ST Online Forum : Have minimum educational requirement for property agents‏

Nov 4, 2009

Have minimum educational requirement for property agents

I AGREE with the latest efforts to regulate property agents . Having retired after being a managing director of two housing agencies, I am privy to the many unseemly practices of unscrupulous property agents.

Needless to say, I had to terminate the employment of some of these agents when their unsavoury practices came to light.

Besides adding an ethical component to the housing agents' certification, I believe setting a minimum educational benchmark is quintessential, for example, a minimum prerequisite of three O-level credits, like what DTZ has set for its agents.

This would enhance the agents' ability to discern correct work ethics when it concerns substantial amounts of monies being paid by unsuspecting parties.

Palanisamy Ramadas

ST Online Forum : Why property agents should act for only one party‏

Nov 4, 2009

Why property agents should act for only one party

I REFER to last Thursday's Forum Online letters by Mrs Teresa Yao ('How new rules can protect property agents') and Mr Teo Kueh Liang ('Barring same-agent property brokerage not practical').

Both writers have highlighted the plight of the majority of ethical property agents, whose image has been tarnished by a small group of unscrupulous and dishonest agents.

In any profession, it is impossible to completely wipe out the bad hats. Therefore, after an acceptable standard of practice has been established, understood and made into law, non-compliant practices should be punished.

In any property transaction, the two most important parties are the seller and the buyer. They must enter into a legally binding contract in order for the sale to go through. It is therefore natural that we facilitate the interests of the seller and the buyer first.

The interests of the property agent come after those of the seller and the buyer, as his role can come into being only after he has been appointed.

The terms of appointment, that is, what the agent can or cannot do, for example, must be expressedly agreed between him and the one who appoints him, so that there is no ambiguity that leads to future problems.

When the Ministry of National Development puts into law a system for the seller, the buyer and the property agent, it must separately examine the relationship between the seller or buyer and the property agent, from the relationship between the seller and the buyer. If the seller or the buyer chooses to hand the responsibilities over to his agent, he must adequately reward the agent.

To protect his own interests, the property agent should act for only one party and not both.

Patrick Sio

ST : Lawyer ordered to return $300,000 over failed deal‏

Nov 4, 2009

Lawyer ordered to return $300,000 over failed deal

By K.C. Vijayan

A BUSINESSMAN who lost his investment in a property deal and sued the lawyer involved managed to obtain $300,000 out of the $1 million invested.

Mr Satinder Singh Garcha said he was talked into investing the sum and claimed that his lawyer S. Uthayasurian, who is also known as Mr Surian, was instrumental in the loss of that money.

Among other things, Mr Singh claimed the lawyer did not tell him that the middleman involved in the deal was an undischarged bankrupt. But Judicial Commissioner Quentin Loh, who released his judgment on Monday, said Mr Singh knew this all along.

Mr Uthayasurian, who has 18 years of legal experience, has already been suspended from practising for a year by a Court of Three Judges in May, in disciplinary proceedings over the same case.

He had acted for multiple parties involved in a property development project on a 117,000 sq ft plot of land in Tanglin Hill owned by the Brunei government.

Mr Singh not only put in the money in May 2006 but also authorised an undischarged bankrupt, Mr Louis Ang, to disburse the funds.

A week later, he found that most of the money had gone to other parts of the project and legal costs.

Mr Singh, represented by WongPartnership lawyers, sued Mr Surian to get back his investment.

Mr Surian, who was paid legal fees of $100,000 out of the investment, refunded the payment made to him, but Mr Singh wanted the rest of his money back.

He claimed that Mr Surian did not alert him to Mr Ang's status as a bankrupt, nor advise him about the risks of giving a bankrupt 'unfettered authority' to handle money.

But Mr Surian's lawyer N. Sreenivasan countered that Mr Singh knew Mr Ang was an undischarged bankrupt and that, being an experienced businessman, was aware of the risks involved, such as having to forgo any claim against a bankrupt should anything go wrong.

Judicial Commissioner Loh, in his 34-page judgment, agreed with the defence.

He added that Mr Surian never thought of bringing up Mr Ang's bankruptcy status with Mr Singh because Mr Ang had been open about it and had raised it in various meetings with relevant parties which included Mr Singh.

Judicial Commissioner Loh said Mr Singh was 'someone who was willing to shape his evidence, in not insignificant areas, to suit his case'.

He said Mr Singh would still have participated in the project even if he knew Mr Ang was a bankrupt as he was keen to develop long-term ties with the Brunei royal family and government.

The judge held that Mr Surian was not liable for the $550,000 paid to two other parties from the funds provided by Mr Singh. It was clear that money was meant for the intended recipients.

