Many Singaporeans may be skeptical of Government announcements like, “public housing has remained largely affordable to most Singaporeans”. But the situation here is certainly not as dire as in Hong Kong where the high property prices have prevented young people from forming families.
Now another study has indicated that Singapore is not even in the league of World’s least affordable metropolitan cities. According to the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey, that honor goes to cities in China, USA, Australia and Canada.
Housing in Singapore may be ‘Seriously Unaffordable’ (according to the survey), but not ‘severely’ so like in the other major metropolitan cities.
And if you rank them by nations, Singapore ranks among the bottom 3, and that’s only because the bottom-placed in United States of America and United Kingdom, have second, third tier cities in their big country to cushion their ranking.
And also, don’t be fooled by predictions of a housing bubble looming here. The UBS Global Real Estate Bubble Index places Singapore in a relatively safe zone. Even if real estate here may be over-valued, they are certainly not at ‘bubble risk’.
And Singapore also does not top the chart in Knight Frank’s latest Prime International Residential Index, which recently revealed the most expensive cities to buy property in the world, based on how many prime square metres US$1million will buy.
That honor again goes to Monaco where US$1 million will get you only 15 square metres of space. A close second in that index is Hong Kong (coming at No. 2), where the same amount of money will get you a home of 20.6 square metres.
So, who which fringe opposition politician said “Hong Kong has a better quality of living“?
Singapore is better than Hong Kong, Sydney, London, Los Angeles…
