Despite spending a fortune in sending scholars to oxbridge, ivy league and other well regarded institutions over 30 years, not one soul has prompted the setting up of a National Rent Council.
NWC was started to ensure that labour cost was reasonable and to guide the nation in addressing wage related matters across the board during times of uncertainty and during cyclic changes.
No one seem to have realised that rent as a crucial cost component has overtaken wages across the board and a similar tweaking mechanism is not in place. And ones does not need an IQ exceeding Lim Boon Heng's to figure out the damage that commercial rent is causing the country.
Here are some interesting facts about rent/property sector and the people in it.
1) Kwa Gek Choo for years has been acknowledged as the doyen of conveyancing. Conveyancing for the uninitiated has nothing to do with the tomatoes but does have an impact on its price.
2) GLCs are a major player in the property market and Reits are an important part of it. Its startes with the little store selling newspapers in the MRT station to large retailers that rent space from JTC, HDB, CapitaLand and the like.
3) Reits are like fire - a good servant but a bad master. Those who have bought into Reits are not just your insignificant mom and pop but influential institutional players and the word pressure and lobby comes into play.
4) Then we have Kwa Kim Li, Managing Partner of Lee & Lee and the niece of Ms Kwa Geok Choo. The younger Ms Kwa is one of the honorary legal advisors to Redas. Just have a look at the REDAS main committee, its sub committees and all the honorary adviors that make the Singapore Property Market go round and round. http://www.redas.com/html/Committees.html REDAS by the way is not the Association for Air Traffic Controllers.
5) If HDB houses approx 80% of the population, which country in the world do you think has the closest thing to able to micro control the property sector and the best ability to tweak it.
So, are we going to get an NRC? And if we did, who would have the brass balls to handle the incoming calls.
NWC was started to ensure that labour cost was reasonable and to guide the nation in addressing wage related matters across the board during times of uncertainty and during cyclic changes.
No one seem to have realised that rent as a crucial cost component has overtaken wages across the board and a similar tweaking mechanism is not in place. And ones does not need an IQ exceeding Lim Boon Heng's to figure out the damage that commercial rent is causing the country.
Here are some interesting facts about rent/property sector and the people in it.
1) Kwa Gek Choo for years has been acknowledged as the doyen of conveyancing. Conveyancing for the uninitiated has nothing to do with the tomatoes but does have an impact on its price.
2) GLCs are a major player in the property market and Reits are an important part of it. Its startes with the little store selling newspapers in the MRT station to large retailers that rent space from JTC, HDB, CapitaLand and the like.
3) Reits are like fire - a good servant but a bad master. Those who have bought into Reits are not just your insignificant mom and pop but influential institutional players and the word pressure and lobby comes into play.
4) Then we have Kwa Kim Li, Managing Partner of Lee & Lee and the niece of Ms Kwa Geok Choo. The younger Ms Kwa is one of the honorary legal advisors to Redas. Just have a look at the REDAS main committee, its sub committees and all the honorary adviors that make the Singapore Property Market go round and round. http://www.redas.com/html/Committees.html REDAS by the way is not the Association for Air Traffic Controllers.
5) If HDB houses approx 80% of the population, which country in the world do you think has the closest thing to able to micro control the property sector and the best ability to tweak it.
So, are we going to get an NRC? And if we did, who would have the brass balls to handle the incoming calls.
