Straits Times: Towering icons lend a new identity

Daring designs such as The Sail add glamour to Singapore’s skyline
By Kimberly Spykerman
SKYSCRAPERS here don’t have it easy.
They have been panned for spoiling the city skyline or for towering over older buildings which have more ‘character’.
They have also been seen as potential death traps when people recall how New York’s World Trade Center [...]

Straits Times: US govt likely to bail out Fannie, Freddie

NEW YORK: It’s growing more likely that the United States government will have to use taxpayer money to rescue mortgage finance giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as their biggest backers, foreign governments, have begun to shun their debt.
Foreign demand for debt issued by Fannie and Freddie has faltered. The companies rely heavily on overseas [...]

Straits Times: Frasers targets ‘road warriors’

FRASERS Hospitality is cashing in on a newly emerging class of business traveller, known as ‘road warriors’, with the launch of a new, lower-tiered brand of serviced apartments early next year. The new apartments, to be branded Modena, will cater to business travellers who are on the road so often that high-end accommodation is unrealistic.
Frasers [...]

Business Times: NZ housing affordability improves in July

(WELLINGTON) Housing affordability in New Zealand improved to its best level in 18 months in July, driven by lower interest rates and a cooling property market, a mortgage broker said yesterday.
Wizard Home Loans said an average homebuyer needed to spend 77.4 per cent of post-tax income to afford a mortgage on a median-priced house last [...]

Business Times: Spanish property firm quadruples asset sale

(MADRID) Spanish property firm Metrovacesa is quadrupling its sale of assets, company documents show, as it struggles to refinance assets bought at the top of Britain’s property boom and faces a property crisis at home.
Details of the firm’s revised business plan, named Phoenix, show that the company is to quadruple the sale of assets to [...]

Business Times: UK sees biggest fall in home prices since 2002

Property slump deepens as banks starve market of mortgage loans
(LONDON) UK house prices posted the biggest annual decline since at least 2002 as banks choked off mortgage lending, deepening London’s property slump, Rightmove plc said.
The average asking price for a home fell 4.8 per cent in August from a year earlier to £229,816 (S$606,350), the [...]

Straits Times: Worrying tripling of demand for HDB rental flats in one year

THE sharp increase in the number of people seeking Housing Board (HDB) rental flats – it has tripled in just a year – has become a cause for concern, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Calling it a ‘worrying trend’, he said such cases made up the bulk of those seen at weekly meet-the-people sessions.
The [...]

Straits Times: Chinatown ERP to be reviewed earlier

LTA to assess rates and timings a month sooner in response to feedback
By Maria Almenoar
CHINATOWN businesses hit by falling customer traffic will know by October if adjustments can be made to the timings or charges for the new road tolls in the area.
The Land Transport Authority (LTA) will bring its quarterly review forward by [...]

Business Times: Atrium, Crosby sales among top 5 Asia-Pac deals in Q2

But DTZ says S’pore commercial property sales in Q2 fell 24% from Q1
By KALPANA RASHIWALA
INVESTMENT sales of property in Singapore slowed in the second quarter of this year, but the sales of The Atrium @ Orchard (US$617 million) and 71 Robinson Road (on the former Crosby House site) for US$547 million made it to [...]

Business Times: SLA sees good interest for infill sites ahead of auction

THE Singapore Land Authority (SLA) yesterday said that it has received about 100 enquiries for the eight infill sites it launched for residential use on June 26. The sites will be auctioned off on Aug 21.
‘There has been especially strong interest in the good class bungalow site at Ridout Road and sites in the eastern [...]