Newspaper reports

Collective sale impetus fizzles out
Sunday Times-5 April 2007

"At the height of the property boom in 2007, 116 collective sales were completed. This figure was whittled down to just eight last year, after the onslaught of the global economic crisis.
There was no collective sale done in the first three months of this year."

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A much needed respite for genuine home owners and "The once fever-hot collective sale market is now stone-cold, and property experts predict it will take at least five years for transactions to reach the pitch seen before."

Though, in five years, the lessons learned from our failed en bloc might well be forgotten through collective amnesia!

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Not an end for en bloc sales

Straits Times - 10 April 2009

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"The judgment has been met by howls of protest from many in the property sector. The fear is that the bar has been set so high that any future deals will be impossible. They say the balance has been shifted too far in favour of en bloc dissenters, such that an en bloc deal becomes vulnerable to even the smallest objections.

As long as sale committee members act on behalf of all owners and transparently, it shouldn’t be a problem,’ said Knight Frank investment sales head Foo Suan Peng.

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It restores the requisite level of care and attention that should be paid when people contemplate selling something they are as emotionally attached to as their homes.
And if society in general eventually learns to be guided by principles other than monetary gains, then it can only be a good thing."

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Let them howl! The scoundrels have had it their way for far too long. The problem was the bar was set so low that sale committees, devoid of all moral responsibility, were acting like gangsters to drive a sale to completion. The gangster character, the desperate bankrupt, the retrenched, the flipper, the double unit owner, the soon-to-be-emigre should all be banned from serving on sale committees. They are at the bottom of any list of suitable candidates and owners should be wary of their ulterior motives.

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"It is the first time the minority group has won on the basis that the sale was not in good faith, and not on a technicality,’ said Mr Philip Fong of Harry Elias Partnership, who represented the objectors."

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Excuse me? That should read "It is the first time the monority group has won on the basis that the sale was not in good faith at the court of appeal."

Tampines Court also won on the basis that the sale was not done in good faith in the method of distribution of the sale proceeds AND in the sale price.

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Glitches at Grangeford

Business Times-15 April 2009

Think of the elderly

Straits Times - 15 April 2009