Lakepoint Condo - Enbloc Potential

[tericia]

With the en bloc going through or not, the rules end of the day's set by the authorities. So we all have to play by the rules and seriously i think the gripe for me is the fact that life in Singapore's really tough. Whether we still have our jobs or our homes is something we all have to manage everyday, not only during en bloc periods. Kudos should go to all Singaporeans who take the time to write in and air their views be it good or bad because, we are the "stayers", not the "quitters". Lakepoint is really a nice place to stay in but unfortunately i also agree the odds are currently stacked against it for the en bloc. That just means home (which these days becomes a commodity as well) is here for a while longer.

[tericia]

looks like frasers home may be either delaying or cancelling the launch. they covered the signs at the entrance to the canal and the number they advertised no one answered when i called.

[EBD]

looks like frasers home may be either delaying or cancelling the launch. they covered the signs at the entrance to the canal and the number they advertised no one answered when i called.

Yup, I don't think I ever saw anyone visit frasers home site either.

Any news from Sales Committee? Seems there is zero news, I don't see any minutes posted on the notice boards..... I thought these group of people were going to work hard to unlock the value.... blah blah blah...
My guess is they cant even get a sales agent.

I may try emailing them later see if any response at all. i think address is [email protected]
Even in a good market enbloc of lakepoint is totally not realistic in my opinion with so much spare empty land nearby.


btw I am keeping a lookout for adverts in straits times property for lakepoint units, would be interesting to see if any sales committee members are trying to secretly offload them..... have seen this behaviour in a few other SC's in doomed enblocs.

[tericia]

quite amusing that you are actually more interested and more informed than i am about my own condo. i personally think they can't do anything in this climate though i hope with the next peak, they can do more than just try (like this time). i would prefer to move closer to town so am tracking town units rather than jurong side. but i must say i really enjoy staying here so far cuz the big spaces really help and though it's a short walk to the mrt i don't hear the tracks like lakeholmz. i just found out one of my neighbour is actually someone who goes around buying condos then after that try to enter the sales committee to convince everyone to enbloc, thereby making $$$. it's "nice" to see these people creating a lot of distraction and negativity.

[EBD]

Now what makes you think I don't live there too?

[tericia]

haha, well this makes really good conversation then. What made you decide to move all the way here? You were from town (district 9) if i do not remember wrongly. Anyway, do you have any other properties besides this (assuming you stay at lakepoint)? Thought it would be good to exchange pointers. Cheerio!

[EBD]

I was in down town. Easy answer is ...... enbloc..... All the prices move up before you get your check and you have to move further out. So if LP goes enbloc, I guess everyone moves to JB. But realistically it wont, not even next cycle, not until all the land is occupied nearby.

Ok, thats only half true, we could buy another apartment right now, but there would be zero gain in doing so, so why bother. Originally intended to wait out here 1-2 years for prices to drop, but looking at the whole world financial mess it may take considerably less time as people who over leveraged themselves (you already met them earlier in this thread.... you know, the ones hurling abuse because some people want the prices to correct or even crash) start to go bankrupt.

So waiting for this to play out, it's almost like 1998 all over again. Stocks crash first, then real economy starts to suffer, then property plunges as the naive find out anyone can make money in up cycle, its how smart you are to position yourself before or during a plunge that counts.

Until then, will be staying at lakepoint, watching with amusment at the enbloc circus that rolled into town here.
eg. periodic resurfacing of tennis courts = disaster!..... not regular maintainance. These people are amateurs.....

[tericia]

haha, i haven't been inside a tennis court for a long time so am not sure how the surfacing's suppose to be like. Am sure residents can give pointers on how to make the place even better till the time comes for us to enbloc. I doubt the situation's that bad now (even though i know some say fire sales coming, but like where?!?) and my feel's 1997's still rather fresh in many people's minds. So this time round i hardly see anyone over stretch themselves before doing some serious calculations + have months of sleepless nights before they commit to any property (even as price kept going up previously), like me. I hardly met anyone who was speculating this time unlike 1997 this time and most of them were very conservative. Those who so called were upgraders most of them actually only took baby steps (like 3 room move up to 4 room) rather than jump straight into expensive condos immediately. I suspect prices will be sticky for couple of years at least if not till 2011 before we see 2004/ 2005 prices again. Was looking at the charts recently especially great depression. Bottom was in 1932/ 1933 about 4 years after 1929 crash. History's been repeating itself consistently so far based on empirical data. Hopefully the launches coming out in 2010/ 2011 will cause serious damage to the property sector, that would be fun to watch and start bargain hunting. I know i'll start getting abuses again but end of the day, it's all about security and wealth. I would like to see more people jumping over sooner than later so i don't have to wait another 10 years before i see the money.

