Happy 47th Birthday Singapore !

Happy Holidays!

Here's wishing all the Thirsty Thursday members Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!

We'll be back soon !

We have taken some time off & will be back soon.
Keep a look out for this space.
Cheers!

Thirsty Thursdays @ 4th March

The first drink session of the year drew a moderate but thirsty crowd to the Pump Room, with Alpin Mehta from Temasek Holdings joining us for the first time. The first Thursdays of January and February usually fall on or around the two New Year celebrations and consequently it had been a few months since the last drinks. In terms of our discussions around market developments, it seems not much had changed in that time, however the Singapore residential market keeps doing well with prices going up without anyone really understanding why, but the commercial markets around the region remain pretty quiet. In fact, in a quick poll amongst the participants on where in the world they see really good value for real estate investments right now, the general feeling was almost no-where. The only places that got mentioned as potentially good places to invest where Mexico and Brazil. Not very encouraging for us based here in Singapore, but of course there is always the chance that ultra low interest rates will ignite another property boom more widely. Lets hope our collective pessimism is wrong, that there will be more clarity on the state of the world economy and perhaps that there will be further corrections in the markets so that buyers start seeing real value again. And in any case, who are we to predict the markets? A group of highly educated professionals with decades of collective experience are bound to be blinded by silly things like fundamentals, supply and demand etc., and get it all wrong...
The next drinks are planned for early April (probably 8th as the 1st collides with Easter) so stay tuned!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Networking Drinks with Kirsty Spraggon

Kirsty Spraggon, a Sydney based author and a motivational speaker joined us for drinks. This was the first time we had invited a guest to attend our networking session and the first time someone sponsored drinks for the group. This was a welcome change and we hope we are able to bring in some more interesting people for some even more interesting conversations, going forward.

It was really nice meeting up with the regular members including some of the new members who joined the group recently.

We spent the evening discussing travel experiences, networking and real estate - primarily Singapore’s residential market and what’s becoming of it. We agreed that in most parts of Singapore the residential market still remains over-priced, which has led to the overall softening of the residential market per se. There were not many recorded transactions as compared to Q3-2009. Genuine 1st home buyers like a few of us, now need to wait for the next cycle to be able to see some realistic and affordable capital values and the market needs correction for stability. The secondary sales market has become quite unaffordable and only time will tell how stable & realistic these prices will eventually be on a longer term horizon - something everyone is watching closely!

Everyone had interesting stories about their travel experiences. Kirsty spoke about Karma & about her experiences in Dubai and some other parts of the world. Jim narrated his experiences in South America and Push & Peeyush spoke about their experiences in the US and Sydney.

It’s really interesting to see how so many people from different nationalities & varied cultures have so much in common – “Wonders of Thirsty Thursdays @ Clarke Quay!”