UBS avoiding Singapore, HK housing markets

Romesh Navaratnarajah18 Sep 2017

Singapore skyline

The bank feels that Singapore’s housing market is too heavily regulated. 

Multinational bank UBS is avoiding the housing markets of Singapore and Hong Kong as there is a tendency for the governments of these cities to impose property cooling measures to control rising prices, reported Bloomberg.

“We have no exposure in the Singapore residential market and we are very comfortable not having any exposure. Historically its been very exposed to government policy intervention and that continues,” said Graham Mackie, real estate head for Asia Pacific at UBS Asset Management.

SEE ALSO: Morgan Stanley: Home prices to rise by 8% in 2018  

Nevertheless, UBS is interested in investing in Singapore’s business parks and light industrial projects, as government policies are more favourable to these segments given the authorities’ goal of creating a more service-oriented economy.

Likewise, the financial institution is bullish on Hong Kong commercial real estate like offices and retail space, but it currently doesn’t want to bet its money on the city’s residential sector due to “severe” property curbs.

 

Romesh Navaratnarajah, Senior Editor at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact him about this or other stories, email romesh@propertyguru.com.sg

Albert Tan
Sep 18, 2017
No choice, Singapore mortgage interest rates are not directly correlated to the performance of Singapore economy and it is in a large part heavily dependant on the US interest rates. There was a time when Singapore economy was performing very well and yet it interest rates are diving together with the US economic crisis and US govt QE policy. This leads to hot speculation in Singapore property market amid a very low mortgage interest rate environment and a blooming hot economy during the 2010 to 2015 period. Singapore Govt had to intervention in the property to prevent a bubble in part caused by their own unusual monetary policy control that goes against major economic countries monetary policy which is more directly tag to their economy performance.
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