(Bloomberg) — Singapore’s new-home sales barely rose in June, capping the weakest first half in at least two decades as sentiment wanes in the once-booming market.

Developers sold 228 units last month, up from 221 in May, figures from the Urban Redevelopment Authority showed on Monday. That means fewer than 2,000 units were sold in the first six months of 2024, the least in available data going back to 2004, according to preliminary calculations by Bloomberg.

Initial home sales figures for the second quarter may be revised in finalised data released later this month.

SINGAPORE: A traffic police officer was on Tuesday (Jun 25) charged with dangerous driving that caused the death of a pedestrian who was crossing the road in the Tai Seng area last year.

Muhammad Firdaus Yusoff, 32, was on duty when he** **rode a traffic police motorcycle at a dangerous speed between 94.3kmh and 111kmh near the junction of Hougang Avenue 3 and Kim Chuan Drive at about 5.40pm on Jun 21, 2023.

The speed limit there is 50kmh.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/17901074

Singapore doubles down on lab-grown meat as Silicon Valley backs off

Global funding in the cultured meat industry dropped by 75% in the last year. Singapore sees its chance to become a world leader, backing local and international firms.

Archived version: https://archive.ph/l9Ndj

SINGAPORE: An 88-year-old man was arrested on Wednesday (Jun 5) for the murder of a 74-year-old woman in a Petir Road flat, in Bukit Panjang.

The police said they were called to the scene at about 1am on Wednesday.

SINGAPORE: The interest rate for Central Provident Fund (CPF) Special, MediSave and Retirement accounts will rise to 4.08 per cent in the third quarter of 2024.

It dipped to 4.05 per cent in the previous quarter, the first decrease after three consecutive increases.

The higher interest rate is due to an increase in the 12-month average yield of 10-year Singapore Government Securities, said the CPF Board and Housing Board (HDB) in a joint news release on Wednesday (May 29).

The interest rate for these accounts is pegged to the average yield plus 1 per cent.

One person has been killed and several others injured on a Singapore Airlines flight from London that was hit by severe turbulence. 

The Singapore-bound Boeing 777-300ER was diverted to Bangkok and landed at 15:45 local (08:00 GMT).

Flight SQ 321 was carrying a total of 211 passengers and 18 crew, the airline said in a statement.

SINGAPORE: Fewer parking spots but a lot more electric vehicle (EV) chargers and bicycle parking lots will be found at the upcoming Punggol Digital District, touted to be Singapore’s first smart and sustainable business park.

The 50-hectare district – roughly the size of 70 football fields – will have 96 EV chargers in its first phase of opening. The plan is to ramp that up to 151 eventually, making it the location with the most EV chargers in Singapore, said national industrial estate developer JTC on Thursday (May 16).

To support environmentally friendly transport, the "car-lite" district in Punggol North will have 1,500 bicycle parking lots and facilities such as lockers and shower rooms.

Correspondingly, there will be fewer vehicle parking lots – at around 1,200, which is 50 per cent less than the requirements of a regular industrial estate, said JTC’s group director for new estates Nelson Liew.

Besides greener transport, the new business park will have infrastructure and technology to optimise land use and energy. This will also lower its carbon footprint, with a 35 per cent reduction in operational carbon emissions annually – equivalent to taking 4,000 cars off the road, said JTC.

Anyone tempted to sign up?

SINGAPORE: A 12-year-old student was taken to the hospital on Tuesday (Apr 16) after a car hit her at a pedestrian crossing outside Bukit View Secondary School. 

The police were alerted to the accident involving a car and a pedestrian along Bukit Batok Street 21 towards Bukit Batok Central at about 7.05am on Tuesday, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) said in response to CNA's queries.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) also told CNA it was alerted to a traffic accident along the same street at about 7.10am.

The girl was taken conscious to the National University Hospital.

She has since been discharged from hospital, said Bukit View Secondary School's principal Jaswant Singh on Tuesday afternoon.

"We are in touch with the student and her family to provide the necessary support," he added.

A 50-year-old male car driver is assisting with police investigations, the police said, adding that investigations are ongoing.

In a video uploaded by Facebook page SG Road Vigilante, the girl is seen running across the pedestrian crossing as a traffic warden waves for vehicles to stop.

