Follow the Sine to Singapore Property Prices

For six years until recently, Mr Stephen Mangham, 50, was the group chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Singapore, and busy managing 600 people.

Today, he runs a 12-man outfit called Mangham Gaxiola, which he started with his former creative partner Robert Gaxiola.

Small as it is, so far, it has been 'hugely rewarding and fun', he says, because the business is his and starting his own firm was something that he had thought about on and off over the past 15 years.

His firm has got off to a flying start, having secured a founding client in CIMB bank.

Mr Mangham graduated with a law degree from Oxford University, but chose to be in advertising.

'At university, I edited the uni newspaper, which made me think that I would enjoy working in an industry which is also about the art of persuasion and communication,' he says. 'I have never regretted the decision.'

Mr Mangham and his wife Helen have four boys, aged 10, 15, 19 and 21.

Q: Are you a spender or saver?

I don't like to owe money, so I have always tried to make sure that I spend less than I earn. I try to strike a balance between making sure that we enjoy life now, and putting away enough for our old age.

I don't spend much on myself. Most of my monthly income is spent (other than pension savings and mortgage payments), but I have saved all my bonus payments over the years.

I spend the most on my family, on my kids' education, their swimming lessons, rugby lessons and so on.

Four boys don't come cheap, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Q: How much do you charge to your credit cards every month?

Probably about $5,000. I try to use debit cards rather than credit cards.

Q: What financial planning have you done for yourself?

A good chunk of our money is invested in property. I have a pension fund and some money in shares.

And my wife has a trust in her name. But we also keep quite a lot on short-term deposit, just in case we need it, in Singapore and Britain.

I'm quite conservative when it comes to investing. I don't like to take risks, and I have an aversion to managed unit trusts where agents take large commissions upfront. I invested in unit trusts which charge a 7 per cent fee and it hardly grew. It was because what little gains there were went to the fees.

I have two life insurance policies, which are enough to look after my family should anything unfortunate happen.

I have three properties in Europe and none here.

First, I invest only in what I know well, which is my business.

Second, I like to keep a lot of money in very safe schemes. I believe housing should be long-term investments. If you don't know where you are going to be in the next 10 years, investing in a market that you don't know very well is very risky.

I don't believe in taking a blind gamble that prices will rise all the time. I know an expat who bought a property at the peak and was made redundant two months after that.

Q: Moneywise, what were your growing-up years like?

I am the oldest of three children. I have a brother and sister. My father was an aeronautical engineer and my mother a nurse. I had a comfortable, happy upbringing - a typical lower middle class one.

Money was sometimes tight, but I never went without it. I grew up realising that you had to earn money before you could spend it.

Q: How did you get interested in investing?

My first investment was in an apartment in London when I was 22. It just seemed more sensible to buy my own place rather than pay someone else the rent.

The apartment cost £30,000. I borrowed the 10 per cent deposit from the bank and made the purchase jointly with a friend.

We then had enough money to buy a bed each, but that was about it.

Q: What properties do you own?

I have a two-bedroom apartment in London, which I bought in 2009 for about $1.2 million and an apartment in Cheltenham, Britain, which was purchased in 1999 for about $500,000. These two properties are tenanted out. I also bought a house in the south of France in 2006 for $850,000. We just sold a house in Cheltenham and are thinking of getting another one.

Q: What's the most extravagant thing you have bought?

Our greatest extravagance as a family are the family holidays. We take a few holidays a year.

Our most expensive holiday was a round-the-world trip just over 10 years ago.

We bought business-class tickets and took in Los Angeles, Brisbane, Sydney, Hong Kong and China over five weeks.

Q: What's your retirement plan?

I plan to be financially independent when I get the children off my hands!

I don't plan to retire, that's for sure. I can't see a time when I'm not in this business.

I enjoy it too much. Retirement will come, for sure, but it's too far away to think about it now.

Q: Home is now...

A leased five-bedroom bungalow with a pool near Holland Road.

Q: I drive...

A leased Toyota sport utility vehicle for $2,900 a month, including insurance.

I would love to drive something exciting, but I can't bring myself to spend so much money on a car.

joyceteo@sph.com.sg

WORST AND BEST BETS

Q: What's your best investment to date?

This happened when I was offered the chance to invest in the shares of a company I worked with, a public listed firm in Britain.

It was going through something of a turnaround and I was one of the 50 senior guys who were given the chance to own a stake in it. I made a 300 per cent return in three years.

Q: And your worst?

I took out an endowment policy in the late 1980s and it fell miserably short of the target payout.

