Housing Bubble confirmed

A few days ago I wrote about Singapore's probable Housing Bubble.
A day later, State Media reported that HDB flats in Tampines were going for $880,000!
If that's not a bubble, I don't know what is.
It is almost like the housing board is challenging itself to the "cool" million dollar mark and they sure look like succeeding.

Minister Khaw Boon Wan then came up with a lame excuse that these were not HDB flats but DBSS (Design-Build-and-Sell Scheme) developments. DBSS flats are built and priced by private developers.
Am I missing out on something here? Public housing built by private developers?

DBSS are in all sense of the word public housing. There is no 24 hour security, exclusive swimming pools and other in-house facilities, enclosed perimeter and you can't keep cats in them.

For similar amounts, you can get beautiful private apartments in St Kilda with your own basement parking, just 6km off Melbourne city centre, Australia! That's even  nearer than Tampines to Orchard Road!!!
Check this out http://www.domain.com.au/Property/For-Sale/Apartment/VIC/Melbourne/?adid=2008997991

And this is Australia, a country with very well documented property bubble.
If Australians knew what we were paying for PUBLIC housing, they would all stop complaining immediately.

So you see my fellow Singaporeans, open your eyes to the world outside this tiny island.
The Straits Times will only have you believe the mythical Utopia that is Singapore.

According to official stats, the average annual household income in 2010 was around $84,000.
Assuming that the average buyer takes out a $300,000 loan, that puts our household debt/income ratio at a mind boggling 258%, way higher than the 130% in Australia.

It doesn't take rocket science to conclude that Singaporeans are being totally ripped off for a piece of 99 year lease (owned by the banks) and property that they can't even pass down to future generations.

You might ask "but what can we do?"
Actually, it is what you did not do. Tampines GRC residents still endorsed then National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan pretty convincingly.
I know of a couple living in the GRC who spoilt their votes even though they didn't like MBT just because the NSP team has no "track record"

Singaporeans will continue to pay dearly for their daft decisions. Pay and pay...

Lee Wei Ling steps up for Singaporeans

A couple of days ago, someone wrote to ST Forum accusing Singaporeans of becoming racist.
I don't think Singaporeans are racist.

I think Singaporeans are more cowards than racists.

Why do we not even make a noise when half the people in our office are foreigners? Because we are cowards.

Why do we accept the unbearable squeeze in our trains, buses, hospitals and malls due to the massive influx of immigrants without a single protest? Because we are cowards.

Why do we allow almost 2 millions new citizens and PRs to go without a single day of national service and not confront our MPs about this? Because we are cowards.

Kudos to LKY's daughter Lee Wei Ling for writing a letter to the ST Forum arguing that Singaporeans are not racist.
In her letter, she mentioned that nearly a third of doctors from the National Neuroscience Institute are Indian nationals!

For years, NUS, a government university, has refused to increase the intake of medical students.
This despite the desperate need to train more doctors to meet the burgeoning demand for healthcare caused by the sudden surge in foreign residents and a fast ageing population.
The PAP has also been positioning this tiny country as a medical tourist hub for rich foreigners and as many as 200-300k flood our hospitals annually.
Obviously,our former Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan must have been "caught off guard".
His solution, like all his counterparts in other Ministries, is to import more foreigners.
They even went to the extent of expanding the list of recognised foreign medical schools, including several from India.

What's worse, and I quote
"Foreign-trained specialists now need only to complete two years of supervision, compared to three previously, while for foreign-trained non-specialists, the duration has been halved - from six years to three."
It doesn't take an expert to conclude that we are playing with fire here and the chance that the quality of medical care will fall is very high.
If Singaporeans were less cowardly, they will take the Health Minister to task.

I for one would not trust an India trained doctor...not even for $8.




Two days ago, a PAP supporter Yap Yien Li wrote to the ST Forum accusing Singaporeans of becoming more ‘racist’ based on comments posted on a TR Facebook (started by fans) about a photo showing three expat Indians sitting in strange positions on a SMRT train.
An unlikely public figure came to the defence of Singaporeans – Lee Wei Ling, the only daugther of PAP paramount leader Lee Kuan Yew. In a letter published in the Straits Times Forum today, Lee who is also the director of the National Neuroscience Institute argued that Singaporeans are not racist.
Using herself as an example, Ms Lee wrote that two of her best friends are Indians and she has many friends who are of mixed Indian-Chinese heritage.
She then made a shocking relevation that 27 percent of doctors in NNI are Indians:
“At my hospital, the National Neuroscience Institute, we have a disproportionate percentage of doctors who are Indians – 27 per cent. There are many Indian doctors in other hospitals. By and large, race is not an issue for patients, except for a few among the less educated and the older among them.”
Ms Lee did not reveal the number of expat Indians among them, but MOH has been increasing the intake of Indian doctors with M.B.B.S from Indian universities to make up for the shortage of local doctors in Singapore.
Besides working in unpopular specialities in public hospitals like Neurology, many expat Indian doctors are also deployed to work in the polyclinics. One polyclinic in the central part of Singapore has 6 Indian doctors and only one Singapore doctor among its staff.

Do foreigners bring wages to people's pockets?

PAP defends its pro-immigration policy by claiming that foreigners help boost GDP growth and hence create jobs and grow wages.

Newly appointed National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan was quoted yesterday:
“We thought (taking foreigners in) was important to bring wages to people’s pockets, so that we can grow as fast as we can… (and) catch up with other countries. But now, we get the message that ‘we don’t want so much growth, that we are prepared to accept slower growth’”

The hard truth is ordinary Singaporeans are arguably not better off than before the immigration floodgates were opened.
Where is the empirical evidence that local wages, adjusted for inflation, have gone up substantially?
What is the official employment or unemployment rate of Singaporeans (not PRs)?
Are these jobs that were created "good" jobs?

According to the World Bank, Singapore's GDP per capita in 2009 was S$51,152, one of the highest in Asia.
However, using data from the Department of Statistics, you can roughly derive the median personal income is S$2,500 or S$30,000 annual.
The Reform Party's Kenneth Jeyaretnam, an economist by training, argued that as much as 45% of our GDP goes to foreigners.
So it is obvious that all this immigration-led GDP growth did not benefit Singaporeans as much as PAP through state media will claim.

Consequently, if the fallacy of foreigners bringing wages to people's pockets is exposed, then the PAP must stop importing them immediately.
In fact, their numbers must be reduced so as to ensure that the fruit of the country's growth is more equitably shared among Singaporeans, not foreigners, even if it means slower growth.

SAF scholar and National Solidarity Party's Tony Tan rightly suggested in his Choa Chu Kang GRC rally that the government should also be measured by other key performance indicators such as wage growth.
You can watch his speech here: