The median value of existing US single-family home sales in metropolitan areas fell 7.7 per cent in the first quarter from a year ago, the National Association of Realtors said on Tuesday.

The quarterly survey of metro region prices also showed that median prices in 100 of 149 metro areas fell in the first quarter of 2008.

Total state existing-home sales, including single-family and condominiums, fell 22.2 per cent from the first quarter of 2007, the report showed.

A proportionately larger slowdown in home sales from a year ago in high-cost markets is continuing to drag down the aggregate national median price, the Realtors’ association said.

In the first quarter, the median existing single-family home stood at US$196,300, down from the US$212,600 median for the first quarter of 2007, the group said.

In the first quarter, 48 out of 149 metropolitan statistical areas showed higher median existing single-family home prices from a year earlier, 100 had price declines and one was unchanged.

‘These are highly unusual results because there were very few jumbo loan originations in the latest quarter, so sales are much slower in high-cost areas,’ Lawrence Yun, the association’s chief economist, said in a statement.

‘Neighbourhoods with little sub-prime (mortgage) exposure are holding on very well, while prices have fallen in neighbourhoods with a wide prevalence of sub-prime loans because more foreclosed properties are being sold at discounted prices,’ he said.

The National Association of Realtors reports on the pace of existing homes sales in the United States on a monthly basis and in the metropolitan regions on a quarterly basis. — REUTERS

Source : Business Times - 13 May 2008

Scandal over falsified engineering data at root of housing problem

When a regulatory hitch hit Japan’s housing sector last year, Tokyo assumed the crunch would be short-lived. But almost a year later, a growing backlog of unsold apartments threatens to dent already feeble economic growth.

Rather than making a modest positive contribution to overall growth as the government had hoped, housing is now likely to offer little or no help, with one pessimist suggesting it could knock a full percentage point off growth this year.

‘Developers are running their businesses on a hand-to-mouth basis. We cannot sit back on condominiums that are not selling,’ said Hiroyuki Ito of developer Azel Corporation.

At the root of Japan’s housing debacle is not loose lending or the popping of a price bubble, as in the US, but a scandal over falsified engineering data for new apartment buildings that prompted an overhaul of regulations.

The new rules, in force since last June, require additional checks of structural calculations for new buildings and have extended a checking period, delaying construction approvals by several months.

Furthermore, bureaucrats had failed to get the guidelines on the new rules ready in time, keeping the market in a limbo for two months. As a result, housing starts in the second half of last year plunged 30 per cent from the same period of 2006, shaving 0.4 per centage points of overall economic growth in 2007.

The downturn has knocked down real estate stocks, such as Mitsui Fudosan and Mitsubishi Estate, and is blamed for the bankruptcy of more than 60 smaller firms and lost jobs of hundreds of workers, from plumbers to printers.

The government has bet on a recovery once builders got used to the new rules, predicting that housing investment would rise 9 per cent over the next year after a 12.7 per cent plunge in the year to March, adding 0.3 percentage point to overall economic growth.

But just as the effect of the new regulations began tapering off, so did demand, and developers found it hard to sell completed apartments to increasingly tight-fisted consumers, worried by stagnant wages and worsening business prospects.

The growing backlog of unsold homes in turn hit new construction and the latest available data from March showed that housing starts plunged 15.6 per cent from a year earlier.

Housing investment accounts for only about 3 per cent of the economy, says Takashi Ishizawa, chief real estate analyst at Mizuho Securities Co. But he warns that the slump’s ripple effect on sectors ranging from interior decorators to makers of cars and furniture could cut total investment by up to five trillion yen (S$66 billion) - about one per cent of the economy - in the year to March 2009.

‘Housing starts will not rebound much this year because we cannot expect an improvement in condominium sales,’ he said.

Sales of new apartments fell to a 14- year low in Tokyo and neighbouring prefectures in the year to March, while average prices hit a 15-year high, according to the Real Estate Economic Institute, a property market research firm.

The fate of a condominium block in Higashimurayama in Western Tokyo seems to justify Mr Ishi-zawa’s pessimism. Last year, several such apartments were sold ahead of completion. Now prices are being cut as the builders pack up.

‘We had sold only half the 249 blocks that went on sale last year,’ said Mikiko Yoshida of developer Nippon Steel City Produce Inc. ‘We have cut the prices by around 20 per cent to boost sales.’

