Good time to buy investment property now.

"There were no worries. It was easy money."





Dear AK,
Morgan Stanley thinks that property prices in Singapore will double by 2030. 
Is a good time to buy investment property now?

Source: AsiaOne.

AK replies:
No one can say what the future holds with total confidence. Of course, people could and some would continue to make predictions for any number of reasons.

I do know that there were times in the past and also the recent past when we could get rental yields of 5% and even close to 6% in Singapore for a residential property. Although it does not adhere to the Rule of 15, in Singapore, that is probably pretty good.





Now, we are probably looking at rental yields of around 3% or, often, even lower and I have said before that this only looks attractive because of the very low interest rate environment. I don't know but did Morgan Stanley say interest rates are rising?

See: 
Rule of 15.





Having said this, I will say that there are always good investments to be found. It might be more difficult to find them but, probably, they are out there somewhere. What is a good investment? Well, it is probably safe to say that it is one that offers good value for money.

See: 
Affordability and value for money.





I acknowledge that I do not know everything there is to know and I definitely do not know what the future holds but I do know that if we wish to speculate, we must have deep pockets. 

Speculators should know that they are speculating and not investing.





See: 
Questions to ask.

Finally, of course, we could make quite a bit of money from speculating. We just have to be lucky.

Related post:
Disastrous investments in real estate.

Structural Unemployment. (Having face more important than having food?)

Someone told me a friend of his has been unemployed for more than a year and recently approached him for a loan. 

Apparently, the kind of work his friend was doing is increasingly hard to find.

It sounds to me like another case of structural unemployment.





It brings to mind a comment I made not too long ago here in my blog:

"The world has been disrupted and will continue to be disrupted by technology.

"It is happening faster than ever.

"If we were to go to sleep and wake up 5 or 10 years later, we might get a shock.

"Many will lose their jobs because of the disruption.

"The old economy is under siege.

"I know because I belong to the old economy.

"If I am not financially healthy today, I would be very worried."




Being financially literate is important but being financially savvy is even more important. 

However, there is an even more important point of this blog post. 

We should be pragmatic.




This person has been offered a job in a different industry but he rejected. 

It is a "dirty" job, apparently, and doesn't pay as well as his old job.

Is having face more important than having food on the table?





Related posts:
1. Be a plumber or be unemployed?
2. Compared to anger, shame is worse.