A white Honda Vezel did not stop and hit the girl. In the footage, the girl is seen flying forward due to the impact.

SINGAPORE - A crane involved in works at a construction site in Sengkang toppled over and fell on a van. 

The accident took place on the afternoon of April 9 in Punggol Road, near the junction of Compassvale Street.

Reddit Singapore removed my post just because I reshared it 1 too many times so I'm posting it here.

Fed up with the ever increasing rentals in Singapore? Need help comparing rentals? Well look no further.

Preface

I've been a rentee for several years now. Early years was OK but lately it has been a horrible experience finding a rental based on articles on Reddit and even news of scams finding rental in Singapore. Getting in contact to view the rental unit was difficult with many arrogant agents and landlords not responding to questions. From what I've read here on Reddit and a few other sites, agents even make rentees bid on the rental pushing up the price even further.

Some of these rental units don't even deserve to be stayed in. You might have seen news like this(https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/i-wont-want-live-here-even-if-you-pay-me-landlord-offers-windowless-store-room-pasir-ris) where there's just one mattress in a tiny and no windows whatsoever.

Even after landing a unit, I keep hearing of landlords making the stay at the unit a living hell. They want you to leave earlier so that they can claim the deposit for themselves. One case I've heard was really bad with the deposit withheld in the range of $8000+.

The rental situation is so bad in Singapore that there even exist a dedicated FB group talking about horrible rental and landlords: facebookdotcom/groups/SGroomblacklist/

Fed up with viewing listing after listing, I gathered a bunch of listings and analysed them to help with my rental search and after collecting rental data for 3+ years, I'm glad to share my analysis on Singapore's absurd rental market.

Check out this site for FREE access to the analysis tool: https://fck-landlords-rentals-sg.streamlit.app/

Recommended to be viewed on a computer as it is not optimised for mobile view

Before reading a wall of text. Take a look at this video of a member of parliament speaking up on rentals and landlords. https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/vzn7fx/irish_socialist_member_of_parliament_speaks_the/

Other Reddit threads related to expensive housing and rental in Singapore:

https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/vioka8/the_man_who_helped_create_singapores_housing_boom/

https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/13lh3yf/do_high_rental_influence_foreigners_decision_to/

https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/1aktdln/median_monthly_household_income_rises_to_s10869/

https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/1aouj74/45_billion_in_housing_grants_given_out_from_2020/

Goal of This Site

My goal so let renters have more bargaining power and are not easily cheated/forced into paying ever increasing rental prices for greedy landlords. Landlords have been increasingly shown to not care for general populace and only increase rentals for their own gain. It is even more disgusting when you see the rules some of the landlord put up for the rental like "no cooking", "no visitors" and one of them worse I've seen: "no cooked or raw food in the fridge". I mean, you want to rent out your extra space, at least make them the person staying feel at home and not like a person that owes you money or living in a prison.

Rentees need to band together to put pressure and stop this vicious cycle of landlords taking rentees' hard-earned money. Landlords need to be reminded that rentees have the choice to choose where they want to stay.

Spread this to anyone you know that needs to find rental in Singapore. This should be their 1st place to check and verify that the rental they're looking is reasonably priced..

I'm not sure how much impact this will make but if even 1 rentee goes for a rent at the lower end of the market price range then that is already a win for me.

How to use this?

Treat it as a historical catalogue of rental listings throughout Singapore. Start by selecting a date range of data to analyze followed by filtering down to the name of the listing (e.g. Block 123 in ABC Avenue) or address/location(e.g. Toa Payoh).

The results on the graph shows the 'heat' of the prices starting from cheapest at the top and most expensive at the top. This helps compare the price range of the location you're considering to rent and similar listings within the same attribute(i.e. same address, region, etc., with air con, etc.) Compare these results to the rental you are viewing and consider to checkout the cheaper listings and look away if it's way above the average or median market price.

Another very helpful feature is to check the 'history' of a rental listing. If you look at recent listings, occasionally you may find some are duplicates as they have the same listing picture, description, etc. This may mean that the listing is not good, whether the price is too high or that they may be some other underlying issue that is not apparent in the listing until one does a visit to the unit.

