Paul Ho
Cavendish Park Condo – En bloc relocation considerations
I have been fortunate enough to be invited to speak to the residents of many potential en bloc redevelopment condominium projects.
Cavendish park condominium is one of them. First and foremost, I have to insist that, I am not an expert in En bloc sales or its En bloc sales process. I have merely taken an interest to monitor this market due to the huge interest generated and also at the request of some of my customers. iCompareLoan is a Mortgage broker that helps people with finding the best home loans in the Singapore property market and work out their finances for buying and selling a property. iCompareLoan’s Home Loan Report is also a FinTech company that provides home loan analysis and automation tools so that Property agents can serve their buyers professionally working through the complex regulations, TDSR, MSR, adjusted downpayment, buyer stamp duties, ABSDs, SSD for selling, and how much CPF can be used for 1st property, 2nd property and so on. In short, we help property agents give home buyers a professional and accurate understanding of their financing in 3 minutes, so this helps agents to close property deals faster and more professionally. Most property agents like to simply talk you through and do not like to give you concrete data because often they do not know. Do not bother with such agents.
Coming back to the topic of en bloc, a lot of anger and excitement has been generated from En bloc sales. You will see a lot of the ugly side of home owners. Greed, anxiety, fear, cluelessness, helplessness and so on. Home owners often get bulldozed through the en bloc process and do not know their rights. For example, the subsidiary proprietors (SP) often are given only the choice to choose one agency? Often they get to choose from a selected agency with a Yes or No vote, why not give the SP the right to choose from 5 or 10 agencies and give each agency get 10 to 15mins to present their case followed by a vote?
Why must the reserve price be voted on by a yes and no vote? Why are there no options for the Subsidiary proprietors to choose from? Such as Reserve price 400m, 420m, 450m, etc.? Often the choices are worded as though there are no choice and packaged as though it is decided. But in reality, the subsidiary proprietors have the right to challenge the decision. These topics are often obscured or talked about only reluctantly when pressed.
Many Collective sales committee (CSC) are selected from people who are pro-sales, hence even if there are no conflict of interest, these people in the CSC are emotionally compromised as they are all Pro-Sales. This could very easily compromise the interest of all the Subsidiary proprietors as they are too eager to sell. Could this be the future cause for any legal challenges? Maybe or maybe not, but surely we cannot place all the powers in the hands of people in the Collective Sales Committee (CSC) who are emotionally compromised towards sale and very often, deliberate only give the minimum information. You can read more about the entire en bloc sales process flow here.
The rules governing the reserve price, transparency and the debate mechanism of doing so were not spelled out clearly because the CSC is inclined to make the figures sound like a “done deal” and have home owners (subsidiary proprietors) quickly sign off. If you do not present yourself for the EOGM, you could very easily miss the process and have things agreed upon. For example, there is usually no debate on the reserve price and the agency commission. Some agencies even structure something like 0.5% commission for $500 million met and 3% if the reserve price of $550 million is met. Surely these type of structure is not being debated and instead given a Yes or No vote. While there is nothing wrong with an accelerator for the agency marketing the en bloc, surely this raise a bell of discomfort, why can’t they just say let’s do 3% for all commission and reserve price is set at $550m instead? So as you can see, these deals are very non transparent though they may be perfectly legal.
Cavendish Park Condo will vote in EOGM to decide the many things such as reserve price, etc. Often the reserve price is made to sound like it is decided and the CSC do tend to be a bit over-bearing on insisting this reserve price, giving people discomfort.
Cavendish Park condo En Bloc Relocation Considerations broken up into 4 parts.
If you are looking for loans, you can check out the best home loans in Singapore here.
Let us all hope that CSC be it in Cavendish park condo or elsewhere, all be transparent as well as be seen as transparent in their dealings, this will greatly garner the necessary support from most Subsidiary proprietors and ensure a smooth and pleasant en bloc process. You can read more about personal finance here.
