$500,000 stuck in a bad commercial space investment! (UPDATED)

UPDATED:
It is an increasingly common sight these days in the heartlands: 

Spanking new mixed-use developments with rows and rows of empty shop spaces plastered with posters and banners screaming “For Rent” or “For Sale”. 

From Kensington Square along Upper Paya Lebar Road and Novena Regency to The Midtown @ Hougang and MacPherson Mall, to name a few...
Source: TODAY




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READER:

Hello AK, 

I have a question regarding real estate that I would like to ask you. 

I am a responsible investor and does my own homework before making any investment, so I will not make you responsible for any decisions I make. 

I have it down here in writing so you can have a peace of mind when you reply to my email. 

I am a stock investor which means I am not familiar with real estate in Singapore. 

I know that you have invested in real estate before, therefore, I would like to seek you help for an issue. 

My father made some money speculating on real estates in the past. 

So as most speculators who have made money speculating on real estate, my father made the mistake of not doing enough homework, not filtering out market noise (mostly the real estate agents), thinking that property prices will go up forever and not position sizing. 

My father laid out about (half a million dollars) on a shop unit, confident that the price of the shop will appreciate greatly in the future. 

He bought it in 2010 or 2011, before the building was constructed. 

Ever since, he has not been able to rent his shop out for rental. 70% to 80% of the shops in the building is vacant since day 1. 

My father has been paying the monthly management fee (about $700/month), annual property tax (no idea how much) and not to mentioned the initial stamp duties and other fees associated with purchasing a property in Singapore. 

Obviously, my father has not been able to find a buyer, not even if he sells it at a loss. 

The size of the shop is about 3m in length and 5m deep. 

My father laid out about half of his cash in this property and another half in another property (this has rental income, so it's fine. 

However, if you add the fees and taxes of both properties, my father hardly makes any money.). 

So my father has been very cash strapped (Situation getting more dire with every month, to be honest). 

Unfortunately, my father made the purchases before I knew anything about investments (not like he will listen to me though).

- Nobody wants to buy/rent the shop

- Monthly management fee ($700+/ month) (Management 很好赚，no AEI or anything, but collects $700+ a month)

- Annual property taxes

- High entry price (my father estimated the market prices of his shop has decreased about 20%)

So my question is, do you have any recommendations as on what can be our next step? 

Any ways to get rid of the property or anything that we can do cut/reduce the losses?

It is quite a sticky situation but thanks in advance. 

Taken from a website 
promoting the mall to investors.

AK says:
Remember what you say here hor. 

Indemnity form signed. ;)

OK, fact is nobody knows for sure what the future might bring. 

What we know for sure is the now and the present. 

The only people who seem to know (the future) for sure are the property agents especially when they want to sell us something. ;p






If we had bought into a piece of property thinking or hoping that the price will go up in future, we are more speculators than investors. 

Remember my blog post on the two questions we should ask if we are speculating in properties?

It is not only whether the property offers value for money. 

We should also ask if we have deep pockets. (See related post #2.)





It seems to me that your dad does not have deep pockets and he is suffering from a double whammy because the property wasn't value for money.

I have a friend in a similar situation and it is causing a serious strain on his family's finances. 

I found out recently when I (being kaypoh) asked him why he seemed so cash strapped when his job pays reasonably well. 






He bought a property and it is not generating cash flow. 

Instead of an asset, he got a liability.

I told him he would be better off disposing it.

"What if the price goes up in future?"

Alamak. 

I told him I don't know what is going to happen in future but I see what the situation is doing to him now. 





Fortunately, his wife agreed that it would be best to dispose of the "asset" even at a loss.

Don't bite off more than we can chew. 

If we bit off more than we can chew, we would do well to spit it out or else we might choke. 

Of course, some handle choking better than others. 

Quite a few could choke to death.

Best wishes,
AK





P.S. The property which the reader's dad bought is not in Alexandra Mall. 

It is in another part of Singapore. 

Not revealing the location of the property in question, I am just using Alexandra Mall as an example. 

