9/16/2007
Another boom town charlie story
The rental business is so good that all the property owners are rushing to raise their rentals by 2 or more times within a year. It is a situation where the lessee must grab a property and quickly sign on it for as long a term as possible at a fixed rate. If not, someone will sneak by and offer to pay more or the landlord will keep raising rentals every few months.
How many properties that I own? One 3 rm flat. But still good if it can fetch $2000 a month rental for my retirement. With private property prices and rentals shooting to the sky, some must filter down to the heartland.
This is the best thing that can happen to Singaporeans as practically everyone own a little flat, maybe not in prime district and cannot fetch $5k or $10k, but $2k is more than good enough if the annuity is going to pay $300.
Thank god that things are working out this way. All singaporeans can retire happily and with a nice little income. With $2000 pm, they can keep their annuity programme.
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12 comments:
exponentially with today's pace of rental rise and forthcoming population hike, you should have no problem getting $4,000 pm rental from your 3 room flat within the next 2 to 3 years. and singaporeans thinking of retirement can consider renting out their flats to ease the housing shortage by moving to malaysia under their generous my second home retirement scheme. the rental for a new 3 bedrooms apartment in the small towns starts from $400 per month, in ringgit. their restaurant food
are tastier, with fresher ingredients at less than one third the prices compared here. lastly their girls are much gentler in the original petite s size which our butches used to have in their pre-testorones filled meat and water dieting days.
Rental prices are still below what the market was commanding back in 1994-96.
Anyway, with S'pore's "open door" immigration policy inviting "the best in the world" to come here, and given that the supply of available accommodation is limited, one can understand why rents are rising.
Sure, there is the inflation component as well—fractional reserve banking and the credit bubble. However the influx of foreigners is clearly evident, and it looks to me that the trend will continue. Very few countries have such a LIBERAL immigration policy as S'pore. This is S'pore's strength, coupled with the ease of employment and low taxes.
To keep a low-tax environment, the state cannot be splurging on "social welfare" for the elderly.
The Buddhists conveniently remind us that life is impermanent, that sickness, old age and death are part of the human experience.
The free-wheeling capitalists remind us that we are beings who always act in our (perceived) positive self-interest, and that everyone makes choices for a "profit"— i.e. people choose and act because they think by taking an action will "improve" their experience. And thus, an economy is born....
One could definitely get "some idea about life" just from considering the opinions of the Buddhists and the Capitalists, and integrating them with personal observations.
In other words: there is NO EXCUSE for being a "failure" in S'pore. If you can't make it before you get sick and old, you must be either:
LAZY
or
STUPID
.... or both! ;-)
Sun Tzu said, no money sure die. which means should one fails to make it in singapore, he is just as good as dead meat.
Luckily now, if you have a HDB flat you can rent it out and at the same time proceed with HDB's leaseback scheme to milk cash to cover your meagre expenses in a small town within malaysia for example.
A smart financial advisor would consider this option of abitraging our boom town charlie to eke out the crumbs instead of kneeling down to beg like soo-hat-ye in our twilight years.
lazy or stupid. there are the lazy and there are the stupid. not sure of the former, but the latter could be inborn.
so how?
it is amazing that singaporeans with a 3 rm flat can become so desperate that they cannot look after themselves in old age.
can this be true? this is an uniquely singaporean phenomenon. with a couple of hundred thousand singapore dollars, a currency that is growing in value, and still pathetically poor and need to live on charity.
what nonsense is this?
** Reminder: money is a medium of exchange
> a currency that is growing in value <
You mean growing in value relative to other main currencies? But to the man-in-the-street this is practically meaningless.
To the man-in-the-street the local currency represents the medium by which he can exchange his productivity for other goods and services. So if he earns $10 per hour, a $20 pair of shoes would cost him (exchange for) 2 hours of his labour-productivity.
But the total supply of money is increasing, and it enters the economy at various "points", usually driving up prices of goods first before flowing onto wages (time lag).
Now our guy finds that the shoes are now $30. Nothing else has changed—his job and productivity are the same, the shoes are the same, only now they cost ONE HOUR of his labour-productivity more.
