Parc Canberra Executive Condo is a luxury development located along Canberra Link, District 27 Singapore. Developed by Hoi Hup Realty and Sunway Development, the property has intends up to 495 units with the site area of 194,187 sqft. The land site is also well served by the new 12 hectare Sembawang Integrated Hub situated just across Canberra Link. Only 400m away, the residents easily reach the upcoming Canberra MRT Station on North-South line.
Canberra Parc
Gone are the days where young couples spend low few hundred thousand of their savings in HDB (BTO / Resales), fulfilling 5 years MOP (minimum occupation period), and easily upgrade to EC (executive condominium) or even private condo with the profit gained after selling the HDB. HDB is no longer a viable investment which guarantees good returns thanks to the multiple cooling measures implemented by Singapore government, for good reasons, particularly since year 2013 when the HDB price reached its peak.
My wife and I picked the worst timing purchasing our 1st property – 5I resales HDB in Singapore, at a whopping cost of SGD 495,000 in late 2013. Similar to other residents in Singapore, we were told that the HDB price could only goes up and the sky is the limit, due to land scarcity. Truth is the price doesn’t recover till date and we are standing with more than 20% loss on capital. It was not a concern for us initially and we were happy with our dream house. However, now that our baby boy is growing fast, we start having many other considerations such as proximity to primary school, comfortable and kid friendly environment, smart home facility (okay it is merely for my own indulgence), and etc. The thought of EC upgrade comes into our mind, and Canberra Parc comes just at the right timing !
Of course, there are many other financial considerations to be evaluated before we even think of pulling the trigger. One of the main concerns is the cash outlay required for down payment could be amount to minimum a quarter of a million dollar. Considering that we have very minimum CPF OA savings in our account, due to consistent OA to SA transfer done since 2 years ago, I might have to liquidate my stocks to fork out such an amount, of course it is not my preference as it will disrupt my long time investment planning. The benefit of upgrading to EC is that the potential of capital appreciation is much higher than HDB based on historical data (again one could argue that past data doesn’t represent future growth , but all in all the potential / probability of price appreciation is still much higher than HDB).
Anyway, we have booked for show flat preview after CNY, where we will also discuss the overall financial commitment with the property agent. It doesn’t cost a dime for such preview, just our time of a day on weekends 🙂
Update 06 March 2020:
We have decided to drop the idea of investing in EC, due to huge upfront cash outlay required, as much as SGD 250k for a SGD 1 million EC. We do not have so much cash reserve for this commitment, and it is too much a concentrated risk to have our reserve capital to be poured in a single investment vehicle, although based on historical data EC’s appreciation in value is rather generous if the location is convenient.
Journey to Financial Independence 