Exposed! Not Jack Neo but MBT

[Wind30]

Which leaves 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001.

 

The bolded ones are chosen. So why not 1998 and 2000? Well you said it, 1997 is the best, 2001 is the worst. So why 1999?

 

Anyone able to use the Google doc link to put 1998 and 2000 as the base year to see what happens?

 

 

does it matter? you can tell how the 2000 will look from the first curve ST published.

 

like what another poster mentioned, the more impt thing to questions is how come the avergae household income rose so fast in the fast few years. Did singaporeans REALLY become richer or is this average ARTIFICIALLY PUSHED up by the government immigration policies?

[Genie47]

It does. Read my post above.

 

You got to explain why that base year is chosen. Of course we will not get any. MBT or the ruling powers isn't interested in explaining themselves. Just know they are right.

[Requiemdk]

In the spirit of choosing arbitrary years as the base point, let's turn back the clock a bit more...

 

 

[Requiemdk]

?? actually from the first graph MBT gives, it is obvious that for the past 10 years, the prices of the HDB is more affordable than it is now. The affordability now is probably the same as it was in 1999.

 

That is what MBT is trying to say. If he extended the graph backwards to 1997, it would show that the hdb now is more affordable than it was in 1997

 

Evidently not as obvious as it would be if he had chosen any other year except for 1997. Let's put it this way then - he could've chosen any of the 10 years between 1999 and 2008 to demonstrate the trend. Let's ignore the later years, say from 2006 onwards, for the sake of actually demonstrating a trend. Now we are left with 7 choices for the base year. 6 of these choices result in a graph that shows the RPI rising far above the MHI while 1 results in a graph where the two end up at roughly the same point. Which is supposed to be representative of the trend then? The 1 special case, or any of the other 6?

 

1999 was a year with a local peak discrepancy between the MHI and RPI. That there exists other, even higher, such peaks is not a vindication of his choice - that's akin to me going out and running down a pedestrian and then complaining when I get arrested that there're other more heinous crimes. 1999 is NOT a normal year to choose. Sure, you can argue that 2001 isn't either, and I'm not saying that it is, but choosing any year around that region is going to show more clearly what's happening from 2006 to 2009.

 

Edit: The only plausible non-fudged up excuse I can think of for choosing 1999 is that he assumed official duties that year (did he?). In that case, does the graph mean to say that after all the craptastic immigration policies and fudging of PRs with SG citizens in other statistics, we're back at square one?! What an abject failure of a minister we have then.

Edited April 9, 2010 by Requiemdk

[Ngck]

Bcoz PR number will bump up the nice figure of employment ?

 

PR employment number should be near 100%, otherwise, they would have gone home.

 

Citizens can be unemployed, but they have no "home" to go back to, so their numbers alone will look much worse.

 

 

absolutely right man...

 

PR is all tax contributing adults.. no PR in his or her right mind will retire in singapore

 

if you include only singaporean adults, you include those retirees, those on public assistance, sick, disabled and very low income earners... and also those good for nuthings..

 

i guess the figure would look terrible... PR and FT in that sense help to bump up the figure nicely

 

in terms of income per capital, average household income, etc

[Genie47]

Chocolate fudge is very nice. But in SG, we can only eat white chocolate fudge which isn't chocolate at all.

[Tonyhawk]

can anybody provide the populations statistics?

 

i reckon

 

Citizens - 2.3million

PR - 1.3 million

Others - 1million

[Sky61]

This is really not a good time to buy a house.

 

I got my TPY 5-room for 550k + COV $12,888 nia. Top floor, 122sqm , 11 year old flat.

 

Full house paquet flooring with very minimum renovation needed. Perfect for my young kids.

 

i think my house is worth something like 620k now........after only 1 year!!!

 

so the burning question is : have your income increase in tandem to your property price increase???

the fact is that most singaporeans whom have emptied their CPF$$ every month to their "expensive homes" would have nothing left for retirement. they will have to sell their homes by then to fund their retirement. with an impending ageing population in the future,where will be the demand for these homes if every old fella wants to sell?? u guess it, young FTs...

 

so we have a case of FTs living in our beautiful homes in the near future,and old folks staying in rental flats or old folks home coz they spend all their retirement savings on housing..

Edited April 9, 2010 by Sky61

[Kb27]

so we have a case of FTs living in our beautiful homes in the near future,and old folks staying in rental flats or old folks home coz they spend all their retirement savings on housing..

 

It's a tragedy for the long-suffering citizens.

 

Where is home? They will wonder. By that time, it's already too late.

[Sky61]

so enjoy our expensive homes now, coz when u r old, its time for the FTs to enjoy...unless of course u invest your monthly hard-earned disposable income on generating returns so huge, that it can make up for your retirement funds (ironically thats what CPF is supposed to do..) taking into account inflation and the increased cost of living.

 

lets not talk about those people who are able to afford more than 1 property and have the ability to buy low,sell high..lets talk about the common people who have only one place they call home...

