Salary.sg – Your Salary in Singapore

The New Paper reported today that a 5-room HDB flat in Jalan Membina has been sold for a record-breaking $675,000.

The apartment is sold even before a valuation has been done on it.

I did a check on the recent resale transactions in Jalan Membina for 5-room flats and found that there have been only 4 transactions in the past 3 months. The transacted prices range from $528k to $550k.

This is probably why a property agent mentioned in the TNP article said the flat is worth an estimated $550k.

If indeed the valuation of the flat (when it’s done) comes to $550k, this means the flat is sold at an amazing $125k above valuation!

So how do you know if your flat can fetch a good price? According to property agents (as mentioned in the TNP article), these are the factors:

• Location. A central location will be good, e.g. Tiong Bahru, Queenstown and Toa Payoh. Jalan Membina is right in Tiong Bahru and “minutes away from Orchard Road.”
• Size of flat. Bigger flats are in greater demand, e.g. 5-room, executive flat, maisonette.
• Near to MRT station. The Jalan Membina flat is just a stone’s throw from the Tiong Bahru MRT train station. Need we say more?
• Have good view. Generally, the higher floor, the better view. If your flat offers a view of the sea, or the Central Business District landscape, you’re in luck.
• Not too old. Apparently, estates in the central region are generally quite old. However, that doesn’t mean there are no new apartment blocks being built in these estates. The Jalan Membina flat is one example – its lease commenced in 2003.

Why are such flats in high demand now?

“Private property owners dislodged by recent enbloc sales see such flats as a relatively cheaper replacements for condominium units… can fetch $50,000 onwards in cash above their value, agents say.”

It’s reported in today’s Business Times that more students are applying for business courses in universities.

The survey conducted by JobsFactory, which runs Jobs Central and Career Central, shows that even once-popular courses like medicine and law now rank low in the eyes of graduating JC students.

In the survey, 2,407 students were asked to select their top 3 preferred courses of study in university.

The following are the most preferred courses, ranked in order of popularity (top being business studies and managment):

1. Business Studies and Management
2. Arts and Social Sciences
3. Engineering
4. Sciences
5. Accounting
6. Health Sciences, Medicine, Dentistry
7. Biomedical and Life Sciences
8. Law

What’s noteworthy is that 61% of the survey respondents did well in their A Levels exams, scoring at least 3 As. So the above courses of choice should give an indication of what above-average students would apply for.

Seems like everyone wants to be in business management these days.

Responding to the letter writer who saw a not-so-bright future for the working class in Singapore, another writer to the Straits Times Forum pointed out a flaw in the former’s argument.

The latter writer said, even though Singapore’s GDP is considered low at US$129m, when viewed in another way, it’s actually a respectable US$29,320 on a per-capita basis.

That is, if we take GDP divided by the population, we get a GDP-per-person value, or how much GDP is there for each resident in Singapore. In fact, at US$29,320, it is “one of the highest per-capita incomes in the world.”

She also cited a report by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, called 2007 Quality of Living Survey which ranked Singapore rather favourably. I took a look at that report and found some interesting tidbits:

• Singapore is actually the best among what I call “non-western” countries, i.e. countries with Asians forming the majority population. (So this excludes Australia and New Zealand in Asia Pacific countries.)
• But if we include “western” cities, we are ranked 8th in Asia Pacific, behind Auckland, Sydney, Wellington, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane.
• The only other “non-western” country featured in the top 50 is Japan, which has 4 cities in the top 50 – Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe and Osaka – all ranked below Singapore.

The letter writer also mentioned a report by ECA International, which compared real salary increases among various countries. I found an article in ECA International’s website talking about that report, but it has this to say:

“Real salary increases – a worker’s actual annual salary increase after inflation is taken into account – in Singapore this year are expected to be approximately 2.8%, on average. This is below the regional average, but still nearly double the real wage increases expected in Hong Kong…”

Also, in terms of real wage increases, we are ranked (by ECA International) below countries like India, Indonesia, China, Thailand and even Malaysia. Could it be that our salaries are too high to begin with? Or is it that the other countries are catching up quickly?

Forbes.com published a list of most well-paid jobs in America. It’s a little similar to the top jobs in Singapore, except that the medical professions feature more strongly in the US list. The salary difference between the No. 1 and No. 25 is also narrower (I’m not sure if it’s fair to compare this way [...]

A letter to the Straits Times Forum today paints a rather bleak picture of the state of economy for the working-class Singaporeans. Basically, the writer contended that Singapore ranking just above Second and Third World countries based on GDP does not bode well for our future. Also, the net salaries of other major Asian cities [...]

Banks have access to your credit payment history. They use the information to assess your creditworthiness – whether you are able to repay your loans or clear your monthly card balance. You can also obtain your own report electronically, as reported in Sunday Times today. First, a quick note on the Credit Bureau Singapore (CBS). [...]

The results of a survey conducted by SPH Research show that Singaporeans are most worried about cost of living and least worried about the need to travel abroad for work. The following is the list of top concerns, ranked by importance (figure in brackets is the percentage of respondents who indicated they are worried about [...]

“The market operates to reward disproportionately people who have been lucky,” says Philip Jeyaretnam, Senior Counsel and President of the Law Society of Singapore, in the current issue of Law Gazette. The article reveals certain information about the salaries in the legal profession, which I will quote and summarise here. (Incidentally, the article also drew [...]

The Public Service Division just made a press release announcing a half-month bonus for civil servants. Civil service employees will receive a mid-year Annual Variable Component (AVC) of half a month, and an additional payment of $220 in July 2007. The AVC, as its name implies, is a variable salary component. It varies according to [...]

Parents, if you think a baby born in the Dragon Year (according to Chinese Lunar Calendar) is good for the baby in terms of education and career, you are sorely mistaken. If anything, it’s the opposite. The baby will grow up to suffer the effects of “overcrowding”. It has been well established that in Chinese [...]