would like to contact an American-based property dealer and buy a two story bungalow in California for less than half of a Duxton HDB flat?
The reason our flats are more expensive than California's apartments is because ours is on earthquake proof zone.
Our HDB prices are sky high because land is monopolised by the govt.
Classified is a euphemism for 'something to hide'?
Maybe this fellow got burnt by the stock market crash and must sell his house to pay off his losses.
good for me since I'm playing the house hunter role... :p
Wait for retrenchments to start and prices to sink to bottom before buying.
New HDB buyers should read this.....
Sunday Times 5th Oct 2008
Be prudent, buy small
These are not the best of times, but the Housing Board's new and resale markets are still holding strong. Last week, in its balloting exercise, the HDB drew an overwhelming
response for some of its priciest flats at the 50th-storey Pinnacle@Duxton in Tanjong Pagar. There were almost 1,500 applications for the 428 four- and five-room flats on offer, or 3.5 hopefuls for every unit. The 111 five-room flats there start at $545,000 and hit $645,000 for a 49th-storey unit - the most expensive new HDB flats - yet there were still 372 applicants.
We wonder how many of them are young married couples. Assume a young couple's combined income is $8000, which is the HDB's ceiling for new flat applicants, and they plan to take out a $500,000 loan stretched over 30 years. If they are eligible for an HDB loan whose interest is 2.6 per cent, their monthly instalment is about $2000. And they can use $1,600 from the CPF. It is painless. But what they do not reckon with is that at the end of the 30-year period, they would have paid a total sum of about $800,000 because of interest, and there will be nothing left in their CPF, except the minimun sum.
Such couples will be asset-rich, cash-poor, which is the position many Singaporeans are in today. Of course, they can imagine their pay and property prices going up over the years. But as the current financial crisis shows, bad time come unexpectedly, and there is always the possibility of losing one's job. There are also other young couples who commit themselves to condos and cars before they have built up adquate savings. In a
downturn, they will not be able to offload them without suffering losses. To these young couples, we advise prudence. Property in Singapore is a good long-term investment, probably one of the best. But the wisest thing to do is to start small. Buy a three- or four-room HDB in a location that does not come with huge premium. Then scale up as savings accumuate.
That was what I have said some times ago. BUY SMALL AND THINK BIG.
YOUR HEAD IF NOT THAT BIG, DON'T WEAR BIG HAT.
Welcome to the new generation of HDB owners. We will born in different time frame.
Sunday Times 5th Oct 2008
Be prudent, buy small
These are not the best of times, but the Housing Board's new and resale markets are still holding strong. Last week, in its balloting exercise, the HDB drew an overwhelming
response for some of its priciest flats at the 50th-storey Pinnacle@Duxton in Tanjong Pagar. There were almost 1,500 applications for the 428 four- and five-room flats on offer, or 3.5 hopefuls for every unit. The 111 five-room flats there start at $545,000 and hit $645,000 for a 49th-storey unit - the most expensive new HDB flats - yet there were still 372 applicants.
We wonder how many of them are young married couples. Assume a young couple's combined income is $8000, which is the HDB's ceiling for new flat applicants, and they plan to take out a $500,000 loan stretched over 30 years. If they are eligible for an HDB loan whose interest is 2.6 per cent, their monthly instalment is about $2000. And they can use $1,600 from the CPF. It is painless. But what they do not reckon with is that at the end of the 30-year period, they would have paid a total sum of about $800,000 because of interest, and there will be nothing left in their CPF, except the minimun sum.
Such couples will be asset-rich, cash-poor, which is the position many Singaporeans are in today. Of course, they can imagine their pay and property prices going up over the years. But as the current financial crisis shows, bad time come unexpectedly, and there is always the possibility of losing one's job. There are also other young couples who commit themselves to condos and cars before they have built up adquate savings. In a
downturn, they will not be able to offload them without suffering losses. To these young couples, we advise prudence. Property in Singapore is a good long-term investment, probably one of the best. But the wisest thing to do is to start small. Buy a three- or four-room HDB in a location that does not come with huge premium. Then scale up as savings accumuate.
That was what I have said some times ago. BUY SMALL AND THINK BIG.
YOUR HEAD IF NOT THAT BIG, DON'T WEAR BIG HAT.
Welcome to the new generation of HDB owners. We will born in different time frame.
This is precisely the reason LKY prefers and wants to maintain the Confucian stock. Tell me where else can you find such fools? They deserve everything that's coming their way.
It is a distorted market by a monopoly.