The central bank, which has already dropped its interest rate tightening bias in the face of the global credit crunch and economic slowdown, has also become sceptical about the health of the Japanese housing sector. It said issues such as a rising inventory of unsold condominiums and stalling investment in rental homes by real estate funds facing a less favourable financial environment would allow only a modest recovery.

Analysts expect a slightly positive contribution from housing investment to first quarter economic growth, seen at 0.6 per cent, but some have cut their longer-term outlooks.

Morgan Stanley last week cut its forecast for housing investment to a fall of 0.5 per cent for the year to March 2009, from a previous prediction of 3 per cent growth.

‘The impact of the change that has caused delays in work on new buildings may run its course,’ said Takehiro Sato, chief economist at Morgan Stanley. ‘But lack of consumer demand will weigh on housing investment.’

Today’s weakness contrasts with a period a few years ago when rising interest rates and higher home prices in Tokyo had real estate agents pushing people to buy while they could.

For developers, the squeeze is likely to get worse before it gets better as higher costs of oil, steel and other raw materials, and rising land prices in urban areas make it harder to cut prices aggressively and clear out inventories. But industry officials say consumers are unlikely to budge and will hold out for substantial price cuts, delaying a much-anticipated recovery. — Reuters

Source : Business Times - 13 May 2008

New Zealand house sales fell to their lowest level in 16 years in April, the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) said yesterday.

Sales by Real Estate Institute members fell to 4,464 houses in the month, a fall of 13 per cent on March. The figure was 45.5 per cent lower than a year earlier.

It was the lowest monthly sales total since January 1992, when 4,427 properties were sold, REINZ said.

‘April shows that the loss of confidence in the housing market is deeper than we had anticipated,’ national president Murray Cleland said in a statement.

The REINZ national median house price fell 1.1 per cent to NZ$345,000 (S$363,195) from the month before, to end 1.1 per cent lower than a year earlier.

Business and consumer confidence has eroded sharply over the past two months in the face of high interest rates and reduced activity, leading some commentators to talk of the economy going into recession.

The median number of days taken to sell a house was 44 from 40 in March and 28 days a year ago.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand, which has kept its official cash rate at a record 8.25 since July last year, has noted the slowing housing market.

Last week, it said if credit conditions become too tight because of a re-emergence of financial market turmoil, the economic and housing slowdown could be exacerbated.

The latest Reuters poll has 12 of the 16 economists surveyed expecting rate cuts to begin by September this year.

Prices fell in five of the REINZ’s 12 regions and rose in seven.

‘About the only glimmer of hope was the fact that a number of regions saw their median prices recover, suggesting that the March figures were something of an aberration. However, the trend overall is for declining house values,’ Mr Cleland said.

Prices in the Auckland region, the country’s biggest population and commercial centre, rose 3 per cent, although sales tumbled 16.7 per cent. Prices in the capital Wellington slipped 8.5 per cent. — Reuters

Source : Business Times - 13 May 2008

No hard evidence solvent borrowers are voluntarily defaulting on their loans

Bankers and housing market analysts are warning of a chilling new trend in the mortgage world: homeowners voluntarily defaulting on their loans even though they can actually afford to make the payments.

It’s known colloquially as ‘walking away’, or more jocularly as ‘jingle mail’, from the sound your house keys supposedly make when you mail them back to your bank.

It’s a way of saying that Americans are beginning to apply a cold financial calculation to home ownership: When a home’s value has fallen below what is owed on its mortgage, they feel it makes no sense to keep up the payments.

‘That is going on, clearly, and there’s lots of evidence of that in the market,’ Don Truslow, senior executive vice-president of Wachovia Bank, said in a conference call with investors last month.

A few weeks earlier, US Treasury Secretary Henry M Paulson had waggled a stern finger at homeowners contemplating walking away from affordable mortgages: Do that, and you’re no better than a ’speculator’, he said.

Elsewhere, media reports and Internet postings are rife with stories about the trend and a supposed sea change in American attitudes toward debt. But there’s a major problem with all this talk about the phenomenon of solvent homeowners ‘walking away’: There doesn’t appear to be any hard evidence that it’s happening.

When pressed for the number of borrowers who could afford their mortgage payments, major banks and lender groups could not produce figures. Nor could the Mortgage Bankers Association, the leading trade group for housing lenders.

