Singapore: The Property Cooling Off

Before the bubble can build up, the Singapore authorities are already on their feet.

Let us read the Reuters report.

Singapore has introduced measures to cool its housing market, imposing a new stamp duty on homes sold within one year of purchase and capping the maximum housing loan at 80 per cent of the property value.

“While the current level of speculative activity in the market is still lower than what it was at the height of the property market boom, and overall price levels are below the previous peak, there is a risk that the market could overheat in the next few months,” the government said in a statement yesterday.

The new measures, which take effect today, do not affect first-time buyers of government-built HDB apartments who can still borrow up to 90 per cent of the property value.

Singapore private home prices have rallied strongly in recent months, with the government’s index gaining 7.4 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year following a 15.8 per cent quarter-on-quarter rise in July-September.

The government said that with the new stamp duty, sellers will have to pay up to 3 per cent of the value of the property transaction.

It added that while fewer than 10 per cent of housing loans in Singapore involve loans exceeding 80 per cent of the property value, “there are signs that more housing loans are originating at higher LTV (loan-to-value) bands”.

Mohamed Ismail, CEO of PropNex, a firm of property agents, said the new government measures will affect mainly homes in prime areas, which are the usual focus of speculators.

As for homes in outlying areas, the impact will be mostly psychological since loans exceeding 80 per cent of the property value are not popular due to the higher interest rate charged by banks in Singapore.

The Internet Will Make You Smarter

This is a Reuters report of a survey carried out on-line on the impact of the internet and its effects on users.

The outcome is certainly wonderful.

The online survey of 895 web users and experts found more than three-quarters believe the Internet will make people smarter in the next 10 years, according to results released yesterday.

Most of the respondents also said the Internet would improve reading and writing by 2020, according to the study, conducted by the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University in North Carolina and the Pew Internet and American Life project.

“Three out of four experts said our use of the Internet enhances and augments human intelligence, and two-thirds said use of the Internet has improved reading, writing and the rendering of knowledge,” said study co-author Janna Anderson, director of the Imagining the Internet Center.

Now the naysayers.

Some 21 per cent said the Internet would have the opposite effect and could even lower the IQs of some who use it a lot.

“There are still many people ... who are critics of the impact of Google, Wikipedia and other online tools,” she said.

The web-based survey gathered opinions from scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers, along with Internet users screened by the authors. Of the 895 people surveyed, 371 were considered “experts.”

It was prompted in part by an August 2008 cover story in the Atlantic Monthly by technology writer Nicholas Carr headlined: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

Carr suggested in the article that heavy use of the web was chipping away at users’ capacity for concentration and deep thinking. Carr, who participated in the survey, told the authors he still agreed with the piece.

“What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence,” Carr said in a release accompanying the study. “The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking.”

But Craigslist founder Craig Newmark said: “People are already using Google as an adjunct to their own memory.

“For example, I have a hunch about something, need facts to support and Google comes through for me,” he said in the release.

The survey also found that 42 per cent of experts believed that anonymous online activity would be “sharply curtailed” by 2020, thanks to tighter security and identification systems, while 55 per cent thought it would still be relatively easy to browse the Internet anonymously in 10 years.

Well, anonymously or otherwise, it looks like we all should get smarter, don't you think?