Singapore’s official private home price index slid 5.7% in Q4 2008 over the preceding quarter. For full-year 2008, the index fell 4.3%, reversing a 31.2% increase during 2007. This is the Singapore real estate market’s worst performance since Q4 1998 and property consultants are predicting a further decline of 10-20% in 2009, with luxury homes continuing to be the worst hit, as in 2008, this sector having seen the biggest increases over 2006/7..
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Singapore’s East Coast Road is renowned for being lined with large houses, condominium apartments and famous food and beverage outlets. Highly sought after in the 1970s for its suburban tranquility, this neighborhood looks set to enter a real estate boom with mounting speculation on the construction of an underground LRT (Light Rapid Transit) extension of the MRT(Mas Rapid Transit) line.
Singapore’s Budget Statement for 2009 is eagerly anticipated. It is seen as pivotal to the outcome of both local and foreign businesses operating here in Singapore. As a matter of fact, it is so important that the Government has brought it forward to January 2009. The policies laid down in this Statement shall indicate the Government’s response in relation to the bleak world economic forecast for the year 2009.
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Singapore’s Duxton Hill is renowned as a good place to stay while on a business trip to Singapore where the Berjaya Hotel Singapore is but a stone’s throw away from busiest business center. Unlike most other hotels in the CBD (Central Business District), it sits in a neighborhood with building structures reminiscent of the early 1900s.
Singapore’s real estate value should not dip by more than 10 percent in 2009 and is expected to continue it its upward climb in the long-term. Government financial reserves ensure that ongoing and future infrastructural developments shall proceed unimpeded despite the problems that the world economy now faces.
Land resource is limited in Singapore. Even as the government owns about 90% of the land here and URA (Urban Redevelopment Authority) projects are undertaken at an optimal pace, the availability of land has always been a serious consideration. Land reclamation from the sea is hard pressed to keep up with Singapore’s dynamic rate of growth.
In an age of rapid development, a small country with limited land resource must reinvent itself. New land parcels for residential, commercial and industrial development have dwindled. Since the beginning of its nationhood, Singapore has bloomed into a metropolis at breakneck speed. But there is a limit to how much a tiny island republic can develop itself, especially where limited land area is concerned.This has spurred the government and private developers to look to other areas of growth. Vertical and underground expansion are now the emphasis. Residential apartment condominiums, flatted public housing and commercial office complexes continue to be built and redeveloped in this direction.