Wachovia’s Mr Truslow acknowledged during the bank’s conference call on April 14 that walkaways were ‘hard to quantify’. A bank spokesman said last week that, ‘We have heard anecdotally that people are walking away’, but his bank had no hard numbers.

Bank of America (BOA) chairman and chief executive Kenneth Lewis, whose company is acquiring mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp, decried ‘a change in social attitudes toward default’ in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in December.

In response to questions from the Los Angeles Times, BOA spokesman Terry Francisco said the bank had seen indications that some homeowners were taking pains to keep their credit card accounts current at the expense of their mortgage balances, often by raiding their home equity lines to pay their cards, a reversal of traditional customer priorities. But he said the bank did not have ‘firm figures’ on how many homeowners were unnecessarily defaulting on their mortgages.

Some people suggest that it might be impossible to find out. ‘How would you know what someone’s true ability to pay would be?’ asked Todd Sinai, an associate professor of real estate at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. ‘I’m not sure you could even come up with a definition.’

At Fannie Mae, the government-chartered company that owns or guarantees billions of dollars in home mortgages, senior vice-president Marianne Sullivan conceded that there was growing ‘folklore’ about residential walkaways but said that the phenomenon probably was connected more to investors than people who live in their homes, or ‘owner-occupants’. ‘The vast majority of borrowers we find have been acting in good faith,’ she said. ‘If they get behind, they are interested in working with their lender.’

Bruce Marks, CEO of Neighbourhood Assistance Corp, a Boston-based non-profit agency that helps strapped homeowners, says flat out that the notion that legions of borrowers are simply deciding not to pay is an ‘urban myth’ that largely reflects the mortgage industry’s desire to blame homeowners, rather than their lenders, for the surge in problem loans.

Mr Marks and others assert that mortgage bankers have an incentive to blame the rise in delinquencies and foreclosures on borrowers skipping out on obligations they’re financially able to meet, because that diverts attention from the lenders’ own role in the mortgage crisis.

‘So many of the loans made were irresponsible - for the borrowers and for the lenders,’ said Kurt Eggert, an expert on predatory lending at Chapman University Law School in Orange County, California. ‘Lenders have an interest in painting themselves as responsible, even caring entities. They want to cast blame for the sub-prime meltdown as much as possible on their borrowers.’

It is generally agreed that the real culprit in the meltdown is the proliferation of exotic mortgages that hit borrowers - many with paltry down payments and therefore almost no equity in the home - with huge payment shocks in the early years of the loan. The new payments are often raised to levels that the borrowers never could have afforded but expected to escape via a refinancing or a sale of the house into a rising market.

When home values fell instead, their exit strategy evaporated. But that does not necessarily mean that they can afford to keep paying.

Experts say some supposed owner-occupants who are ‘walking away’ might be speculators in disguise: buyers who acquired properties as investments to resell for a fast profit. Investors, unlike genuine homeowners, will treat their purchases strictly as economic transactions; their decisions to abandon payments shouldn’t be seen as a sign that American homeowners no longer feel obligated to pay their debts, says Stuart Gabriel, director of the Ziman Center for Real Estate at the University of California, Los Angeles’s Anderson School of Management.

‘A number of (foreclosed) properties are actually investor-owned, not owner-occupied, and we have to be careful that we’re not attributing to homeowners the actions of investors,’ Mr Gabriel said.

Prof Sinai of the Wharton school points out that homeowners have long been known to do whatever it takes to avoid foreclosure - they’re concerned with maintaining their credit ratings and building equity in their homes, and are typically invested not only in their property but in their communities.

Historically, owner-occupants didn’t default on their mortgages except in a handful of extraordinary situations, such as death, divorce, illness or job loss. Their predictable behaviour helped keep mortgage rates low.

‘If it’s correct that there’s a change in behaviour, all the default and credit risk models will have to be recalibrated,’ Mr Gabriel said. But he added: ‘I have not seen one shred of data that conclusively or systematically speaks to that point.’ - LAT-WP

Source : Business Times - 13 May 2008

CAPITALA, an Abu Dhabi-based real estate company, yesterday launched its maiden project - an integrated development combining residential, leisure, sports and retail.