[Prof Lilian Ng (NBS, NTU)]

haha, i haven't been inside a tennis court for a long time so am not sure how the surfacing's suppose to be like. Am sure residents can give pointers on how to make the place even better till the time comes for us to enbloc. I doubt the situation's that bad now (even though i know some say fire sales coming, but like where?!?) and my feel's 1997's still rather fresh in many people's minds. So this time round i hardly see anyone over stretch themselves before doing some serious calculations + have months of sleepless nights before they commit to any property (even as price kept going up previously), like me. I hardly met anyone who was speculating this time unlike 1997 this time and most of them were very conservative. Those who so called were upgraders most of them actually only took baby steps (like 3 room move up to 4 room) rather than jump straight into expensive condos immediately. I suspect prices will be sticky for couple of years at least if not till 2011 before we see 2004/ 2005 prices again. Was looking at the charts recently especially great depression. Bottom was in 1932/ 1933 about 4 years after 1929 crash. History's been repeating itself consistently so far based on empirical data. Hopefully the launches coming out in 2010/ 2011 will cause serious damage to the property sector, that would be fun to watch and start bargain hunting. I know i'll start getting abuses again but end of the day, it's all about security and wealth. I would like to see more people jumping over sooner than later so i don't have to wait another 10 years before i see the money.

Are we near the kind of economic difficulty faced during the Great Depression? The US economy today is much stronger than it was in 1929 and the fundamentals are still pretty strong regardless of the crisis we're in.

If you look at the numbers, they are so dramatically different. GDP growth in the US is about 1% and I'm sure it will fall but it is nothing like the -27% during the Great Depression. Unemployment is about 6.1%, but during the Great Depression it was 25%.

Today's world is very different from the Great Depression period - there is greater linkage between fiscal policies and the economy than before and all policymakers are working together. So we are not even close to the level of difficulties faced then.

[tericia]

If you are really Prof Lilian Ng and you are really a professor, i'm deeply honoured that you took the time to answer. I'm glad Condosingapore.com has people like you. Though i do agree that the policy makers are now working together to remedy the situation, the problem now is we do not know if the remedy solves the problem quickly or it just drags the economy through a long period of low growth. I suspect the situation may become a U shape recovery rather than a V shape one. The situation in US is bleak as towns get shut down because everyone's foreclosed. Because this situation starts from everyone losing their biggest asset: their homes, i feel it's not just losing pocket change. A home in absolute amount is a large sum for people to lose. That said fundamentally Singapore is in a good position now and i do agree it is possible the recovery for us may be much shorter than expected especially with China now in the picture when they weren't there before. However, both US and Europe are affected, this in my opinion will dilute any impact China would have on us. Moreover, the IR, F1 and Youth Olympic were expected to have positive impact but now we are not really sure if they would make any impact at all, even if they open on time. The debt that US carries is also a worry as they now put more $ into the markets to try to stabilise them, but where is the money coming from? If the time comes where they are expected to pay up is during this 5-10 years, my opinion is this will accumulate into another great depression or worse because during the great depression, US didn't have trillions of debt. So my opinion's it'll take us probably another 10 years before we see the light and it will take probably 10 years or more for things to clear up.

[Question]

If you are really Prof Lilian Ng and you are really a professor, i'm deeply honoured that you took the time to answer. I'm glad Condosingapore.com has people like you. Though i do agree that the policy makers are now working together to remedy the situation, the problem now is we do not know if the remedy solves the problem quickly or it just drags the economy through a long period of low growth. I suspect the situation may become a U shape recovery rather than a V shape one. The situation in US is bleak as towns get shut down because everyone's foreclosed. Because this situation starts from everyone losing their biggest asset: their homes, i feel it's not just losing pocket change. A home in absolute amount is a large sum for people to lose. That said fundamentally Singapore is in a good position now and i do agree it is possible the recovery for us may be much shorter than expected especially with China now in the picture when they weren't there before. However, both US and Europe are affected, this in my opinion will dilute any impact China would have on us. Moreover, the IR, F1 and Youth Olympic were expected to have positive impact but now we are not really sure if they would make any impact at all, even if they open on time. The debt that US carries is also a worry as they now put more $ into the markets to try to stabilise them, but where is the money coming from? If the time comes where they are expected to pay up is during this 5-10 years, my opinion is this will accumulate into another great depression or worse because during the great depression, US didn't have trillions of debt. So my opinion's it'll take us probably another 10 years before we see the light and it will take probably 10 years or more for things to clear up.

