Real Estate Offers: Round 3

Foreigners are eligible to take up a 99-year tenure at Waterview in Tampines.

Waterview is located near the rapidly expanding Changi Business Park.

Here are a few more real estate offers that have been shoved into the Passengers' mailbox in the past few weeks.  Advertisers pay Singapore Post to have postmen distribute these flyers to mailboxes in a particular neighborhood or even throughout the island.  Again, none of these arrive with our address printed on them, and they show little knowledge of whether we are eligible to buy property in Singapore.  I decided to cull the pile of offers down to a trio located in the far east of Singapore near Changi Airport.

Flamingo Valley is about one MRT stop closer to Singapore's Central Business District (CBD) than Waterview.

Builders Frasers Centrepoint Homes advertises their use of the Japanese designer Miyake Masaki Associates.

The Passengers are not eligible to purchase within the Flamingo Valley development because we are not Singaporean citizens nor have we applied to become Permanent Residents, colloquial called PR. Only SCs and PRs are allowed to buy freehold properties or are eligible for the socialized flats built by the Housing Development Board (HDB).  Flamingo Valley is well placed near the enjoyable recreations of East Coast Park with its ocean views and trails for cyclists and skaters. There is also the delicious East Coast Lagoon Food Village.

Move your fabulous family-of-four to NV Residences.

NV Residences is on the other side of eastern Singapore, near Serangoon Harbour rather than East Coast Park. I don't have anything profound to say about its advertised facilities, but the models superimposed against an artist's impression of the impending development seem exceptionally fabulous.

Real Estate Offers: Round 2

Oasis at Elias "Resort Homes" will be completed 31 December 2015.

A few weeks ago I posted photographs of urgent and unbelievable buying opportunities that have been added to the Passengers' mailbox.  Another batch arrived last week. Don't delay; act now on these once-in-a-lifetime deals.

The above flyer (front & back) details an enticing property on the northeast coast of Singapore, quite far from the city center.  That's okay because Oasis @ Elias will be like having your home in a resort community "with the beach and nature parks nearby."  The advertised asking prices start at S$640/sq ft for a 99-year leasehold from March 2008.  That means S$700,000 (about USD 530,000/GBP 334,000) for a two-bedroom flat surrounded by existing HDB towers.  The development will not be ready until 31 December 2015; only 91 years left to enjoy your purchase.

Far East Organization wanted us to come to brunch at The Greenwich Sales Gallery

The Greenwich is advertising phase two of their low-rise condominium project in Seletar in the northern interior of Singapore.  The development by local heavyweights Far East Organization includes a nearby retail space called Greenwich V, "planned to be a chic, modern and green 'village' that will capture the vibrancy of its namesake in New York."  Perhaps they should be reminded that homosexuality remains illegal in Singapore.  FEO claims phase one "was fully sold within a few days."  They also list three-bedroom units at S$1.35 million (USD 1.02m/GBP 664,500) or S$1,174/sq ft.  Hurry up because one-bedroom units for only S4825,000 should be ready by 31 December 2018 with 90 years remaining on the leasehold.

Come to the St Regis hotel this weekend for a "Singapore Exclusive Exhibition" of Battersea Reach.

Finally, a seemingly much more affordable London property in a new south-of-the-Thames developmen called Battersea Reach on the front and Spinnaker House on the back.  None of those details matter because units start at only GBP 299,995 (SGD 628,000/USD 476,000) for a 999-year lease.  Jone Lang LaSalle do not give a completion date, but I'm sure all that information will be available to buyer who come to the St Regis hotel this weekend to buy sight unseen a pied a terre in London.

Real Estate Offers

Look, an invitation to a "VVIP Private Preview" from Jones Lang LaSalle.  I might have felt we were part of an exclusive set if the advert actually included our name or address.  Nevertheless "Bring along this mailer to enjoy your early-bird promotion."

A couple months ago I wrote about the fevered sport of real estate here in Singapore.  Loads of people want to invest in property, and even government-built flats are selling for record amounts.  Consequently, estate agents are not shy about soliciting potential buyers.  One day last week I opened the mail box to discover three flyers advertising new buying opportunities.  These do not come with names or even addresses; they are as anonymous as coupons for pizza delivery.  Sadly none offered up off-plan condominiums in Mongolia.

The Far East Organization is building Miro, and it is practically around the corner.  This advert opens to invite us to a Saturday brunch at the Miro Sales Gallery.  FEO also does not indicate they know our names.  1,250 square-foot units start at S$2.8 million (USD 2.04 million/GBP 1.33 million).