Capitala is a joint venture firm by CapitaLand - which owns 49 per cent - and Mubadala, which owns the remaining 51 per cent. The company aims to design, build, manage and maintain integrated communities in Abu Dhabi. Its maiden project, Arzanah, is located on a 1.4 million square metre site in the Grand Mosque District, minutes away from Abu Dhabi city centre, the Abu Dhabi International Exhibition Centre and the central business district.

The development boasts features such as gardens, a canal, a beach, and facilities such as a club, a spa, a school and extensive walking and cycling trails. Shopping can also be done in an open-air climate controlled environment. Residents and visitors have easy access to the Zayed Stadium, and other sports facilities such as the Abu Dhabi International Tennis Complex, the 40-lane international standard Khalifa International Bowling Centre, the Abu Dhabi Ice Rink and a state-of-the-art aquatic centre.

Capitala estimates that there will be 9,000 residences with about 18,000 residents and over two million people will visit the development annually. The first phase of the development will be completed in 2011.

‘Today, both Capitala and its maiden project Arzanah are fundamental building blocks of our long term real estate strategy - one that is focused on regenerating the community and constructing architecturally outstanding and sustainable properties that will help create secure investments for property owners and provide a quality standard of living for the community of Abu Dhabi,’ said Waleed Al Mokarrab Al Muhairi, chief operating officer of Mubadala. He added that Mubadala’s Real Estate & Hospitality division is making investments in the real estate sector to address the growing need for high quality residential real estate and related services in Abu Dhabi.

Mr Heang Fine Wong, CEO of CapitaLand GCC Holdings Pte Ltd and CapitaLand ILEC Pte Ltd, said: ‘Our development will fit well with the intent of Plan Abu Dhabi 2030 which maps out a strategy for the future of the city as an environmentally, socially and economically sustainable community.’

Source : Business Times - 13 May 2008

Asia Food & Properties has returned to the black in its fiscal first quarter.

The firm reported a profit of S$45 million, overturning a loss of S$2.7 million in the year-ago period.

Revenue rose 9.5 percent to S$195 million, mainly from its China property business and its food operations.

Asia Food & Properties said the outlook for the commercial and hotel sector of the China property business remains competitive, despite positive foreign investment interest and buoyant business activities.

Increasing corporate demand is expected to bolster the Grade A office market.

But it expects demand in the residential market to be affected by government policies on residential market in China.

As for its food business, the company said its priority is to focus on higher margin products and increasing its sales volume to stay competitive in China.

Meanwhile, its palm oil unit Golden Agri-Resources has posted sterling results for the first quarter.

Net profit doubled on-year in the first quarter to US$443 million, thanks to higher crude palm oil (CPO) production and a surge in CPO market prices of close to 100 percent.

Revenue was also a record US$747 million, up 172 percent on-year. - CNA/ms

Source : Channel NewsAsia - 12 May 2008

Asia Food & Properties (AFP) on Monday reported a net profit of $45.44 million for the first quarter ended March 31, 2008, compared to a net loss of $2.8 million a year ago.

Revenue rose 9.5 per cent to $195 million, of which $147.5 million (75.6 per cent) was from the property business and the remaining $47.5 million (24.4 per cent) was from the food business.

AFP said the group’s higher sales was mainly attributable to the food and property business in China.

Going forward, AFP warned that its performance would continue to be affected by such factors as economic growth, interest rates movement, government policies on the property sector, rising material costs, money supply and foreign exchange movement. — BT Newsroom

Source : Business Times - 12 May 2008

TWO subsidiaries of Singapore-listed Gallant Venture Ltd announced on Friday the sale of S$45 million worth of land at Bintan’s new Lagoi Bay development.

PT Bintan Resorts Cakrawals and PT Buana Megawisatama indicated they had sold close to 300,000 square metres at Lagoi Bay on Bintan’s northern coast for various resort, hotel, residential and retail projects. The buyers included property developers as well as resort owners, including niche hotel chain Alila Hotels and Resorts, which plans to open a luxury boutique hotel at Lagoi Bay.

The palm-fringed bay with its long stretches of silver-sand beaches is billed as Asia’s first master-planned beach resort, spread across 1,300 ha. On offer for sale within the development are seven prime beachfront resort sites and over 400 ha of residential sites. Also planned are retail malls, a golf course, a marina and a retirement village.

Bintan, part of Indonesia’s Riau islands, lies 45km south-west of Singapore. It contains an industrial park but has been increasingly positioning itself as a leisure destination. It has witnessed an increase in visitor arrivals from 113,494 in 1996 to 333,749 last year - although growth has remained flat since 2001. About one third of visitors last year were from Singapore, while more than 20 per cent came from Korea and Japan.

