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Thursday, December 3, 2009

Singapore Considers Cooling Down The Property Market

By Billy Chen

The local economy began to become more favorable, Singapore real estate market finally showed signs of life again. Activities in the market has increased significantly, and economists are busy painting rosy picture on real estate transactions in the coming months. But beneath all the noise and optimism, Singapore government announced in November 2009 and calibrated that it intends to take measures to prevent the emergence of the real estate market.

Perhaps the memory of the sudden boom and a slump in the mid-nineties, is still fresh in the administration mind. And this time the government more determined to prevent such a sharp recording and possibly followed by equally rapid reversal of the market.

The Singapore government has quite a few options at their disposal and they are land supply strategy, credit tightening and taxation policies. We will go over each of these in more details.

Land Offer decision - This might be the most effective tool in the fight against the red hot demand for all types of real estate in Singapore. As the government to reduce the release of land for new developments, it will certainly slow down the offer for new projects launched in the market, so that unreasonable restrictions on real estate speculation.

Financing - Recently there have been speculations in the market that government may review the guidelines for financial facilities such as private housing loan.Market players and speculators would be hard hit if this amount is brought back to 80 percent of purchase price.Currently the maximum loan amount a lender can approve to a qualified private house buyer is 90 percent.

Taxation Policies - And when it is re-introduced to the market, it would certainly affect the market in a major way.As the government evaluates the options for its intervention in the real estate market, this one would likely feature somewhere in the plan.This capital gain tax has always been a convenient tool to in the past to combat excessive housing appreciation in Singapore.

Raise Property Tax - It could also be a focused approach targeting property investors and speculators. These folks may be subjected to a higher tax than the current 10 percent. In general those owner-occupiers in Singapore currently pay half of this amount.

Double Stamp Duty - Again, this might be for the slowdown in the market speculators as the stamp tax effective would be imposed if he decides to buy or sell a property.

So you have it, a short list of possible measures to combat the threat of overheating property market. However, it is still too early to say whether the government will exercise their options as the market is still directionless at the moment. - 23305

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