Still Rising

It’s finally here! The fabled $1 million mark! News broke that a Housing and Development Board (HDB) executive maisonette in Bishan had been sold for $980,000. This sale is another example of the failure of the government’s cooling measures.

Already, the Singapore government is in damaged control mode with National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan coming out to say “more important is the larger picture” and ask that Singaporeans “not to be traumatized”. Alas, the problem is that the larger picture for the Singapore government is not good.

Simply put, despite their best efforts to talk the price down, concrete actions by the government have been slow in coming and housing prices in Singapore have gone up because of it. Data from the Singapore Real Estate Exchange shown that HBD housing prices have gone up 1.8% in the past 2 months. And that’s in the midst of the Singapore government’s so-called cooling measures!

When faced with these figures, Minister Khaw could only say that he’s not too worried about the month-to-month fluctuation and that’s things are better now than a year ago. Well, that may be true but a 1.8% increase is still a 1.8% increase!

When the cooling measures were first announced, Singaporeans were expecting the prices to go down. Singaporeans want the prices to go down. Right now it’s going the direct opposite direction! If that’s not failure, I don’t know what is.