I accelerated the policy from 25 years to 20 years and took the money out. The target payout was £90,000, but it came in at only £70,000.

Endowment policies were very popular then; I followed the crowd.

Quek Xufeng is five years old and, rarely for kids these days, he has never tasted a hamburger.

Just like his parents, he is a vegan and does not eat anything that is of animal origin. This rules out meat, fish, eggs and milk products, although he does sometimes consume products such as a gelatinous dessert made of sea algae and sugar.

The first time he asked if he could have a burger, his mother, property agent Hong Meishan, 34, posed this question to him: 'If I cut your flesh and ate it, would you feel pain? Then how do you think the animal will feel?'

Little surprise then, that Xufeng has not asked for a hamburger since.

Madam Hong, who became a vegan about eight years ago for animal welfare reasons, says she hopes raising her only son this way will help him develop compassion for animals and a desire to contribute to saving the Earth.

She has not been without her detractors. Her parents did not share her beliefs and felt that Xufeng needed meat in his diet to be healthy. But she insists that he is no less healthier than his peers who eat meat.

The boy eats tofu, nuts and beans for protein and she also feeds him herbal supplements.

She also keeps up with dietary research and maintains a strict 'colour code' when it comes to whipping up her son's meals.

The colours of vegetables are an indication that they are good for certain parts of the body, she says. For example, vegetables that have a red hue are good for the heart, while greens are good for the liver.

Madam Hong also substitutes cow's milk with oat, barley, sesame and brown rice milk. And the bread the family eats is baked by her and contains no milk or butter. She uses olive oil as a substitute.

In keeping with eco-friendly living, she buys vegetables from an organic farm rather than at the market. She spends about $500 just on vegetables for her family of three every month.

She also recycles plastics and metals and converts reusable items such as cartons and toilet paper rolls into playthings for her son.

She also does not use leather, in keeping with her belief of kindness to animals.

But it is not easy to live green, she admits. She and her husband, Mr Quek Sio Hua, 46, who runs his own transportation logistics firm, both own cars - a necessity as their jobs require them to get around a lot.

'I do what I can. The Earth is sick. If everybody can do a little bit, it will really help,' she says.

Kimberly Spykerman

'If I cut your flesh and ate it, would you feel pain? Then how do you think the animal will feel?'

MADAM HONG MEISHAN, who posed this question to her son Xufeng when he asked to have a hamburger

When Madam Bettina Ng gave birth to her daughter almost two years ago, she was all psyched up for breastfeeding and thought it would be a breeze.

After all, she had given birth naturally, without epidural, a feat not many mothers today can lay claim to.

Her doula - a birth coach - visited her twice at the hospital and three times at home after she was discharged, and found no problems with her baby's latching on for nursing.

But during baby Alexis' one-month check-up, the doctor looked at the infant's weight gain and said she was 'not thriving', and suggested she took formula milk as a supplement.

When Madam Ng heard that, she felt stressed out and guilty, like some other mums who do not breastfeed exclusively.

The 35-year-old civil servant recalls: 'I was a total emotional wreck. Every evening I would start weeping. Initially, I didn't tell anyone about this. I felt terrible, like I had failed in my duty as a mother because I wasn't able to breastfeed her fully.'

Although she introduced formula to her daughter as advised, she soldiered on to partially breastfeed Alexis until the girl was eight months old.

Eventually, she overcame her feeling of being a failure. 'I rationalised that I did everything I could until my body almost gave up. My entire reservoir had been emptied, what else do you want me to do? My conscience as a mummy is clear,' she says.

Despite a less than successful first attempt, she intends to try to breastfeed exclusively if she has another child.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends that babies be breastfed exclusively for at least six months.

But the breastfeeding rate in Singapore is low, according to doctors LifeStyle spoke to. Associate Professor Tan Hak Koon, head and senior consultant of the Obstetrics & Gynaecology department at the Singapore General Hospital, says the mean duration of breastfeeding in Singapore is 12.7 weeks.

To combat the low figure, five maternity hospitals have implemented WHO's Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) guidelines, in a bid to be certified by the international authority by 2014.

The hospitals - SGH, KK Women's and Children's Hospital, Mount Alvernia Hospital, National University Hospital (NUH) and Thomson Medical Centre - no longer provide formula milk as freely as before or they charge a nominal fee for infant formula.

In line with the guidelines, Mount Alvernia helps mothers initiate breastfeeding within the first half-hour of birth and NUH and Thomson practise rooming-in where baby and mother stay together 24 hours a day.