Yes, there are quite a few of these "promising" malls which were marketed to retail investors in Singapore in recent years.





Related posts:
1. Nobody cares more about our money...
2. Two questions we should ask...
3. Disastrous investments in property...

Wife becomes "tai tai" because husband has high income.

Tai tai (太太) is a Chinese colloquial term for a wealthy married woman who does not work. (Source: Wikipedia.)

I don't know if it is surprising to you but I have seen so many such cases over the years. 





There are childless couples who decide to stay childless because they want to concentrate on their careers and have double income. 

DINK. Double income no kids.

The ones I am blogging about now are those who decide to stay childless too but with only one person bringing home the bacon. 

What does the other person do? 

Anything but being gainfully employed.

I have a good friend, several years younger than me, who is a doctor. 

His other half decided to stop working many years ago and when I remarked that it wasn't a wise decision, instead of agreeing, he said, "I make enough money to support both of us."

OK, end of conversation.

I know that my friend is not from a wealthy family and he also had a hefty study loan which he had to repay. 

He had a mortgage on a condo and he also bought a luxury car. 

While my friend has his job, he will have no problem paying for everything. I am sure. 

While he has his job.

His income is earned. 

It is not passive. 

If he had to stop working for any reason, he would very likely be unable to keep up his lifestyle. 

Oops. Sorry, it should be their lifestyle.

The prudent thing to do is for both of them to have earned income. 

They should build wealth and invest in income producing assets. 

Only when they are able to depend on their passive income alone to have the lifestyle they want should the wife stop working. 

This is the wise thing to do.

To love is a fine thing but letting love blind us could be destructive and not just in terms of wealth.




I hope my friend does not regret in future.

"Your husband makes a lot of money. He doesn't have a lot of money. Wake up!" - AK

Related posts:

1. Pertinent questions in wealth building.

2. Financial freedom over home ownership.
"Your choices and your relationships are key indicators whether you are going to succeed financially." Dave Ramsey.

2016 full year passive income from S-REITs.

In this final blog on S-REITs in 2016, I want to record a heart felt good bye to Saizen REIT as we knew it. The REIT was one of my largest investments in the S-REITs universe for many years. It was an asset play and an income stock that amply rewarded my strategy of being paid while I waited.

Now, this brings us nicely to the importance of investing in income producing assets. For many of us, not having passive income means working till the day we die. It would also probably mean having a weaker ability to cope with very real financial challenges in life such as inflation.

Warren Buffett once said that we should not depend on a single income and that we should make investment to create a second source. To me,  quite simply, this means investing for income, which is what I have been doing mostly.

If you are a regular reader, I hope my experience will keep you pumped up for the new year. 

If you are a new reader, I hope my experience inspires you to consider investing for income (if you are not doing it already) for a financially more secure future.

2016 full year income from S-REITs.

In 2H 2016, I added to my investment in Soilbuild REIT due to a rights issue. This was at 63c per rights unit. I took up my entitlement and also applied for excess rights. From that exercise, I increased my investment in the REIT by more than 10%.

Some details:

1. Issue of 94,353,672 new units in Soilbuild REIT on the basis of 1 New Unit for every 10 existing units in Soilbuild REIT. 

2. Funds to partially finance the purchase of a building, 2 Bukit Batok St 23, which has an initial annual rental of $8 million. 

Another bit of news of interest to me was the reverse takeover (RTO) of Saizen REIT by Sime Darby. As I am still holding on to my original investment in Saizen REIT, I received another distribution before the RTO was effected. It means that I received a tidy 5 figure sum which, of course, made me happy.

I said this earlier in August:

"We will be paid 9.87c a unit and still get to keep our investment in the REIT."

I haven't been doing much with regards to my investments in S-REITs. 

Mostly, I am just collecting dividends regularly and letting professional managers take care of the day to day operations.

Total income from S-REITs in 2016: 

S$ 452,243.52

This figure includes the bumper distribution from Saizen REIT which will not be repeated in future.

