Short term rental of your room can be illegal

Post from: Houses In Singapore

I read an article from The Straits Times today “Hosting a paying guest? It could be illegal”. Apparently short term rental of your rooms is illegal. URA says short term lease must be for a period of at least six month.

Some owners just need to rent out their rooms for a short period of time for few days to a few weeks. These owner may be away for a few weeks overseas to work or holiday. Leaving the house empty may be wasteful, but renting it out can help them with their travel expenses and paying the bills.

On the other hand for tenants, some would find that staying in hotel is expensive. Ironically today there’s an article about raising hotel rates. A budget hotel room rate is about $100, but a host room in the suburban is about $50 to $60. Which one will you go for? I have met tenants who just want to have a cheap one monh apartment just to have chemotherapy treatment in a Singapore hospital. Service apartment is not a cheap option for them as it can cost about $5500 to $8000 a month.

How good are these rooms anyway?

A quick look at popular room hosting site of Airbnb,  the rooms in Singapore that’s posted there are of good standard. Some even better than hotel rooms. Rates per night can range from $50 to $200 per night.

Safety of other residents and owners themselves

These hosting sites get host (owner) to list their rooms or apartment help host to get a tenant. These sites will also prescreen these tenants before giving the host’s contact to the tenant. Payment of rental is held in trust by the hosting site and will only release the payment to the hosts only when the tenant has moved into the house. This security feature will minimize fraudulent landlord and tenant. A trustworthy community thus formed. Tenants and hosts can leave comments of each other so that other user will know how good the hosts or tenant is. More or less like leaving a comment on the hotel website.

I believe this short term rental of rooms or apartment will become a norm in future. Let the short term rental landlords and tenants police their own community. But for now we have to abide to the law.

HDB Option to Purchase (OTP) available to download from HDB infoweb

Post from: Houses In Singapore

HDB standard Option to Purchase (OTP) is now available to download from HDB infoweb. Buyers, sellers and salespersons need not get a hardcopy of Option to Purchase from HDB anymore. They can download the OTP from the HDB infoweb and they only need to download one copy of the OTP.

This new downloadable form will definitely make it more easier and convenient for everyone who needs the OTP. Especially for salespersons, they use it a lot and sometimes salesperson is just too busy to make a trip to HDB to get a OTP.  This will save them time by making less trip to the HDB.

How to come up with 40% downpayment to buy a house?

Post from: Houses In Singapore

Have you ever wondered how condo buyers able to come up with a 40% downpayment for their new condo? If the new condo is worth $1.2 million in todays market on the average, we are talking about $480,000 in down payment!  To be able to buy this condo you need to leverage on refinancing.

Given a person has got no cash but has a property that he bought in 2003. The buyer who bought some houses during that time and hold out till now would have at least doubled in value. To quote an example, Buyer A bought a condo worth $800,000 in 2003. In todays market this property will fetch about $1.6m. He wants to buy another condo for investment and he cannot afford to make a 40% downpayment for a property that he want to buy which worth about $1.2m. That’s $480,000 in down payment.

How to get $480,000?

Refinance his property with the bank. Talk with the bank to ask for a refinance of the property that he currently own. The bank will assess his income and the amount the bank are willing to refinance.

If you want to know more about refinancing and use the cash out to buy another property, leave a message below.

How to apply for a real estate agent licence in Singapore?

Post from: Houses In Singapore

To apply for a real estate agent license and become a real estate agent, you have to go for Real Estate Salesperson (RES) course and RES exam. In order to sit for exam, you must at least an educational qualification of 4 GCE “O” Level passes or equivalent. This is one of the regulatory requirements for salespersons.
If you have other qualifications (eg. overseas qualifications or private diplomas etc.) you will need to have their qualifications assessed by CEA for purpose of determining whether the educational qualification requirement is met. Find an Approved Course Provider which you are interested to enrol for the course Approved Course Provider via CEA website.

The RES course and exam will take about two month to complete. When you have completed the course and pass your exams, you need to join a real estate company like Houses In Singapore in order to help you to apply a real estate agent license. The application process will take about one month.

Therefore, in all, it takes about four months to become a license real estate agent.

To be a licensed real estate agent, you need lots of training and guidance along the way. It is important to find a right mentor to guide you. If you want to know more about our firm Houses In Singapore and our How to start a real estate business and Real Estate Salesperson Apprenticeship Program (REAP), feel free to fill up the form below.

Silver Housing Bonus announced in Budget 2012

Post from: Houses In Singapore

Silver Housing Bonus announced in the budget is to help older Singaporean unlock their savings from their flat. The scheme is for elderly who are 55 years old and above, who wish to move from their flats to three room or smaller flats. The bonus will be based on per household and comes in $15,000 cash and $5,000  to the elderly CPF accounts.

How to benefit from the Silver Housing Bonus?

In order to benefit from the Silver Housing bonus, the elderly has to use the sales proceeds from selling of their flat to top up into their CPF up to the Minimum Sum (currently at $131,000). Any excess can be withdrawn in cash.

Example of how Silver Housing Bonus works

Suppose an elderly couple sold their 5 room flat in Bishan worth $650,000 and buy a studio flat worth $80,000. The cash proceeds after topping up $131,000 each into their own CPF Minimum Sum and purchase the studio flat, the net proceeds will be $308,000. On top of that, the government will give the elderly couple  $15,000 in cash and $5,000 in their CPF account. The total proceeds got by the couple is $328,000. (The total proceeds has not accounted for stamp duty payable and other miscellaneous fees that may involved during selling and buying of the flat)