Limitations

Due to the likely possibility that not all users are looking for rent and some may be landlords, I've decided to hide a certain % of the listings as to favor rentees. Currently, it is configured to show results up to the 3rd quartile of prices based on filters given. This is to encourage rentees to go for cheaper rentals.

Interesting Findings

Changes in prices over 3 years

This constitutes listings from early 2021 to early 2024 with about 70000 listings in total

Note: You can't see this kind of view in the actual web app.

Viewing the graph over a 3 year period and with no price filters, we can clearly see when landlords got greedy and we can see prices become 1.5x to over 2x of past listings.

This is particularly apparent for whole unit listings. See the below screenshots for more details

Looking at graph plots on the left side of the graph(which constitutes listings from early 2021 to close to 1st half of 2022) and at upper top end of the price range, you can see that they are mostly(if not all) whole unit listings.

This one I highlighted is for a unit located in Orchard.

If we take a look at the right side of the graph(which constitutes listings from 2nd half of 2022 to early 2024) and try to find a similar listing, it is almost 2X the price.

Listings that are repeated for many weeks

One can only guess why it is still not rented after almost 3 months of advertising. Good thing is that we see prices going down after some time knowing that there's no demand for this room rental.

Other Notes

• Rentals - Source 1 is more reliable IMO as a majority of the listings are listed by the landlord and not by agents

• In Rentals - Source 1 , the tags property for listings is incomplete for a majority of the listings prior to 2024

• There may be more 'clusters' of points as some data lack the information to help distribute by when the rental listings were published.

Feel free to ask questions down in the comments. I'll be happy to help you on your rental journey.

Closing Notes

I'm not sure how long I can keep the site up especially if it goes under due to load. Hopefully it stays up long enough to make an impact.

Please help to spread the word and make an impact on bringing down housing rental prices.

How timely, another story about landlords from hell:

https://www.reddit.com/r/askSingapore/comments/1arxyxw/landlord_from_hell/

F*** landlords and rental agents. See how long you all can huat!

A woman who had been drinking her soy milk from Mr Bean and found a cockroach in it took to Facebook to share about the incident on Monday (18 March). In her post on Complaint Singapore, Facebook user Pamster Tan wrote that the drink had been purchased from the Mr Bean outlet at Queenstown MRT by her colleague.

She had started sipping the drink from 12pm, and later sucked up "something that is not a pearl and with a crunch". She discovered it was a cockroach after spitting it out.

SINGAPORE — Pritam Singh, the Leader of the Opposition and head of the Workers' Party (WP), was charged on Tuesday (19 March) with two offences over allegedly lying to a parliamentary committee. This development comes two years after the police initiated investigations into his conduct during proceedings before the Committee of Privileges.

According to The Straits Times, the charges stem from Singh's testimony before the committee, which was convened in November 2021 to address a controversy involving Raeesah Khan, a former MP from his party. That committee had recommended Raeesah be fined $35,000 for lying to Parliament and abusing her parliamentary privilege.

The vouchers will be valid from Apr 15 this year until the end of December 2027.

SINGAPORE: In a crackdown on litterbugs, Singapore may publicise images of offenders in community spaces so members of the public can help identify them.

Identified offenders will be dealt with under the law, including being fined or charged in court, the National Environment Agency (NEA) said.

"Care will be exercised" in cases committed by young children, the elderly or vulnerable groups, the agency added.

SINGAPORE: From Mar 1, it will no longer be mandatory for people to wear masks in some healthcare settings that are considered lower-risk, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said on Thursday (Feb 29) as it adjusts Singapore's COVID-19 response protocols, including vaccine recommendations.

“Mask-wearing will no longer be compulsory for patients, visitors and staff in outpatient settings, including polyclinics, general practitioner clinics, specialist outpatient clinics, dialysis centres, Traditional Chinese Medicine clinics and dental clinics,” said MOH.

“However, mask-wearing is still strongly encouraged for medically vulnerable persons, seniors and persons with acute respiratory infection (ARI) in these settings.”

Mask-wearing will also be required for higher-risk healthcare settings, such as inpatient wards, emergency departments and residential care facilities.