Singapore Minister for National Development Chee Hong Tat
The Singapore government hikes seller’s stamp duty to discourage speculative homebuying, with that move leading today’s headline roundup. Also making the list, an office tower in “South Korea’s Silicon Valley” draws bidding interest and Aussie land lease group GemLife debuts on the ASX.
Singapore Boosts Stamp Duty to 16% to Discourage Flat Flippers
The government moved to curb rising speculative buying in Singapore’s residential property market, increasing seller’s stamp duty rates by four percentage points and extending the holding period that SSD applies from three to four years.
The changes will take effect for all residential properties purchased on and after 4 July 2025, the Ministry of National Development, the Ministry of Finance and the Monetary Authority of Singapore said in a statement late Thursday night. Read more>>
Mirae Hopes to Sell Seoul Tech Park Asset for $1.5B
The sale of Pangyo Tech 1, a landmark office tower in Pangyo, South Korea’s answer to America’s Silicon Valley, has drawn strong bidding interest from global and domestic investors, signalling renewed appetite for core commercial real estate assets amid uncertain economic conditions.
Investment banking industry sources said Thursday that Pangyo Tech 1, a flagship office complex anchored by tenants including Naver, KakaoBank and Hyundai Motor, attracted more than six bidders in a sale process overseen by Mirae Asset Global Investments on Tuesday. Read more>>
Aussie Land Lease Developer GemLife Raises $285M in ASX Debut
Australia’s Puljich family has minted a A$433.1 million ($285 million) fortune after debuting land lease developer GemLife on the ASX, the seventh float for the local market in the past fortnight.
GemLife, founded in 2015 by the family that pioneered in Australia the housing model of leasing land to retirees in master-planned communities, had priced shares at A$4.16. They opened at A$4.40 on Thursday, closing the day at A$4.33, up 4.1 percent. Read more>>
Logos Malaysia Data Centre MOU Lapses After ESR Privatisation
UEM Sunrise no longer plans to build a Johor data centre that had been the subject of a memorandum of understanding with ESR’s Logos unit, with officer in charge and chief financial officer Hafizuddin Sulaiman saying the Malaysian developer is in talks to sell the 74 acre (30 hectare) site.
Hafizuddin said the plans with Logos to develop an up to 360-megawatt data centre near the border with Singapore fell through because of changes in Logos’s ownership and business direction. In July 2024, parent group ESR bought the remaining 13.6 percent stake in Logos from the company’s founders. Read more>>
Alibaba Announces Third Malaysia Data Centre Project
Alibaba Cloud is continuing its global rollout of data centres, announcing the launch of a third site in Malaysia. The Chinese cloud company also revealed that it will launch a second data centre in the Philippines in October.
Alibaba first opened a cloud region in Malaysia in October 2017, at the time making it the first global public cloud platform to host infrastructure in the country. The new data centre is the latest in a series of new global locations launched this year, the most recent being a second data centre in South Korea last month. Others include a new region in Mexico and a second data centre in Thailand. Read more>>
Hong Kong Home Deals Jumped 50% in June
Hong Kong’s residential property transactions jumped more than 50 percent in June from a year earlier, with buyer interest boosted by falling interbank rates and developers’ competitive pricing.
A total of 5,955 residential deals were registered during the month, up 54.4 percent from a year earlier and 16.7 percent from May, according to data released Thursday by the Land Registry. The value of those transactions surged 77 percent year-on-year to HK$61.1 billion ($7.8 billion). Read more>>
Korean Politicians Debate Foreign Home Purchases as Chinese Investment Grows
Lee Un-joo, a Supreme Council member of the Democratic Party of Korea, said Friday that real estate regulations should be applied based on the principle of reciprocity and there should be no disadvantageous treatment of foreigners, adding that she would submit related legislation.
The number of dwellings owned by foreigners in Korea was 100,216 at the end of 2024, up 9.6 percent from a year earlier, according to official statistics, with an estimated 56 percent owned by Chinese. The number of dwellings owned by foreigners in Seoul rose nearly 5 percent, and a total of 72.7 percent are concentrated in the metropolitan area. Read more>>
China Service Sector Slowed in June
A private gauge of China’s services sector activity expanded in June, but at a softer pace despite efforts by businesses to attract new customers. The Caixin services purchasing managers index edged down to 50.6 from 51.1 in May, hitting the lowest point since September, Caixin Media and S&P Global said Thursday.
That marked the 30th month above the 50-mark separating expansion from contraction. External uncertainties weighed on services exports in June, with new export business continuing to decline at the sharpest pace since December 2022, according to Caixin. Read more>>
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