‘We envisage one million visitors to Bintan annually by 2012,’ said Gallant’s CEO Eugene Park. He added that Gallant will be investing S$500 million in the island over the next four years, including on roads, power, water and telecom facilities, a new airport to attract short-haul traffic and faster ferries from Singapore - which would cut down travel time to around 40 minutes from one hour at present.

‘We want to develop Bintan as an alternative to Bali and Phuket as a destination of choice for the beach tourist,’ he said.

Gallant’s major shareholders include Indonesia’s Salim group, and Singapore’s Sembcorp Industries, as well as Ascendas.

At a briefing prior to the ground-breaking ceremony of Lagoi Bay, the Regent of Bintan, H. Ansar Ahmad, said the Bintan regency ‘has issued a special regulation for all land in Bintan Resorts and Bintan Industrial Park to be designated as a vital area of the region and be accorded special protection and privileges which prohibit all forms of demonstrations or protests’.

He added that the Regency ‘has also established a one-stop service for all investment licensing and processing, thus doing away with the hassle of having to go to multiple agencies’.

With the establishment of this service, the time needed to obtain all licences will be reduced to only 33 days, he said - about the same as in Malaysia, China, Thailand and Vietnam.

The formal groundbreaking ceremony at Lagoi Bay was performed on Friday night by Riau Islands Governor Ismeth Abdullah.

Source : Business Times - 12 May 2008

Every fortnight, Mr Shahul Hameed, 50, packs his wife and three daughters into the car and drives across the Causeway.

The family’s retreat is a 2,400 sq ft, two-storey semi-detached house in Gelang Patah, Johor. It is part of a gated community called Leisure Farm Resort Residences, located 30 minutes from Singapore.

Their home away from home is where they can indulge in fishing, cycling and take the occasional boat trip to the nearby island of Tioman.

Mr Shahul, a financial planner with NTUC Income, bought the Balinese-style property, which features dark wood finishes and floor-to-ceiling glass windows, about four years ago for RM537,000.

In Singapore, he owns a 1,600 sq ft condominium apartment in Sims Avenue, which cost him $732,000.

He says: ‘When you have money just sitting in your bank, you tend to spend it. So I thought why not buy a second home nearby?’

The family has benefited from the regular weekend getaways, he claims. Since buying the house, he has consistently exceeded sales targets at work. His three daughters, whose ages range between five and 19, have performed better in their studies.

He adds: ‘I believe a change of environment now and then helps you lead your life in Singapore better.’

Owning a holiday home overseas may no longer be a luxury afforded only by Singapore’s super-rich, as more regular folk like Mr Shahul invest in overseas properties too.

Others discovered by LifeStyle include a teacher, an owner of a small business and a marketing consultant, though not all agreed to be interviewed.

Retired teacher Natahar Bava, 62, and his family own a semi-detached house at Sunset Way. But they spend holidays at their second home at the Kennedy Bay Resort in Perth, where their beach-facing, two-storey villa boasts an unobstructed view of the Indian Ocean.

Mr Bava, who has three daughters aged between 20 and 37, bought the house in 1997 for A$400,000 for his second daughter when she enrolled at a university there.

But the girl chose to live in the university hostel instead, so the property became the family’s holiday accommodation.

They visit as often as three times a year to rejuvenate, often paddling out to sea in a pair of kayaks they own.

‘It was a good turn of events that fulfilled an original dream I had,’ says Mr Bava. In 1982, he had taken a group of students to Perth on a school field trip. Smitten by the tranquillity of the place, he swore to one day own a home there.

‘WA (which stands for Western Australia, the territory Perth is located in) also means ‘wait a while’,’ he says in reference to the slower pace of life there.

Being an ‘average Singapore citizen’, he was only able to afford a place 15 years later, he adds.

There are no exact figures to the trend, but in general, developers and property companies who market overseas projects here point to a growing interest among Singaporeans to put their money in homes offshore.

At Colliers International, which has launched recent projects in places like Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand and Thailand, business in the overseas sector grew four to five times from 2004 to 2007, says its associate director of international projects Michael Tan.

Executive director of DTZ South-east Asia, Mr Heng Hua Thong, adds that the number of overseas property launches in Singapore has also increased.

