Saint, this only applies to people buying a HDB apartment from the resale market who concurrently own a private
property.
Let's say someone who lives in a still-under-mortgage HDB or private apartment wishes to upgrade to a better dwelling.
In order not to be subject to the 70% financing rule, at the time he/she seeks financing for the
condominium, he/she must already have proof to present to the financing institution that the first property has already been sold.
This person cannot simply tell the institution that the proeprty will be disposed of within 6 months. It must have been sold already.
In the case of new launches which are years away form completion at launch, obviously pretty much everyone in this group will be taking a second mortgage since they can't jolly well sell their existing home and rent for a few years while waiting.
They can, but generally they won't.
Basically, all of the government's measures have removed an element of demand, in varying degrees from most property segments in the market.
They are dead serious on controlling prices because all evidence points to economic growth in the immediate future points to a slowdown on the most recent year.
And they also know the low interest rate environment is fuelling alot of the home purchases, many from first timers who have never seen anything but 1.someting percent rates and have no idea what a rise to 4% might mean for their monthly payments.
Ultimately though, I think it's just the boom-bust feast-famine cycle at work driven by the same underlying human attribute, regardless of whether demographics change.
Just like how iron ore producers and hopefuls everywhere in the world where iron ore exists in mineable quantities are rushing to produce more and more for China whose demand for the metal is expected to increase at the same pace forever.
Which is nonsense of course yet that doesn't stop these companies from digging, drilling and mining at a pace that will eventually produce more iron ore than the world could ever need in a few years.
Dot.com boom. I can't rememebr now the name of the Harvard (I think) study I read analyzing (can't remember if it was written in the midst, or pos after it) the assumptions behind the growth of the then-hot tech companies. I believe it was 7 (or maybe 10) companies, such as Sun, Oracle and not even Microsoft.
Based on various projections made by analysts, the authors of the paper concluded that their stock price growth, if they did follow these projections meant that in X number of years, these same companies would account for 70% of the enitre market cap of either NASDAQ/Dow/some combination of it/something else totally outcapping othwer heavyweights like GE, Boeing, Microsoft etc put together.
But it's been many years since I read that, and I can't seem to find it anywhere now, so m y memory's a bit hazy.
Which of course is absurd.
What's different this time? The manifestation of human greed is different, it is couched in different terms and rationalizations.
I don't see how the end result will be any different from any other time in history.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. What do we do? We merely pretend to be doing something else.
Actually you are quite wight, I plane forgot about the spelling 
