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Singapore Edition
Where have all the sales gone?
Photographer: Wei Leng Tay/Bloomberg
By Low De Wei and Yi Wei Wong
September 21, 2024 at 9:00 AM GMT+8
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Welcome to Singapore Edition. Each week we bring you insights into one of Asia’s most dynamic economies. If you haven’t yet, please sign up here.
It’s race weekend and everything from the stock market to COE prices seems to be speeding. But not the nation’s private home sales. Low De Wei and Yihui Xie get under the hood to find out why, while Yi Wei Wong takes us away from the traffic congestion for a taste of Italy.
Newsletter
Singapore Edition
Inside the Great Singapore Real Estate Standoff
Where have all the sales gone?
Photographer: Wei Leng Tay/Bloomberg
By Low De Wei and Yi Wei Wong
September 21, 2024 at 9:00 AM GMT+8
Save
Welcome to Singapore Edition. Each week we bring you insights into one of Asia’s most dynamic economies. If you haven’t yet, please sign up here.
It’s race weekend and everything from the stock market to COE prices seems to be speeding. But not the nation’s private home sales. Low De Wei and Yihui Xie get under the hood to find out why, while Yi Wei Wong takes us away from the traffic congestion for a taste of Italy.
The Big Standoff
It’s been a week of high-profile gatherings in Singapore, from finance conferences and adrenaline-fueled crypto conclaves to one on longevity optimistically titled “Don’t Die,” as visitors swarm into town for F1.But in property-obsessed Singapore, there was a less-publicized meetup that had executives grappling with a major conundrum — the annual Mid-Autumn festival lunch for the city’s top real estate players.
Around the banquet and live performances floated conversations about the strange predicament in the private home market. For months, homebuyers and developers have been involved in a game of chicken.
Buyers, daunted by high interest rates and anticipating a surge of new homes in the pipeline, have held their purse strings in revolt against the high prices developers are seeking. Developers, calculating that rate cuts like the Fed’s half-point drop this week will change sentiment, have stubbornly resisted big reductions, even as thousands of unsold new apartments pile up.
The result is that Singapore is on track for its worst year for new private home sales since the Global Financial Crisis. In most markets, that would signal a property downturn, but in Singapore, overall prices are still rising as some buyers look for alternatives in the resale market.
Build it and they will come?Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg
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Developers have even been holding back on releasing new projects for sale, hoping to stagger launches to prevent a sudden glut of private units. But Singapore has put in penalties that mean developers who don’t build and sell their units within five years have to fork out significant taxes.
The government is also offering land at the fastest pace in more than a decade as part of measures to try to cool the surge in prices. Developers though have been picky, bidding strongly only for “sure bets,” such as choice suburban plots.
Who will win? It used to be common for buyers to avoid making major purchases during Hungry Ghost month, when the spirits of the dead are said to return. While the festival ended earlier this month, Singapore's developers are still looking a little haunted. —Low De Wei
The government is also offering land at the fastest pace in more than a decade as part of measures to try to cool the surge in prices. Developers though have been picky, bidding strongly only for “sure bets,” such as choice suburban plots.
Who will win? It used to be common for buyers to avoid making major purchases during Hungry Ghost month, when the spirits of the dead are said to return. While the festival ended earlier this month, Singapore's developers are still looking a little haunted. —Low De Wei
The Crypto World Lands in Singapore in Search of Fresh Narrative
Photographer: Carolina Moscoso
By Muyao Shen
September 18, 2024 at 5:00 AM GMT+8
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Muyao Shen wonders if Token2049 in Singapore will produce crypto’s next big narrative, or just more of the same.
Narrative depletion
Welcome to the time of year when the entire crypto industry is descending on Singapore, the garden city of Southeast Asia, for the Token2049 conference. Like other big events in the digital-asset industry, it’s safe to expect some wild anecdotes will emerge. After all, this is the crypto industry, where there is always a bull market in wild anecdotes.While crypto has long had a love affair with conferences, this year the hype in Singapore has reached a fever pitch. Yet outside of the parties, lavish dinners, and karaoke sessions, the industry is grappling with one pressing question: What’s the next big narrative?
Crypto thrives on narratives. In fact, the stories being told tend to drive the market more than any actual technological breakthroughs.
Three years ago, the buzz was around TerraUSD, an algorithmic stablecoin that promised a decentralized economy free from outside intervention. Two years ago, it was FTX and its empire aiming to disrupt global finance. Neither narrative ended well. But at the time, the stories were intriguing. Money flowed in, and prices soared.
Yet fresh narratives are hard to come by these days, and one sign of desperation for new plotlines is the recycling of old ones.
Lately, there’s renewed chatter around decentralized physical infrastructure networks, or DePINs, an effort to use blockchains to decentralize ownership of pieces of real-world infrastructure.
Many are touting this sector as the next big thing, but similar ideas were hyped years ago by projects like Helium’s efforts to create a decentralized wireless communications network.
Tekin Salimi, the founder of crypto investment fund dao5, pointed out that recycling old narratives is not uncommon in crypto.
“In a lot of cycles, narratives do get recycled in some unique form,” Salimi said. “And each generation gets a little bit better.”
Salimi, like many in the industry, is looking to the upcoming presidential election in the US, where the industry finally got its first crypto friendly presidential candidate with Donald Trump, as the biggest factor for the future.
“Everyone’s focused on the election,” he said. “It feels like so much of the future of crypto for the next four years is tied to macro. And the future of macro is very different under a Trump presidency and a Kamala Harris presidency.”
Trump and his family have also caused quite a stir by getting involved in a project called World Liberty Financial, which is supposed to be part of the decentralized-finance sector in crypto. (And yes, this project will have a token.) An X Spaces livestream on Monday about it attracted more than 60,000 participants, yet it’s unclear that project will produce an innovative storyline for the industry.
Crypto has had a strong start to the year: the historic approval and launch of ETFs that directly invest in Bitcoin and Ether in the U.S., Bitcoin hitting a new all-time high, and the potential of a U.S. president friendly to crypto. There are few excuses left for the industry not to deliver on its promises to change the world.
Yet while the parties rage on in Singapore, good luck to those trying to uncover the next groundbreaking crypto project. It’s about time the industry finds its next big thing, but it’s just not clear if it will.
“In a lot of cycles, narratives do get recycled in some unique form,” Salimi said. “And each generation gets a little bit better.”
Salimi, like many in the industry, is looking to the upcoming presidential election in the US, where the industry finally got its first crypto friendly presidential candidate with Donald Trump, as the biggest factor for the future.
“Everyone’s focused on the election,” he said. “It feels like so much of the future of crypto for the next four years is tied to macro. And the future of macro is very different under a Trump presidency and a Kamala Harris presidency.”
Trump and his family have also caused quite a stir by getting involved in a project called World Liberty Financial, which is supposed to be part of the decentralized-finance sector in crypto. (And yes, this project will have a token.) An X Spaces livestream on Monday about it attracted more than 60,000 participants, yet it’s unclear that project will produce an innovative storyline for the industry.
Crypto has had a strong start to the year: the historic approval and launch of ETFs that directly invest in Bitcoin and Ether in the U.S., Bitcoin hitting a new all-time high, and the potential of a U.S. president friendly to crypto. There are few excuses left for the industry not to deliver on its promises to change the world.
Yet while the parties rage on in Singapore, good luck to those trying to uncover the next groundbreaking crypto project. It’s about time the industry finds its next big thing, but it’s just not clear if it will.
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