Singapore home prices rose for a fourth straight quarter as the country’s property valuations continue to defy a significant slowdown in sales.

Prices for private residences climbed 1.1% from the previous three months, according to preliminary figures released by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) on Monday. That’s only slightly slower than a 1.4% rise in the first quarter.

The increase reflects continued local spending power despite a broader slowdown in sales in a market that boomed through the pandemic. That’s made the financial hub the third-most expensive city in the world to buy private housing, according to an annual report recently published by Swiss wealth manager Julius Baer Group Ltd.

That surge prompted authorities to introduce multiple curbs on the market, including a 60% stamp duty on foreign purchases of residential assets. The increased levies and high interest rates have cooled demand, with home sales falling for a second month in May.

“There is still demand for housing, although buyers are being selective,” said Ken Foong, a real estate analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. Property may be favoured as an inflation hedge, he added.

Singapore’s ruling party is grappling with voter concerns about housing affordability, and the government has ramped up the supply of private residential homes to the highest in more than a decade. But developers have chafed at the curbs and increased supply, with residential land plots receiving few or under-priced bids recently, and one getting none at all — the first time that has occurred in over two decades.

Home values remain eye-watering. The median price for a private condominium or apartment exceeded S$1.7 million (RM5.92 million) in June, according to the latest information from a URA database, up more than 30% from four years ago. In separate data released Monday, the second-hand market for cheaper public housing, where the bulk of locals live, saw its 17th consecutive quarter of price increases.

Final changes in the property price index for the second quarter will be published on July 26.

Source: Bloomberg

Malaysia’s $100 billion ghost city was meant to house 700,000 people. After few people moved in, developers tried in vain to make it into a tourist hub.

Now, the mega-development is serving as a set for a handful of reality shows and documentaries.

The empty city, just over Singapore’s western border, was used for an episode on the second season of the Netflix reality show “The Mole,” which debuted last week.

The competition-style reality series follows 12 contestants completing challenges while one of them secretly sabotages the other players. They race to grow a money pot prize and uncover who the traitor is among them.

The show’s 10-episode second season was filmed entirely in Malaysia and features Forest City, Kuala Lumpur, and Tioman Island. Filming started in July last year and lasted for six weeks, local media reported.

The contestants, who come from various professional backgrounds, complete treasure hunts, free dive, and abseil down a 38-story building in Forest City.

In the third episode of the season, the show’s host, the former NPR journalist Ari Shapiro, introduces Forest City: “A perfect spot for a glamorous holiday home, for those who can afford it. And most of the year, they lie empty.”

The city has also featured in other recent shows.

South Korea’s KBS filmed an episode of the travel reality series “Battle Trip” there, while Germany’s ProSieben TV filmed a short documentary about Forest City. An Austrian documentary titled “Hungry: Tipping the Scales” was also shot there.

Announced in 2006, the luxury housing project was meant to feature apartments, a waterpark, and hotels. The whole project cost its developers $100 billion.

But eight years after construction began, only a few thousand people live there. The project has turned into a ghost town — and a major liability for its developer, Country Garden, which is facing sizable financial issues elsewhere.

Source: Business Insider

ECONOMISTS flagged the declining employment share of the Philippine manufacturing sector, which they said is key to achieving a high-income status and meeting other development goals including bringing down poverty incidence to single digits at a faster rate.

A De La Salle University (DLSU) School of Economics report on Monday showed that most targets under the Philippines’ development plan for 2023 to 2028 will be met later than expected, and noted that the country would struggle to achieve high growth in the long-run in the absence of an industrial policy that has helped its Southeast Asian neighbors’ manufacturing industries climb the value chain.

Most Filipino workers are employed in sectors of “very low productivity,” the report said, adding the manufacturing sector’s employment share is only 8% and is expected to further decrease to 7% by 2030.

“Historically, countries that have achieved high-income status obtained employment shares in manufacturing from about 20-25%, sometimes even higher,” Mariel Monica Sauler, an economics professor at DLSU, said at the report’s launch in Makati City. “Our current manufacturing employment share is just 8%.”

For the Philippines to become an economic powerhouse, it needs to restructure its economy by taking workers out of the agriculture sector through mechanization and by significantly increasing the employment share of its manufacturing base, said Jesus Felipe, director of the Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies at DLSU.

“We desperately need firms with high organizational capabilities and highly productive, that manufacture and export complex products, and that compete in the world economy,” he said during the event.

Mr. Felipe said the declining number of Filipinos leaving the country for job opportunities abroad — a phenomenon linked to an increase in wage rates locally — provides an opportunity for the country to expand its manufacturing base.

According to the report, the number of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) will further decline to 1.91 million in 2025 from 1.97 million in 2023.

“We think that our wage rates are going to increase.

Therefore, the incentive to leave the country declines,” Mr. Felipe said.

Even as the agriculture sector’s employment share has been on a decline, Ms. Sauler said the share of construction and transport and storage sectors, which have “low productivity” and “low wages,” have increased.

Source: Business world