By increasing the money supply by monetary expansion and credit CHEATS ORDINARY PEOPLE out of the fruits of their labour—i.e. the salaries they earn in their jobs....and when the real economic crisis comes, those who are still lucky enough to have jobs.
I'll use Zimbabwe as a lving example of what happens when a society and country go "MATILAH".
To be sure, Mugabe is a brutal dictator, but put him aside just for a moment and look at what the Zimbabwe central bank is doing: printing large denomination currency ($200,000 note) in order to "solve" the inflation problem.
http://www.mises.org/story/2532
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0827/p01s08-woaf.html
http://blog.mises.org/archives/006924.asp
RESERVE BANK OF ZIMBABWE Website — i.e. Zimbabwe's Central Bank. Note the USD exchange rate, and the 3-digit interest rates.
Also the CPI, and inflation rates. Bear in mind these are govt figures, and in reality, the actual amounts could be WORSE.
======================
Zimbabwe is a great living and current example which can be used to illustrate certain TRUTHS (not opinions) about the political economy of any and every country.
It shows you how govt intervention over time leads to total collapse. Govt tinkering with the money supply, credit and the currency has bad consequences.
I will agree that Zimbabwe is an EXTREME case, however to the extent that every govt in the world interferes with the domestic economy, you are going to see similar negative effects—of course not to the extent of Zimbabwe.
For example, our own central bank MAS, has allowed the increase in money supply and credit growth... so we've seen:
1 stock index go up
2 real estate go up
3 more people borrowing
4 prices of goods increase
5 finally catching up are the wages (always the last to increase)
Keep and eye on Zimbabwe, and you'll learn alot about economics very quickly.
it is amazing that singaporeans with a 3 rm flat can become so desperate that they cannot look after themselves in old age.
can this be true? this is an uniquely singaporean phenomenon. with a couple of hundred thousand singapore dollars, a currency that is growing in value, and still pathetically poor and need to live on charity.
what nonsense is this?
September 17, 2007 5:56 PM
Wrong! this isn't a uniquely singaporean phenomenon, but a global thing. the only thing unique abt it is that we didnt follow the western path of humanitarian/ compassion based social security and welfare systems mostly becos it doesnt have good ROI and partly becos we didnt want crutch mentality.
the poor in the world or in the usa are the jobless and penniless. they don't have a roof over their head. or if they have, it is a worthless piece of hut.
in singapore, with a 3 rm flat that worths a few hundred thousand, or can fetch at least $1k in rent, and these people are still desperate. consider penniless and have to be forced to save more when they could easily trade their 3 rm flat for something.
somebody put the following on u-tube...I think it would have been better if they have left out the tasteless bs wordings/comments and just let the pictures do the talking....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-guxHFyz2A
It is possible a small number of the personalities could be foreigners
At least the pictures make 1 point, that our old folks are not as literate as the present generation.
Now this is not abt bashing old folks. And I dun mean this to be prejudical to anyone in particular, as we will all be there as oldies someday. Most of all, I am only referring to the majority oldies, as in by and large. Of cos not everyone is the same.
If you look at our old folks and elderly, you would wonder how can anyone think that most can still be productive in the workplace? even as toilet cleaners or canteen helpers, they are already such a sight.
The elderly in singapore today, are BY AND LARGE poor in hygiene and manners. they are not mentally nimble or efficient at work. most of all, they have bad attitudes and stubborn mindsets, pettiness and many deep seated complexes as in the i have been there done that and eat more salt therefore know better ego trip. It is the mental attitude that is most difficult to change.
So when we scale up the retirement age from 55 to 70 for example, it is impt that we do not take this as a rigid statistic. No matter how you like the old folks to rejoin or remain in the workforce, let's not forget that by and large, a person above 55 usually have many impairments be it physical, mental or spiritual, which the cold statistic couldnt distinguish.
In following the western model of guiding the elderly back to the workplace, let's not do it blindly. Beocs the quality of our elderly is not comparable to their western counterparts, to the extent that our young ones may be.
if singaporeans are to live till 100 or more, 70 will be the prime of their lives.
we are an exceptional specie. unthinking, squandering, no talent, but expect to earn millions and to live and work till at least 80.
what kind of jobs shall singaporeans do? wiping tables, sweeping floors?
something wrong with the formula?
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