News At A Glance

Car companies with premium brands like Porsche and BMW are starting to collaborate with luxury hotels to drive their brands. Such collaborations signal the strategy of luxury brands to align with like-minded, best-in-class brands to enhance the consumer experience.  Some hotel companies such as the Waldorf Astoria and Montage International, are partnering with car brands systemwide. Others such as Marriott and Four Seasons are leaving it to their individual hotels to find their own partners.  One example is Four Seasons that have selected to work with Mercedes-Benz. Aside from provid...

As China is Singapore’s largest export market, economists in Singapore are more concerned about China’s economy slowing down than the trade dispute between China and the United States. Singapore’s economy exceeded expectations to grow 3.3 per cent in 2018, which was close to the 3.6 per cent growth in 2017. It is expected to grow between 1.5 and 3.5 per cent in 2019.  Given China’s economic slowdown and a possible escalation of trade tensions, Singapore’s GDP growth is likely to moderate next year. In a December survey by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), private sector econom...

According to advance estimates from Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry, Singapore’s fourth-quarter GDP growth was 2.2% year-on-year, which is just slightly lower than the 2.3% achieves in Q3. The latest flash estimates mean that Singapore’s full-year GDP growth could still hit 3.3%. Singapore’s economic growth in Q4 was lifted by the manufacturing sector, with higher biomedical manufacturing and electronics production making up for declines in precision engineering output. The services sector slowed its growth to 1.9 per cent in Q4, down from 2.6% in the previous quarter. The grow...

Resale prices of private non-landed homes in Singapore declined in December after rising in November, accordingly to flash estimates. Singapore Condominiums and private apartment resale prices fell by 0.8% in December from the previous month of November, which recorded a modest increase of 0.3%. Overall, resale prices of non-landed private residential homes have come down by 1.5% from July 2018, when property cooling measures were introduced after prices reached a new peak. However, from December 2017, resale prices are still up 7.5%.  The cooling measures have also affected the nu...

Singapore’s Ministry of National Development announced the Land Sales Programme for the first half of 2019 on 6 December 2018. There will be five sites on the Confirmed List and nine on the Reserve List, yielding a total of 6,475 private residential units (including 910 executive condominium or EC units), 86,000 square metres gross floor area (GFA) of commercial space and 1,115 hotel rooms. Compared to the 8,040 housing units in the H2 2018 GLS Programme, there is an apparent 20% reduction based on the 6,475 units in the H1 2019 GLS supply. Similarly, there is also a cut back of nearly 30% in...

Developer GuocoLand has started work on its new Beach Road integrated development Guoco Midtown, which will comprise 770,000 sq ft of Grade A office space, 30,000 sq ft of retail and entertainment area and more than 200 residential units. It is set to be completed by early 2022. The former Beach Road Police Station, a conserved building, is a part of the development as well. Its full concept and design will be unveiled in the first half of 2019. Guoco Midtown will be served by the East-West, Downtown, North-South and Circle MRT lines and linked via an underground passage to Bugis MRT interc...

In a real estate forecast report jointly published by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the Urban Land Institute (ULI), Singapore’s real estate investment market has been ranked second in Asia Pacific region. The report is entitled Emerging Trends in Real Estate Asia Pacific 2019. In it, the top five Asia Pacific markets for investment and development in 2019 were listed as Melbourne, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo and Osaka.  The city state has risen to the second place from third last year mainly because of a large number of major office deals in the past 12 months. A lack of supply and...

Mr Lawrence Wong, Singapore’s Minister for National Development said that the cooling measures that hit the market in July are aimed at preventing property bubbles and stabilising the market so prices move in line with income growth and economic fundamentals. Mr Wong was speaking at a dinner marking the 59 th  anniversary of the Real Estate Developers’ Association of Singapore or Redas.  The Minister said that the Government cannot, and will not, take a hands-off attitude to the property cycle, and that there should not be any surprise when is Government intervention. He added that the Gove...

Where Is The Easiest Place to Do Business? On the latest World Bank “Doing Business” report, which gathers data on 11 areas of business regulation, New Zealand was ranked top out of 190 global economies in 2018 with an ease of doing business score of 86.59. It holds the shortest time to start a business at 0.5 days, placed first in ease of registering property, starting a business and getting credit, and came in second with regard to protecting minority investors.  Meanwhile, New Zealand also ranked first under the building quality control index alongside Luxembourg and United Arab E...

The Singapore Government has put in place new anti-money laundering and terrorism financing requirements for property developers that will require them to perform due diligence checks on their buyers and flag suspicious activity. The Developers (Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing) Bill amends both the Housing Developers (Control and Licensing) Act and the Sale of Commercial Properties Act, which regulate the sale of residential and commercial properties before they are completed by developers. Those convicted of not complying with the new provisions may be fined up to S$100,000...