you are right. seen and travelled the whole world and this recession is the worst. The crappy thing is the shitty times is hiding all these bad news as SPH obviously has alot of vested interests. Go overseas and read their local papers and they are far more objective. almost all countries overseas have their property market down by 30-50 % average and the most frightening thing is the rate of fall ie all happening in 4-6 months!!!! singapore is no exception and with an open economy probably worst and the fall might be 50-70%. this is not an unrealistic figure. afterall in 2006 if you tell local people that 2008 and 2009 would see the worst recession, bankers and property agenst would laugh at you for being "unrealistic" with all the IR hype ongoing(even las vegas sands shares has drop 95% and nobody foresee it).
it is so bad that you have alot of rich people in europe and US literally killing themselves(suicides) and the newspapers only published the famous and very rich ones. you don't hear of suicides in the 96/97 ccrises, 2000 dot com bust, 2003 post 911 crash but you hear of suicides now almost every week of some people in europe, HK, USA and soon singapore when alot of speculators are going to get hit very hard.
here expects the tsunami to hit hard with minus 5% growth and expected 300,000 people unemplyed/retrenched. one by one the category COEs are dropping to $2 and $200. soon the big category COEs would hit $1. all the signs are there and you still have local property agents and house sellers talking crap and asking unrealistic prices.
