Singaporeans buy smaller London units (29 June 2014)

According to the Sunday Times, S'pore buyers were purchasing smaller London units.

CBRE found that 62% of London Property sales from Singapore in the first five months of this year were in the 500GBP to 750GBP psf range.  The first thought I had - where does CBRE get this aggregated data from?  I'm not questioning the data per se, but I do wonder.  Is it the UK Land Registry?  Or their own sample of data?  I am just being skeptical because we ought to be.

Royal Wharf Again?
Again, the article talks about Royal Wharf by Oxley (almost like free advertisement for them), but I have written before that I do not think very much of this project due to its location, noise and other issues. (see link)

Smaller London Units
We have blogged earlier that all our units belong to the 'every man's home' category.   Since Day 1 of our investment in London (which was from back in 2009), we have not purchased all the glitter and glamour units.

Rather, we have gone for down-to-earth units that are easily rentable to the masses, and that has worked very well.  The most expensive unit we have purchased in psf terms was significantly less than GBP 600 psf. In fact, other units purchased by us were less than GBP 500 psf.

In our conversations with other Singaporean investors, we have also found that a sizable number invested in similar type of units, having gone into London in the recent few years.  By similar type of units, I mean those that are less than 600 GBP psf or even less than 500 GBP psf.

Therefore, I am quite skeptical to believe the thrust of this article.  This article seems to imply that until this year, Singaporeans tended to purchase big and expensive units but now are chasing after smaller ones.  That is not the case, based on our anecdotal experience.  But who are we to say? LoL.

Short Term Gains?
If you are looking for a quick buck, I would not recommend investing in London.  You need at least a 5-year horizon, if not more.  And, the entire sale process is also rather long and cumbersome.  We have been going through a sale process.  It has taken more than 6 months already, yet not yet completed due to a myriad of reasons.  Not so easy.  Do be aware of this.

  Happy Investing!