Straits Times Forum: Two-tier test system raises standards of estate agency industry

WE REFER to the letter ‘HDB resale net services open to abuse’ by Mr Steven Lau last Saturday.
We would like to take this opportunity to clarify the misconceptions about the SAEA (Singapore Accredited Estate Agencies) accreditation schemes.
The SAEA scheme was launched in November 2005 with the objective of raising the level of professionalism in the [...]

Business Times: Standard Chartered launches transparent home loan pegged to Sibor

Package has offset feature – interest earned on deposit can cut loan interest
By LYNETTE KHOO
STANDARD Chartered Bank has upped the ante in the mortgage market here with a new transparent home loan pegged to the Singapore interbank offered rate (Sibor). The loan comes with an offset feature where customers can use the interest earned [...]

Business Times: Market could do with Wing Tai plainspeak

WHEN Wing Tai Holdings holds its fourth-quarter and full-year results briefing next Tuesday, it will be the last of the major Singapore-listed property groups to announce results for the period ended June 30, 2008. Net earnings are expected to be lower than the S$382 million record performance for the preceding year. But the wait may [...]

Business Times: Hersing, global property fund ink storage MOU

It plans to expand self-storage business in region and S’pore
HERSING Corporation said yesterday that it has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with a leading global real estate fund for a proposed joint venture relating to Hersing’s self-storage business.
Hersing, through wholly owned subsidiary Storhub Self Storage, manages and operates self-storage centres in five locations across [...]

Business Times: More flexible guidelines for M’sian reits

More leeway for expansion, but withholding taxes not addressed
By PAULINE NG IN KUALA LUMPUR
MALAYSIA has announced new real estate investment trust (Reit) guidelines that would give Reit management companies greater flexibility to manage and expand their portfolios, but left the issue of its uncompetitive withholding taxes untouched.
The new measures – a follow-on to earlier ones [...]

Straits Times: Lehman Brothers sell up to 50% stake

LEHMAN’S BID TO RAISE CAPITAL
50% stake up for sale
Secret talks but no deal with Chinese, Korean state-owned firms
TROUBLED US investment bank Lehman Brothers held secret talks to sell up to 50 per cent of its shares to South Korean and Chinese state-owned firms in the first week of this month but failed to reach agreement [...]

Straits Times: Chief of Fragrance chain debuts on Forbes’ S’pore list at No.24

BUDGET hotels and mid-range condominiums are hardly what one associates with the rich and famous.
But they proved the key to wealth for Mr Koh Wee Meng, the chief of Fragrance Group, which owns the chain of tourist-class Fragrance hotels, as well as boutique property developer Fragrance Land.
Mr Koh debuted on Forbes magazine’s list of Singapore’s [...]

Business Times: Lum Chang wins $76.5m contract from A-Reit

ASCENDAS Real Estate Investment Trust (A-Reit) has awarded a S$76.5 million design-and-build contract to a unit of Lum Chang Holdings for the construction of a new eight-storey tower and a three-storey ancilliary podium in Changi Business Park.
The building will be on land with an area of over 28,000 square metres – one of the biggest [...]

Business Times: Cooling property market takes a seat at SLA auction

Only four of eight in-fill sites launched for residential use were eventually sold
By EMILYN YAP
(SINGAPORE) The wait-and-see attitude that buyers have adopted in the cooling property market was evident at a Singapore Land Authority (SLA) auction yesterday.
Some 200 individuals and small developers packed a room at M Hotel, but there were only a handful of [...]