But the lawyer was liable for $300,000 paid to one Mr Lim Beng Huat, who was Mr Ang's driver.

The judge made it clear that Mr Surian had been negligent in making the payout to the driver without probing the reasons or checking with Mr Singh, and this led to the loss.

Mr Singh, who was described as 'extremely intelligent, very sharp and very quick' by the judge, came from the United States to settle in Singapore several years ago.

The businessman is also an avid polo player who captained the Singapore team to a silver medal in the 2007 SEA Games.

BT : Saizen Reit defaults on 7.25b yen loan‏

Business Times - 04 Nov 2009


Saizen Reit defaults on 7.25b yen loan

Property trust says maturity default not likely to affect its ability to operate

(SINGAPORE) Singapore-listed property trust Saizen Reit said yesterday it had defaulted on a 7.253 billion yen (S$112.65 million) commercial mortgage-backed securities loan.

The company said in a statement the 'maturity default' was not expected to affect Saizen Reit's ability to operate as a going concern nor impair its ability to get further financing.

A maturity default occurs when the borrower fails to pay the lender the balloon payment, or principal balance, at maturity.

'The main impact of this maturity default is an increase in the interest rate from 3.07 per cent to a default rate of 7.07 per cent per annum,' Saizen said in a statement.

The loan, known as 'YK Sintoku', is a non-recourse and not cross-collateralised against other properties in Saizen Reit's portfolio. It was originally provided by Credit Suisse Principal Investments Ltd, a unit of Credit Suisse, in 2005 and was later securitised and transferred to an issuer of the commercial-mortgage backed securities, the statement said.

Saizen, which went to market in November 2007, is the only Singapore-listed real estate investment trust (Reit) with purely Japanese regional residential properties\. \-- Reuters

BT : US commercial property prices up in Q3: index‏

Business Times - 04 Nov 2009


US commercial property prices up in Q3: index

(NEW YORK) The prices of investment-grade commercial real estate rose more than 4 per cent in the third quarter, possibly signalling an end to the sector's year-long downward spiral, according to an leading property index released yesterday.

The 4.4 per cent third-quarter increase in the MIT Center for Real Estate's transaction-based index (TBI) index is the first positive price change in the index in more than a year and the largest increase since the market downturn began in mid-2007.

'One quarter does not a trend make and we are still well below normal trading volume,' David Geltner, director of research at MIT/CRE, said in a statement. 'Nevertheless, this is the strongest sign of a bottom that we've had in two years.'

The US commercial real estate market has been in a downward spiral for more than two years. Borrowers are facing shortfalls in financings when loans come due. Some borrowers are struggling to meet even monthly payments.

The delinquency rate of US commercial real estate loans securitised into Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS) hit 4.8 per cent in October, up from 4.36 the prior month and dwarfing the 0.77 rate of a year earlier, according to Trepp, which tracks CMBS loans.

The TBI tracks the prices that institutional investors, such as pension funds pay or receive when buying or selling commercial properties such as shopping centres, apartment complexes and office towers.

The price index at the third quarter stood at 36.5 per cent below its 2007 peak, up from its 39 per cent deficit seen last quarter, which now could be the trough and suggests the US commercial property market may have finally found a price bottom.

In addition, the number of transactions rose for the second straight month in the third quarter to 90 from 42 in the second quarter.

'The big news this quarter is not just that the price index increased, but that transaction volume substantially increased for the second quarter in a row, reflecting the first increase in market sentiment in two years,' Mr Geltner noted.

MIT/CRE also compiles indexes that gauge movements on the demand side and on the supply side of the institutional property market. The demand-side index rose to 42 per cent below the 2007 peak, up from 48 per cent last quarter. It ended eight consecutive declines. -- Reuters

Market may turn bullish soon‏

Business Times - 04 Nov 2009


Market may turn bullish soon

Because the plunge of September 2008 will not be included in most statements, turning attitudes positive, says PAUL J LIM

THOUGH stocks have soared more than 50 per cent since the market hit bottom in March, the sentiment of individual investors is hardly euphoric.

In fact, the percentage who say that they are 'bullish' today is only slightly higher than it was in the summer, when the market was much lower, according to a survey by the American Association of Individual Investors.

Yet these attitudes could change soon, but not because anything has changed fundamentally in the market. It's simply that time is passing, and the quarterly performance reports sent to investors will soon no longer highlight the worst of last year's losses.

At the moment, the quarterly brokerage and 401(k) plan statements still reflect an important time lag. Open a recent statement and you're likely to find that despite their gains of late, most of your stock investments still lost money for the 12 months through the third quarter. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, for example, was off nearly 7 per cent in the 12 months ended Sept 30.