‘At least every month you have one project launched in Singapore. That’s definitely more compared to one or two years ago,’ he says.

With the local property market only just settling after a spate of sky-high property prices, it makes sense for some to look elsewhere where risks are not so great, says managing director of Orange Tee Global Properties Dave Loo.

The agency markets developments in places like Malaysia, Thailand, Australia and the United Arab Emirates.

Thailand’s market, for instance, has undergone several tax revisions recently to entice foreign investors. An apartment in a place like Phuket can go for as low as $100,000, adds Mr Loo.

While it is still more common for Singaporeans to buy for investment, he estimates that between 30 and 35 per cent of his customers buy properties to use as holiday homes or for their children who are studying overseas.

For the former purpose, resort destinations like Phuket or Bali are naturally more popular than city locales, he adds.

Prominent National University of Singapore lecturer K. K. Seet, for instance, bought a 2,000 sq ft, Thai-Balinese house in Pattaya for $300,000 in September 2006.

Says the 40-something bachelor: ‘I’ve always wanted a house near the sea, which would be impossible to achieve in Singapore, unless one is prepared to fork out millions for Sentosa Cove.’

He bought the house somewhat unexpectedly while on holiday in Pattaya, and now visits about three to four times a year.

Dr Seet says he was attracted to the city’s contrasting flavours, such as the sight of a high school band performing on a pedestrian boulevard, ‘while go-go girls were twirling around poles in a nearby bar even as busloads of tourists were tucking into a seafood buffet in an adjoining restaurant’.

‘It’s this heady mixture where everything is ‘live and let live’ that is fascinating,’ he adds.

Industry players like Mr Peter Thng, executive director of Reapfield Property Consultants, agree that the demographics of overseas home buyers have diversified to include middle-income earners. The agency has sold properties in Australia, New Zealand, Britain and Malaysia.

He says: ‘This is not surprising given the affluence of the society and also the fact that many have either lived, studied or worked overseas.’

In the 1990s, middle-aged businessmen formed his main group of customers. Today, apart from professionals, ‘civil servants such as teachers and military personnel form the bulk of our client base’, he says.

For Singaporeans scouting for holiday homes, proximity is perhaps the biggest selling point. Properties in the region, such as Malaysia, Thailand and Australia are favoured, though countries like Malaysia - which offer advantageous exchange rates - have extra appeal.

In a recent survey carried out by Malaysia’s Real Estate and Housing Developers Association, Singapore was identified as its top foreign market. Malaysia has a My Second Home programme, which allows foreigners with a certain amount of capital to buy houses there.

At Johor’s Leisure Farm development, 49 per cent of buyers are Singaporeans or expats based here, says its sales manager Peter Lim. ‘Their profiles include professionals, businessmen, people looking for a shortcut to their dream home.’

Indeed, with holiday homes becoming a prized asset, few owners are willing to rent out their place to vacationers to cover costs. Says Dr Seet: ‘I’m not interested. What if they wreck the place?’

Still, those interviewed by LifeStyle say the returns on their investments have been far from poor. Mr Bava, for instance, reckons his Perth abode is now worth more than twice the A$400,000 he paid.

Mr Shahul is even planning to buy a third home at Leisure Farm, a bungalow 21/2 times the size of his current semi-detached house.

If he cannot find a suitable buyer for his existing Johor property, he will still keep it, ‘as a present for my children’, he says with a smile.

‘When you have money just sitting in your bank, you tend to spend it. So I thought why not buy a second home nearby? I believe a change of environment now and then will help you lead your life in Singapore better.’ - SHAHUL HAMEED, a financial planner, who bought his house in Gelang Patah, Johor, which he visits every fortnight with his family, daughter Nur Istiqamah, eight, wife Nur Asyiqin Abdullah, 35, and daughters Nur Diyanah, five, and Zaakira Mahreen, 19

‘It was a good turn of events that fulfilled an original dream I had.’ - NATAHAR BAVA, who bought a house in Kennedy Bay Resort in Perth, in 1997

‘I’ve always wanted a house near the sea, which would be impossible to achieve in Singapore, unless one is prepared to fork out millions for Sentosa Cove.’ - DR K. K. SEET, NUS lecturer, who has a 2,000 sq ft Thai-Balinese house in Pattaya

Source : Sunday Times - 11 May 2008