More foreigners pay millions for homes here

More foreigners than ever are forking out millions to buy a residential property in Singapore.
Last year, they snapped up nearly 5,000 units, which represented a 23 per cent market share, property consultants said.
And as the luxury property boom gained pace in the final quarter of last year, their buying spree hit an all-time high. For the first time, their market share hit 26 per cent, beating the previous all-time high of 24 per cent in 1995.
Before the market started to bounce back in 2005, foreign homebuyers made up less than 20 per cent of all buyers in Singapore.
Indonesians bought the most private residential properties here last year, accounting for about 23.7 per cent of foreign buyers, based on statistics compiled by Knight Frank. Malaysians took second place with 22.7 per cent.
Indians came third, with 8.4 per cent, followed by Britons, with 8 per cent. Buyers from China took up 7.7 per cent. Next came Australians, with 5 per cent.
Other significant foreign buyer groups came from the United States, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
More foreigners are also buying landed homes, particularly in the prime districts, even though they need approval to buy.
Some of them have benefited from recent collective sales and are looking for a landed home with their proceeds, said an agent covering the landed market.
He has worked with British and Indian clients who have no problems with paying a 1 per cent deposit for a house costing up to $10 million, even before obtaining approval to buy.
The home-buying budgets of many foreigners run to several millions of dollars.
Fourth-quarter caveats lodged showed that nearly half of the foreign buyers bought homes for between $1 million and $5 million, said Knight Frank.
About 38 per cent bought homes costing $500,000 to $1 million. An elite group of 5 per cent bought posh homes costing $5 million or more, it said.
Source: The Sunday Times, 01 April 2007