If you are the US government, what would you do?

[tericia]

Hi Question, thanks for asking. I feel i'm not at the position to be able to comment what i would do if I'm the government as i don't know what resources i've and i've not done any work at that level before. However, after some thought i like to ask Prof Ng when she wrote, "The US economy today is much stronger than it was in 1929 and the fundamentals are still pretty strong regardless of the crisis we're in", what are the fundamentals you are referring to? I'm also curious what are the indicators you look at. Are we still referring back to a simple interest rates versus inflation like all textbook states or is the situation a lot more complex than that. GDP growth is one indicator but if we are to go through long periods of low growth or the U shape recovery results in slight negative growth for 5 years or more, then there must be something in the GDP that academics can point out to be roughly the main reason why GDP is not moving up. Another point i would like to make is though i agree with Prof Ng that, "Today's world is very different from the Great Depression period - there is greater linkage between fiscal policies and the economy than before and all policymakers are working together. So we are not even close to the level of difficulties faced then", usually when there is interference, there will be deadweight loss. Currently the precedence in all data and results has not shown 1 command economy or any interference from the government that produced a result that is worth considering. I personally feel the deadweight loss resulted from policymakers will cause a longer than needed bear market. If that is the case, we will still see a bottoming out of the economy in the next 3-5 years, which is the best time for bargain hunting. Unless anytime before that another crisis strikes.

[Barack Obama]

If you are the US government, what would you do?

I will answer you in January next year.

[Thxs]

Thxs for generating interest here. You must be seller looking to sell..
Me too !

[Unreg¡stered]

Thxs for generating interest here. You must be seller looking to sell..
Me too !

Which joker is generating interest? More like having their own discussion.

[EBD]

Thxs for generating interest here. You must be seller looking to sell..
Me too !

Generating what interest? The enbloc is as dead as it's going to get. There is zero activity as far as I can see on notice boards from SC (the people who promised to work so hard for you..... blah blah blah).

I see so many jokers now desperately trying to sell failed enbloc in ST on saturday, still try to use enbloc potential in the ad. So funny, which sucker would believe now?

[tericia]

Actually, you can't blame them. Think some of them were so over sold on the en bloc idea, they now find it hard to see it in pieces so soon after the "height" of the sales meeting. Anyone reading the right reports + with experience will know rocketing property prices are what they are: rockets. Rockets die as quickly as they start. Most of my friends or contacts that were thinking they can wait for prices to rise even more are now worrying if they can even off load their property at break even price. It's tough to be hopeful then see what you thought was possible gone in a moment.

[tericia]

i wonder who's gonna buy if it's $1000 psf. It will be interesting to see how it pans out.

To all condo owners in Jurong West,


Congrats to all of us. The $1000 psf price has come to town!


Saw this advert on the new development at Lakeside by Frasers Centrepoint.

http://www.propertyguru.com.sg/listi...de-new-project

[EBD]

i wonder who's gonna buy if it's $1000 psf. It will be interesting to see how it pans out.

I wonder how old the advert you linked to is. I guess there's one born every minute.

[EBD]

AGM coming soon.

I wonder if we can expect any of the antics seen at bayshore park or mandarin gardens were the enbloc comittee try to make the place unliveable and prevent maintainance by blocking motions and cramping management budgets.

I hope not, they should realise enbloc cannot happen now with the state of the economy and credit crunch.

Especially as caspian next door has gone for a price that makes enbloc unfeasable for developers.

[tericia]

It would be poor strategy for the "punters" to make the place unliveable. We cannot guarantee that someone would be interested in this plot of land as there is much empty land around Jurong.

If the time comes where the market upturns where there is a chance for profit taking and no one wants to buy the place en bloc, then making the place unliveable would also guarantee that individual units would not fetch an attractive price. No one wants to live in a place that looks like a “hand me down”.

You are right about that the qualifications of the committee members do not represent how savvy they are about selling the project. Based on another committee member (a stayer), those (one of the most qualified member) eager to push for an en bloc suggested we remove all the CCTV as there is no crime committed so far. Well… what can I say?

It may or may not be a good thing if the whole lakeside area becomes a “Hillview” area, a congregation of condos. The competition may actually help profile us more since we are technically the cheapest around here.

Still if they are so narrow minded about it even though our maintenance fees are already so low for such a big place, then I think they would make the whole experience a disaster.

[EBD]

It would be poor strategy for the "punters" to make the place unliveable. We cannot guarantee that someone would be interested in this plot of land as there is much empty land around Jurong.