Edited April 9, 2010 by Sky61

[Varoom]

so enjoy our expensive homes now, coz when u r old, its time for the FTs to enjoy...unless of course u invest your monthly hard-earned disposable income on generating returns so huge, that it can make up for your retirement funds (ironically thats what CPF is supposed to do..) taking into account inflation and the increased cost of living.

 

lets not talk about those people who are able to afford more than 1 property and have the ability to buy low,sell high..lets talk about the common people who have only one place they call home...

 

 

Its all our fault. If u grow old and find urself stuck with no money sleeping on streets, its ur fault for not getting out of sg when u were young!

[Lightbringer]

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Before everybody gets themselves into a tizzy over why 1999 was chosen as the base year and come up with 101 conspiracy stories, let me share something:

 

Housing prices are a function of consumer prices and hence part of the CPI.

 

The CPI is rebased once every five years, with the most recent format having a base year of 2009. Previous base years were 2004 and 1999.

 

Hence when charting visual graphs it makes sense to use the base years as a starting point as this is where the index would be pegged at unity at the start.

 

This is exactly why the opposition is so ineffective in Singapore: they always miss the forest for one single tree that captures their attention and are convinced that this will be their flash point to stage a revolution. In this case the crux of the issue is the relative affordability of HDB flats. To analyze this, 2 key factors need to be considered: the price increases of HDB flats, and the increase in the real incomes of the relevant parties (i.e citizens within the income bracket that makes them eligible for HDB flats).

 

Instead of analyzing these clearly and carefully such as how the Govt is calculating real income or household income to compare against housing prices, everybody goes into a frenzy over speculation about which base year should be chosen and why. And the real issues, the really troublesome decisions, all of these gets ignored and forgotten in the ensuring media circus. It's sad.

[Lightbringer]

Found something interesting related to this issue.. and far more relevant.

 

Please read the whole article to pick up flaws. One especially serious one is the chart of median household income vs housing prices. It was meant to illustrate that rising house price is due to rising household income. Using household income is extremely misleading as it has risen because more married women are pushed into the workforce due to the rising cost of living i.e. higher housing prices can drive household income up. Also, rising housing prices can cause couples with difficulties owning a home to share a place with their parents causing household income to rise. Our median worker income rising far slower(median income in 2000[Link (http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/papers/people/cp-income2000.pdf)] and median income in 2009[Link (http://www.mom.gov.sg/Home/Pages/Press_Release/20091130-Singapore_Workforce__2009.html)]). All other countries measure housing affordability against median worker income of its citizens . The Reform Party pointed out the discrepency why using household income can be misleading because of the effects of large number of PRs:

.

"Firstly though he omits to tell us, he probably means residents (which include PRs) and not just citizens when he talks about Singaporean households. Over the past decade the resident population grew by 15% while the resident labour force grew by approximately 25%. This was undoubtedly due to the surge in new citizens and PRs as a result of the government

[Mortoncar]

my friend's father bought his 5 room flat point block in marine parade from hdb for $11,000

today is worth hundreds of thousand

literally stayed in the flat - rental free with capital appreciation

 

can anybody do a better job for their citizens

[Zyrofillica]

my friend's father bought his 5 room flat point block in marine parade from hdb for $11,000

today is worth hundreds of thousand

literally stayed in the flat - rental free with capital appreciation

 

can anybody do a better job for their citizens

 

im sorry to say this but dun be dumb. he sell his flat for so much profit then stay where? good job? earn lots of money? only if your friend father is intending to go JB retire or some other country. Then your friend leh? stay where? good job? earn lots of money?

[Albeniz]

my friend's father bought his 5 room flat point block in marine parade from hdb for $11,000

today is worth hundreds of thousand

literally stayed in the flat - rental free with capital appreciation

 

can anybody do a better job for their citizens

 

How many such friends do you have who managed to enjoy such windfalls? All?

I believe he should belong to the exception rather than the norm.

 

Even if the "father" managed to get a fortune from this transaction, his "grandchildren" will have to pay a high price for that so-called appreciation. i.e he sells high, the children and grandchildren will have to buy high too.

Unless he chooses to sell the flat, get the money and then migrate elsewhere.

 

I know of a PR who managed to get a whopping profit of 200k after he sold his house and then returned back to his home country.

 

We can't really do that. Can we?

 

 

Edited April 9, 2010 by Albeniz

[Xtrocious]

And somehow I am always the affected minority.

 

Easy to explain...

 

Where to find "bell curve" large enough to fix a bi-polar bear

[Xtrocious]

How many such friends do you have who managed to enjoy such windfalls? All?

I believe he should belong to the exception rather than the norm.

 

Even if the "father" managed to get a fortune from this transaction, his "grandchildren" will have to pay a high price for that so-called appreciation. i.e he sells high, the children and grandchildren will have to buy high too.

Unless he chooses to sell the flat, get the money and then migrate elsewhere.

 

I know of a PR who managed to get a whopping profit of 200k after he sold his house and then returned back to his home country.

 

We can't really do that. Can we?

 

That's so true :angry:

 

That's exactly what I overheard on the MRT one day!

 

This China lady was boasting to her friend that buying a HDB is such a sure-win thing - sit for a few years and can unload and go home...