Dr Yvonne Ng, a consultant at the department of neonatology at NUH, says a newborn baby should not remain in the nursery away from the mother for long periods during the early days, so that breastfeeding can be initiated more easily.

But a mindset change is required for parents to accept this. Currently, many parents in Singapore leave their baby in the nursery so they can get more rest.

When mums do not breastfeed, it is often not for the lack of trying.

Property agent Paulynn Tan, 30, gave birth to son Elliott 10 months ago. At the time, she had prepared all the equipment needed for breastfeeding, including a nursing pillow, a breast pump and milk storage bags.

But just before she was discharged after four days, her paediatrician advised her to supplement Elliott with 15ml of formula after each feed because she was not producing enough milk for him.

'He would latch on for a few minutes but lose interest shortly and fall asleep. But when I unlatch him, he wakes up crying. My baby was just more demanding than other babies,' she says.

'At one point, I remember the nurse pushing him back into my ward telling me that my son can't wait.'

The stress she felt built up when she saw that her baby was satisfied only after a formula feed and it further dented her confidence.

After one month, she stopped breastfeeding 'with a very heavy heart'. Part of her still feels guilty for doing so, a feeling reinforced by a slew of pro- breastfeeding articles she found online when she was looking for support.

'Some articles are quite hurtful and say things such as breastmilk is the best and there is no reason why you shouldn't give breastmilk,' she says.

'But they do not understand there are mums who have tried every single thing and are not able to produce enough milk. I hope people will question less or keep their gasps to themselves when a mother does not breastfeed.'

Doctors and lactation consultants say common breastfeeding problems include poor baby positioning, perceived lack of supply and poor latching on the breast which will result in skin being torn, bleeding and painful.

The Breastfeeding Mothers' Support Group receives at least 2,000 calls and up to 800 e-mail messages a year from mothers seeking help with breastfeeding.

Vice-president Angeline Wee, 46, says its counsellors provide emotional and 'technical' support to mums, including guiding them on how to position the baby and dispensing facts on breastfeeding.

'Sometimes mothers just need a listening ear because they may be fighting with their mothers- in-law or confinement ladies, who insist on feeding formula,' she says.

The group follows the WHO guidelines on breastfeeding.

'But for mums who are struggling, the counsellors will tell them some is better than none. In extreme cases, we'll tell them it's okay to stop breastfeeding if you really don't feel happy. If you are feeling grouchy all the time, it's not good for the baby. The mum's psychological health is more important,' says Ms Wee.

Indeed, for her own mental well-being, public relations director Julie Chiang, 33, started to supplement her son Dylan's feeds with formula after two months and continued with partial breastfeeding until recently when he was six months old.

She says: 'I'm pro-breastfeeding but I stopped because my son started falling asleep at the breast whenever I was feeding him and it became very stressful having him latched on to me all the time. I was tired, irritated and, at times, resentful. At that time, I felt that breastfeeding was all I was good for.'

She was wary about telling other mothers that she used formula.

'Whenever I share this, they have that disapproving look in their eyes and whatever you say is an excuse to them. But by introducing formula, it does not mean I do not love my son or our bond is any less strong.'

janeng@sph.com.sg

facebook.com/ST.JaneNg

Share your difficulties with breastfeeding. Write to suntimes@sph.com.sg

'Introducing formula does not mean I do not love my son or our bond is any less strong.'

MS JULIE CHIANG, with son Dylan and husband Terence Chan, on feeding her son formula milk

'There are mums who have tried every single thing and are not able to produce enough milk. I hope people will question less or keep their gasps to themselves when a mother does not breastfeed.'

MS PAULYNN TAN, with son Elliott and husband Roy Tan, on the strident pro-breastfeeding articles she reads online

THERE were plenty of new private homes sold last month but a key property industry body warned yesterday that the market sentiment may be more sombre.

Mr Wong Heang Fine, president of the Real Estate Developers' Association of Singapore (Redas), said January's strong numbers - analysts tip that about 1,800 units were moved - must be seen in perspective as they do not mean that every project is doing well.

'January's figures are generated by the new launches of two or three projects, so the numbers themselves do not really reflect the entire state of the market. You have to look at the numbers a little more in detail,' he added.

'Generally, in terms of new launches, they have been getting very good response.

'And of course for these two or three projects, the product is also very good.'

Mr Wong, who was speaking on the sidelines of Redas' Spring Festival lunch at Shangri-La Hotel, added that sales from specific projects and locations have to be examined to get a truer picture.