If we were to exclude all income distributions from Saizen REIT this year, total income from S-REITs in 2016 would only be:

S$ 66,933.70

Quite shocking how much smaller the number is, isn't it? This shows how big an investment I had in Saizen REIT. 

The lower income, without any contribution from Saizen REIT, translates to S$ 5,577.80 a month.

This is still quite comfortable for one person to live off but unless I can make up for it somewhere, this lower income from my investments in S-REITs is something I would have to live with in future. 

Of course, if you have been following my blog, you would know what I have been doing to make up for the shortfall.

A few years back, I had 5 relatively large investments in S-REITs. Today, only 2 are left.

If you are wondering which 2, with the value of my investment in Saizen REIT drastically reduced in the past year, 

AIMS AMP Capital Industrial REIT 
and 
First REIT 

are now the only S-REITs which have significantly more weight in my portfolio.

Some might remember that, a few years ago, I drastically reduced my exposure to LMIR and Sabana REIT for different reasons, locking in some decent gains in the process. So, my S-REIT portfolio has been shrinking in size for some time.

With interest rates probably going higher, there is a reasonable need to be cautious when investing in S-REITs but there is no need to be pessimistic.

In response to a reader who was rather pessimistic:

The worry is probably common amongst investors.

This was a conversation with a reader who raised two questions:

What do I find more important?
1. Relatively reasonable gearing.
2. Relatively strong cash flow.
3. Relatively good manager.

(If you want to listen to AK talking to himself a bit more, go to related post #3 at the end of the blog.)

That ends this blog post and I will share some thoughts on my non-REITs portfolio, hopefully, before the year ends.

Related posts:

1. Saizen REIT RTO.

2. 1H 2016 income from S-REITs.
3. REITs and interest rates (2014).
4. 2016 income from non-REITs. 

Buy 99 years leasehold or freehold property in Singapore?

For home buyers in Singapore, most would qualify for a BTO HDB flat. It gives the best value for money. 

Even a resale HDB flat is a good deal compared to the sky high asking prices of private condominiums. 

However, regular readers know that I would caution against buying very old HDB flats.






"It's OK lah. I like the location and there are 60 years left to the lease."

And how long are you going to be staying there for? Is there a possibility that you might want or have to sell it sometime in the future? 

To be prudent, we might want to think a bit further along those lines.







For whatever reason, many people aspire to stay in a private property here even though it would cost at least 3 times more compared to a BTO HDB flat, location for location, size for size. 

And it is not $50,000 for a HDB flat versus $150,000 for a condo hor. 

It is more like $350,000 for a HDB flat versus $1 million for a condo kind of proportion!

Hello! This is Singapore!





Some people pay so much just to stay in private properties that they become slaves to their mortgages. They become house poor. 

House poor is definitely not fun. Why? 

No money left to have fun lor.

Even if people can comfortably afford to stay in private properties, to me, one compelling reason to go private in Singapore is because we want to get a property sitting on freehold land or with a land lease that is significantly longer than 99 years. 







Otherwise, buying a private condo (with a 99 years land lease) here is like paying at least 3 times more for a home just because it comes with some (usually inadequate) facilities which have to be shared with tens or hundreds of other households in the estate. 

(In the case of buying a landed property with a 99 years land lease, don't even have facilities lor. Alamak. Does that sound similar to a HDB flat?)

Oh, did I also mention that the monthly building maintenance fee which condo dwellers have to pay could be 5 times more than what a HDB flat of comparable size would attract?

Silly, isn't it?





So, if you are buying a private property in Singapore, with very few exceptions, it is my opinion that unless the price is truly attractive (think Rule of 15 and value for money), it should be on freehold land or 999 years leasehold land.





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For those who do not follow me on Facebook, this was a conversation I had with a few readers on the issue of lease decay:

Jack James:
Does it matter ? Hahahha .

Ooooii ... our Sarawak landed houses are all on 60 years lease la !!

Assi AK:
I not staying in Sarawak wor.

Jack James:
Just to tell you such lease/leasehold/999years/ freehold are really not a big deal .