Savills hopes we will invest in a London, buy-to-let with "estimated rental yields of up to 5.5%."  Prices begin at GBP 305,000 so we should bring ourselves to their exhibition at the Hilton Singapore on Orchard Road.

Integrated Resort 1 | Resorts World Sentosa

Resorts World Sentosa (called RWS around here because Singaporeans love acronyms) with the larger island of Sinapore in the background. All images of RWS from Slate's slideshow.

While the Passengers nervously watched USA and England keep alive their respective, overly optimistic quests for World Cup glory, Singapore welcomed the opening of its second den of iniquity integrated resort: Marina Bay Sands.  Some work remains to be done on the structure, especially the much anticipated Skypark atop the 55-story towers.  But this post piggybacks on an architectural write-up of the city-state's first integrated resort in Slate: Resorts World Sentosa. The project opened in time for the Chinese New Year in February and includes 1,740 hotel rooms spread over six locations, a maritime museum, convention and conference facilities, and loads of retail space, but these mostly serve as a fig leaf for the cash cow super casino.

The gaming floor at RWS.

Traditionally the ruling classes party of Singapore have has looked down on gaming, but Macau is making money hand over fist from newly wealthy Chinese not allowed to gamble at home.  So Singapore decided to patronize all the punters who might patronize a casino  Only two casinos have been built and only as a part of larger euphemistically named integrated resorts.  The first project was located on Sentosa a small island to the south, even easier to control and far from most Singaporeans . Sentosa visitors pay S$3 to set foot on the island, and Singapore citizens must pay a S$100 (about 72 USD) admission to lose money inside the casino.  The gaming floor itself has been buried underground precisely to keep it away from public view.  Families should concentrate their excitement on the brand-name excitement above ground, a shiny new Universal Studios attraction.  Those Singaporeans unable to control their losses can be added to a blacklist and refused entry to the casino.

Slate's architectural critic Witold Rybczynski has a fair amount of praise for the 121-acre project designed by postmodern pioneers Michael Graves and Associates.  The principal and his firm have carried out something of a gesamtkunstwerk, an impressive total design effort extending from the hotel towers down to the flatware and the lamps in each hotel room.  This seems well within the capabilities of a firm that makes paper-towel holders for the discount retailer Target, but it hasn't been popular practice since the early twentieth century.

Micheal Graves Design Automatic Drip Coffeeemaker, available from Target.

The high-end Cockfords hotel at RWS.

"Asians don't want to borrow from Western culture.  They want their own architecture.  Although they don't necessarily know what that is," says the condescending American Michael Graves.  Rybczynsky claims the Cockfords hotel was designed without the flourishes of Classicism that punctuate much of the architect's work.  This seems accurate if one ignores the green cupolas and refuses to see green rim encircling the top of the inhabitable floor as an overhanging cornice.  The design does bother to subtract any capitals from the extended pilasters that emerge to support the ring of oversized pedestals.  Also the name Cockfords does not necessarily suggest a Southeast Asian location.

Much of my hesitation to agree with Rybczynski stems from my dislike of the whimsical stunts that characterize Graves.  His play with classical devices and bold colors seems increasingly naff and bears some responsibility for some of the worst excesses of corporate architecture in the last thirty years.  However, I concede that the design probably does match the brief set forth by the patrons. This was not the first resort executed by Graves; he did Walt Disney World Swan, and his selection was probably a safe choice for Singapore.  Indeed the firm specializes in architectural fantasies so  it does not surprise that they built the blinders required to keep a supercasino super-clean.

Strategic Default Meme

Stuyvestant Town and Peter Cooper Village: another investment underwater.  Photos from the NY Times.

Here's the idea.  The American housing market has become so bad that many indebted homeowners, perhaps up to ten percent of all mortgage holders, are now shouldering a repayment schedule so onerous that they would be better off returning the keys to the bank and finding their family a nicer rental someplace else. If enough people wake up to this reality and act accordingly the feeble property market could enter another round of unrestrained blood letting. 

The theory has been bubbling away in a number of news sources.  I first read about it before Christmas thanks to Daniel Gross at Slate/The Big Money.  He cited the Wall Street Journal's forecasts that in 2009 one million Americans will stop making payments on properties that they could actually afford with a bit more budgeting or additional income.  Then Nudge author Richard M. Thaler opined on these same homeowners in the New York Times, exploring what behavioral norms prevented people from making a rational business decision not to throw good money after bad.  The Planet Money podcast from NPR chimed in on the matter last week, chatting with a property lawyer in Arizona.  When the idea finally landed in the business section of the New York Times yesterday, the meme was certainly off and running fast.