Three projects launched last month - Watertown in Punggol, The Hillier in Upper Bukit Timah and Parc Rosewood in Woodlands - sold about 1,360 units in total last month, according to recent reports. This is in stark contrast to the meagre 632 units moved in December across the entire market.

Data for January's total new home sales will be released by the Urban Redevelopment Authority on Feb 15.

Mr Wong, who is also chief executive of CapitaLand Residential Singapore, said in his speech that while the strong interest in recent launches shows there is liquidity in the market, foreign purchases, especially in the high-end sector, are well down. Another concern is that the large supply of new office and factory spaces in the pipeline will weigh on rents and vacancy rates.

Developers will have to adopt their own pricing strategy in the light of these market conditions, Mr Wong noted, adding that Redas is still monitoring the impact of the new additional buyer's stamp duty that came into effect on Dec8.

Mr Wong also told the guests, who included Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew as guest of honour, that Redas is looking for any Budget incentives that can 'lower the cost of doing business'.

Developers shared Mr Wong's caution, with some telling The Straits Times that they are monitoring the market, and also noting that buyer sentiment partly hinges on the health of the global economy.

CapitaLand's Bishan Central condo project, for example, will be launched when the market is ready, Mr Wong said, noting that it appears 'quite stable, barring any issues in Europe'.

Frasers Centrepoint Homes chief executive Cheang Kok Kheong said he expects prices to fall by 3 to 5 per cent this year. However, its launches will proceed.

The Straits Times understands that its executive condo project, Twin Waterfalls in Punggol, will be launched this month.

Mr Cheang noted that recent land prices have come down slightly and some of these savings can be passed on to buyers.

'Obviously, we also lowered our price to meet expectations. We wanted to sell (Watertown) for $1,300 per sq ft but we've moved the price down to just below $1,100 psf,' he added. Watertown is being jointly developed by Far East Organization, Frasers Centrepoint and Japan's Sekisui House.

Chip Eng Seng CEO Raymond Chia added that the Dec 8 cooling measures would help stabilise the market and it is the land supply in the pipeline that might impact the market more.

The firm hopes to launch a mid- to high-end condo project in Fort Road in the second quarter of this year.

But Mr Chia said that the market is still 'sensitive' and the firm will look at it closely before deciding on the project's pricing.

esthert@sph.com.sg

Stark contrast

January sales

1,360 units sold from just three projects launched: Watertown in Punggol, The Hillier in Upper Bukit Timah and Parc Rosewood in Woodlands

December sales

632 units for the entire market

PROPERTY developers are continuing to plow ahead with their pipeline of launches, even as they ponder over the best course of action to take following the government's latest cooling measure, the additional buyer's stamp duty (ABSD).

Frasers Centrepoint for one, will go ahead with the launch of its Twin Waterfalls, a 99-year leasehold executive condominium (EC) project located close to Punggol MRT station, with e-applications opening on Feb 10.

But buyers will find prices more palatable as they would be about 20 per cent cheaper than the recently released Watertown, according to Frasers Centrepoint Homes chief executive officer for development and property Cheang Kok Kheong. He put prices for the project at between $720 and $750 per square foot (psf).

In addition, the property player is also expecting to unveil a 99-year leasehold condominium development, Palm Isles - a 429-unit garden home styled project at Flora Drive - sometime in the first week of April, at an average price of just under $900 psf.

But whether or not there will be a shift towards more competitive pricing in the days ahead was not confirmed by developers at the Redas (Real Estate Developers' Association of Singapore) Spring Festival luncheon yesterday, as they feel that it would be premature to judge the true effects of the ABSD at this juncture.

Redas president Wong Heang Fine, who is also the chief executive of CapitaLand's Singapore residential arm, pointed out that even when the impact can be determined, each developer would likely respond in a different manner depending on the target market and product.

Having said that, there has been a significant decline in foreign property buyers, especially in the high-end sector post-ABSD, noted Mr Wong, who also highlighted that recent URA data has reflected a moderation in prices for private residential assets for nine consecutive quarters.

'We really have to see how things go in the next few months before we decide what our reaction would be to the government measures,' said Mr Wong.

Price-wise, consultants caution that values could fall by about 3 to 5 per cent across the board in 2012 on the back of softening land sale prices.

All in all, the tone at the new year event was more subdued than at the last Redas function held in December 2011, with most developers keeping a tight-lip about future plans, providing coy comments at best.

But Mr Wong was pretty forthcoming with one thing, his budget wish for government incentives to lower the industry's business costs in the times ahead. A big wish that would put a smile across most developers if delivered.

Source: Business Times © Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. Reprinted with permission.