Fast-forward to current figures, which won't be reflected in most printed investment reports for some weeks. Even after last Friday's losses, many numbers look much better. That's mainly because the market plunge of September last year is no longer included in them. Right now, the S&P 500 is up nearly 12 per cent from its level 12 months ago. Through last Thursday, domestic stock funds were doing even better, with gains of more than 23 per cent, on average, according to Morningstar, the fund tracker.

Investors may think that the market has improved tremendously over just the last few weeks. It hasn't. It's just that by the end of October, the market was more than a year beyond the stock market swoon that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers. During the worst of the 2008 panic, from the start of September through Oct 10, the market lost nearly a third of its value.

People are often told that they should invest for the long run, but Greg Schultz, a principal at Asset Allocation Advisors, a financial planning firm in Walnut Creek, California, said that 'shorter time frames actually impact investor psychology more'.

'Investors aren't looking at 10 years,' he said. 'They're looking at how they've been doing over six months, nine months, 12 months.'

In the last few weeks, there have been signs that small investors are starting to view this rally as real, said Mike Scarborough, president of Scarborough Capital Management, a 401(k) advisory firm based in Annapolis, Maryland. But most of the bandwagon followers - market timers who fled stocks after last year's tumble but who now want to make a quick buck after equities have already soared - have yet to re-enter the market in droves, he said.

Mr Scarborough believes that this kind of market timing is ill-advised.

'The pigs haven't shown up yet,' he said. 'But when they do, you'll know the market is nearing a top.'

At that point, he said, he is likely to start ratcheting down his clients' exposure to equities by around 5-10 percentage points. He guesses that this will take place in January and February, when investors are likely to open brokerage statements showing double-digit gains for 2009. Those statements are also likely to show modestly positive gains for most types of stock funds over the last five years.

Barring another market swoon, investor confidence is also likely to get a big boost in March. That's when the year-over-year performance figures for stocks will move beyond the sell-off that occurred in the first quarter of this year.

If the market treads water between now and March, the one-year performance figures on March 9 will show a climb of more than 53 per cent. Without further gains, of course, people may focus on the 51 per cent gain that would still be needed to attain the levels of the market's last peak, which was reached in October 2007.

'Psychologically, a lot of people measure themselves off of the highs,' said Ronald W Roge, a financial planner in Bohemia, New York. For now, though, the danger is that the market may be entering a period of rising optimism just as the fundamentals sour.

For example, when the rally began in March, the price-to-earnings ratio for the S&P 500 stood at a modest 14, based on the trailing four quarters of operating profits. Today, that P/E is about 27.

Even if you use a more conservative profit gauge - 10-year averaged earnings, a measure that smoothes out wild swings - you find that valuations have begun to soar. In March, the price-to-earnings ratio for the broad market using these 'normalised' earnings was 13.3, well below the market's historical average of around 16. This P/E has since climbed to 19.5.

A surge in investor confidence could be a shot of adrenaline for a rally that's maturing. But if fundamental stock values are weakening, and investors pour money in anyway, the bears are likely to see this as a sign of a market top. -- NYT

The writer is a senior editor at 'Money' magazine

BT : UK home prices fall at slowest pace‏

Business Times - 03 Nov 2009


UK home prices fall at slowest pace

(LONDON) British house prices fell at their slowest annual rate since June 2008 last month, dropping 4.2 per cent, due to an ongoing lack of housing for sale after the credit crunch, property data company Hometrack said yesterday.

Hometrack's monthly survey of estate agents and surveyors showed that house prices rose 0.2 per cent in England and Wales last month on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, the same rate of increase as in September.

However, this rise was largely concentrated in London, where prices rose 0.4 per cent, while in 84 per cent of postal code areas, house prices were static last month, Hometrack said.

The number of new buyers registering with estate agents grew only 1.2 per cent, down sharply from an average of 7.5 per cent in spring and early summer when many Britons typically start house-hunting.

'The pent-up demand that has boosted the market in recent months is starting to fade in the face of firmer pricing and fewer clear bargains,' said Richard Donnell, Hometrack's director of research.

'Looking ahead, new buyer registrations are likely to slow further in the coming weeks as we approach Christmas. And with a continuing lack of new housing for sale, prices are expected to remain under upward pressure in the near term.'

Low interest rates and a sharp fall in house prices since their peak in late 2007 have made British property more affordable than in many years, but rising unemployment and the difficulty many homebuyers have in finding mortgages have kept a lid on demand.

Hometrack's survey shows weaker recent growth in house prices than that of mortgage lender Nationwide, which said on Friday that prices rose 0.4 per cent last month and were up 2 per cent on the year, based on mortgage approvals.

The Land Registry, whose record of completed transactions lags other surveys, reported that prices rose 0.9 per cent in September but were still 5.6 per cent down on a year earlier. -- Reuters