If the time comes where the market upturns where there is a chance for profit taking and no one wants to buy the place en bloc, then making the place unliveable would also guarantee that individual units would not fetch an attractive price. No one wants to live in a place that looks like a “hand me down”.

You are right about that the qualifications of the committee members do not represent how savvy they are about selling the project. Based on another committee member (a stayer), those (one of the most qualified member) eager to push for an en bloc suggested we remove all the CCTV as there is no crime committed so far. Well… what can I say?

It may or may not be a good thing if the whole lakeside area becomes a “Hillview” area, a congregation of condos. The competition may actually help profile us more since we are technically the cheapest around here.

Still if they are so narrow minded about it even though our maintenance fees are already so low for such a big place, then I think they would make the whole experience a disaster.

You make the assumption that people trying to sell enbloc care.
My understanding is that the Lillian Ng earlier in the thread, if it really is her, is not a resident of lakepoint. Owners in this category won't have to put up with the degradation of the estate if they choose to try and make like bayshore park and mandarin gardens.

It's a standard tactic, but one that puts it at odds with the requirement of the MCST to upkeep the place, which is why the mandarin garden MC was smart to refuse to stand for election. Quite frankly it also puts them in danger of being legal action.

I am not suprised that they want the CCTV cut. You certainly don't want to be caught gluing peoples mailboxes shut like at Laguna Park
How much do you think it would actually save?

And where is the progress!!!!!!! My old place already got agent and lawyer in 2 weeks after forming. And reportage to owners of the status. You see any?


As for the BS the previous poster claiming to be Lillian Ng was spouting.... the market has spoken.

I'm not against enbloc per se, but it's not the right time, it's not the right price - underscored by caspian and reflected in plummeting property prices, and it's really not the right team. Hope the banks don't start calling them for top ups haha.


ps we should also make sure MC gives out details of NEA contact number to all units. I am seeing increase in mosquito numbers since caspian started.
And noise way past 10pm.

[tericia]

I am new to this en bloc issue but if the experience tells me anything, I see that most do not think about their strategies before jumping onto the train of big money. You might get the money but the train will kill you too if you leap blindly.

We are not talking about a simple sum of a few hundreds a month, like a simple insurance plan. Even that, many people in Singapore has problems coming out with that sum without investigating thoroughly the issues at hand. Seriously, those who cannot even part with some monies to prepare for their future deserve the future they get.

Here at lakepoint, it is the other way round, or the start of it. Some treat the en bloc issue too lightly. Come on, if done right, we all will get more than many even dream off. In my opinion, the planning was done haphazardly and it was quite kan cheong during all the hype.

Risking the fact that some will say I am doing back seat driving (or back seat criticism) here, at least those who feel they are in for the buck should allow some space for personal gains, whether they stay here or not. If the en bloc turns out to be a dud, which is what is happening, at least give those who want out the ability to cash out at the highest possible. After staying here for a while, I must say I will like the place to be in as pristine a condition as possible because it is a lovely place to be.

If the estate turns out to be a mess, we will all be stuck. Only those who have more than one apartment and have the holding power can wait out till things turn for the better, maybe. From what I see, those in the sales committee or MC are mostly the ones with only one place, that is lakepoint is the only home they own, unlike most of the watchers. We are watchers also because we are not here all the time; we can go somewhere else when the situation presents itself. They stand to lose the most if this place goes down while the rest of us can just peacefully go somewhere else while just renting our apartments out.

[tericia]

heard the committee trying for the en bloc again. Wonder if it is true and who would buy...

[EBD]

heard the committee trying for the en bloc again. Wonder if it is true and who would buy...

Why bother buying from us? So much empty land nearby.

[hotswill88]

Why bother buying from us? So much empty land nearby.

If cheap sales, why not ? but then no owner will agree, right ?

[proud owner]

If cheap sales, why not ? but then no owner will agree, right ?

by the way where is Lakepoint ?

[tericia]

haha, well... say also no use. Cheap sale, no one wanna sell. If not got a lot of empty land around so who would buy right? Think most probably place will run till lease expires.

[hotswill88]

haha, well... say also no use. Cheap sale, no one wanna sell. If not got a lot of empty land around so who would buy right? Think most probably place will run till lease expires.

The new Caspian sells like hot cakes................so, is price of lakepoint also on the up-trend ?

[EBD]

The new Caspian sells like hot cakes................so, is price of lakepoint also on the up-trend ?

price is down

Ask yourself why caspian sell like "hotcakes"

because the price very low.


There is so much empty land here. You want enbloc, the land has to disappear first. Developer will by empty land from government at lower price than us and not have costs of demolition on top of it.

Some people here really need to wake up their idea man.

enbloc downtown as no land left.