For the past few years, I have seen every mall having ever more baby related retail stores. Rows after rows of baby stuffs always greet you when you go to any supermarkets like Tesco, Giant, Jusco and more. Baby warehouse sales? These are held every month everywhere. With all these baby stores and stalls in the malls, there are not ever more restaurants with ‘kids eat free’ signage. Gone are the days when only the western ones do it. Just yesterday I saw Sakae Sushi having the ‘baby eat for free’ offer for the first time ever, after enjoying meals there for years. Of course, they (Sakae) are only starting with SUNDAY. Perhaps that’s when a lot of parents are bringing their kids to the malls and competition is thus stiffer.
Okay, what has baby eat free got to do with property? Actually, do we believe prices go up only because of the usual reasons stated such as oil prices up, construction costs up, speculators pushing it up, government did not control the prices etc? Or should we also look at the actual happenings on the ground? Instead of a 800 sf property when we were singles, we got married and upgraded to 1,000sf or higher. When we have kids and needs a maid or the parents stay with us, we needed an even bigger home. 1,400 sf or higher would be preferred and landed becomes an attractive option. Are there many more of these larger units or are there more of the smaller ones? The answer is clear thus far, smaller units are many times more and larger units were never built earlier because the demand was simply not there! Think couple, then baby and followed by kids. With a growing number of family members, the demand for properties grows and continuously changing.
Buying for investment is not the same as a buyer needing to upgrade because of a second baby. The former, you have many more choices including SOHO. The latter? Well, when our family grows BIGGER, we better buy LARGER units. In other words, even if you are a single today, why not get a larger unit instead, today. Slightly bigger. Slightly further is okay. By the time you get married and have the second baby, you would feel so lucky that you bought earlier. With more restaurants offering the baby eat free promotion, it meant that the market is poised for continuous growth, at least for the larger units for many more years to come. Babies take at least 18 to reach university age and that’s when they ‘hate’ staying with us. Sigh. Happy eating and buying.
written on 4 Dec 2014
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