Assi AK:
If I don't have a choice, then, nothing to say. If I have a choice, I rather have a longer land lease.

Lease decay does not change whether it is landed or not.

It matters if you care about leaving your home as a legacy for future generations.

Jack James:
Trust me , 99years is already a big deal . 

My colleague parents bought 3 rooms flat at Little India area for S$6,500 and now it worths close to S$400,000 .
So long , you have something on hands , it appreciates .
Well , even if you have freehold property , don't dream the next generation would love to stay at the old hundred years old house , they probably cash out and buy new houses . In view of that , buying lease or freehold for next generation ? I am sure they will cash out too . No problem one la lease units.

Assi AK:
What future generations do is up to them.

I am inspired by how my friend's family stay in a FH walk up apartment which their grandfather left behind. He bought a few units in the estate back then. They can collect rent in perpetuity. No issue with lease decay. We have to do what matches our motivation.

Jack James:
Wait until it is 100 years and see who will rent a 100 years old freehold condo .

Assi AK:

Haha... Singapore is not that old yet but going by what I see in the USA, homes which are more than 100 years old find ready tenants too... Just need renovation from time to time but there is no problem with lease decay.

It costs money to renovate an old property but it beats returning the asset to SLA upon expiry of the land lease.

Jack James:
I can see you inject a big fears on lease decay . In any circumstances , you will still reap a big profits in leasehold . Not an issue . Just be SMART to cash out before it is too late .

Seah Chen Yang:
by the time it reach 100 years, you are already long dead to know about it and can do nothing to change it either way. lol. so that is why AK say freehold or not depends on whether you wanna leave it for your next generation and we have no control on what they want to do after we pass even if we say we want to leave it for them to earn rental income for life but they choose to sell for capital gain after we pass.

Assi AK: 

Yup, owners of 99/60 years leasehold properties must bear that in mind. Lease decay is a real issue which many property agents play down because it suits their purpose. Having said that, all investments are good at the right price.

We can only hope that our future generations will be financially prudent and savvy. We can only make what we feel are the best decisions for them when we are still around. Right?

Raymond Chiam:
U.s houses may be old but they are not 10 over storeys like our FH condo. Such tall buildings may become structurely unsound after 40, 50 years. Let alone 100! Definitely need to tear down n rebuild n that's provided neighbours don't all opt for en bloc. So FH unlikely to last more than 2 generations in my opinion

Assi AK "... built to ensure safety in the event that they are overloaded beyond the calculated "design event" and/or to account for mistakes in the building's design or construction... The combination of using a 50-year recurrence for design loading events and safety factors in construction typically results in a design exceedance interval of about 500 years, with special buildings (as mentioned above) having intervals of 1,000 years or more. This means we would expect a typical structure to fail once in every 500 to 1,000 years."
Source:
http://www.independent.co.uk/.../how-long-are-skyscrapers...

How long are skyscrapers built to last?

INDEPENDENT.CO.UK

Assi AK I did a search because I remember a friend telling me that unless it was built in the 70s or early 80s, newer skyscrapers are able to last a long time.

Assi AK It might also be interesting to note that compared to buying land in Singapore, construction cost is relatively inexpensive. Having land or a share of the land in perpetuity (even for redevelopment) is better than returning the land to SLA when the lease expires.

Assi AK If we are worried, we can always stick to buying FH condos in Geylang. They are typically a maximum of 8 storeys high. ;p

Assi AK Anyway, if it comes to a need for redevelopment, it is going to be generations away. All I can do is leave my future generations assets which I hope they will cherish. What happens in the future will be their responsibility. 

A decision to buy FH, 999 years (as good as FH) or 99 years (these days even 60 years or 30 years) leasehold properties is only probably right or wrong in relation to our motivations. 

What we choose to buy should very much depend on what we plan on achieving.

As usual, if you have money oozing out from your nose and ears, you can pretty much buy whatever you want. Don't mind me.

AK is just a frog croaking in a well.







Read:
Buying freehold.
Related post:
60 years leasehold condo in Singapore.