Surely like to know your reasons for pulling out of Capital City .
Like you say nothing much we can do . Maybe their concept work , as I notice a new trend of people shopping and eating out in malls rather than shop houses along the roadside. We already got a shophouse , we would like to diversified into shopping mall. As far as I know , they are the only mall with units for sale , not much choice .
Ok, I pulled out of fourth floor selection because of the theme, it was African / Turkish / Middle East, JB Chinese are very Cheena, they may not like the theme, the unit I chose initially was facing the food court and the food court was Halal, and unlike Singapore, food court do not seem to thrive in JB, maybe because the food courts are Halal ones, so crowd may not be there, or may turn out to be very Malay crowd. The plus point was Cinema was on the fourth floor.
Later, I chose a unit on the third floor, this one the theme more suitable for Chinese Malaysian, Japan, Taiwan, Korea theme. Also the unit I selected was food capable and I was banking on the tenant selling Taiwanese Xiao Che.
Next was the background and history of Hatten, I was always asking, who the heck were they? They do not have any presence in Singapore and yet they were Singapore developers. So I did some CSI and found out that they were actually Wing Fong group. Ok so now, this group developed Water Front City in JB, and later project abandoned, there were some Singapore owners left holding the baby, they could not get back their booking fees, it seems all the lawyers involved in the deal were connected to the developer, so they could not do squat.
So if this was the case, what good is the contract for four years rental guarantee from Hatten? So alarm bells ringing I decided to pull out. Next thing was location, although investing in mall shops in JB or even Malaysia is very tricky, I noticed a trend, that the more chance a mall has to succeed is how close to the residential area it is located. This is true internationally, Singapore, Australia, America etc, AEON in JB seems to have a formula, except for the Permas Jaya location, all their locations seem to be located near higher end neighborhoods which have golf courses. Tampoi is nada for any up market residential surroundings and now seems to be smack in the industrial estate. Granted the leases have run out and the area will be renewed, but will take time, how long? No one knows, and present state because of the leases running out, the whole area is surrounded by rotting and decaying factories.
Now comes to the financial strength of Hatten, they are involved in so many mega projects at the same time, two huge ones in Malacca, they have visions to build an MBS development in mainland sans Casino and aa Sentosa island resort type development on Palau Malacca both locations are far from the heritage center and in a corner of Malacca, this is also danger sign for commercial property for business. So if they fail, they will fail big time and may even collapse.
So there you have some of my views.
