Offer in singapore

[Hear, hear]

I second PP's comments. I reckon the whiner who is continuing trashing HDB apartments is one desperate agent. Woe betide agents here if expats feel HDB is emminently livable. They stand to lose big in commissions from renting out overpriced, mediocre condos to expats. 

[800 quid]

can't get you anything decent in London.

a studio in Kensington costs £1000

Clapham Junction, £800 (all in) can get you a huge double room with perhaps 1 other housemate.

i rent a 2 bed in Clapham South for £1,450.

If you can show me where I can get a place for £800 without the fear of getting stabbed and robbed, i'll be very grateful.

i was looking at a 1 bed flat in Peckham when I arrived years ago, and it was £750 though.... takers?

[AnotherOneReadAgain]

Another stupid expat - possibly a banker - who compare SG to London.

Read again: SG is a medium-sized provincial city and deserved to be priced itself accordingly.

It is neither London, not NY.

[ripped off indeed]

"comparable to any banking city...."

You are totally wrong, if not plain stupid

That comparison is not valid

SG is a medium-size provincial city. That's all. Nothing else. What can you get for $1800 in a medium-sized provincial city? A house. Here you get a 3 room HDB.

Plain stupidity indeed. If you have ever been to Singapore you would realise that perhaps a third to half of the world's multinationals have their regional hq here, the other half being in HK. This means there are plenty of high paying positions relative to other cities. Of course it's not as glitzy or exciting as Europe or NY, but try and find the same jobs in a medium size provincial city you fool. Of course SIN is different to London or NY, but if you work in London you can find cheap housing an hour or so away from the city, this is simply not possible in Singapore thanks to the limitations of its size. In terms of salary and compensation levels (white collar mid-upper levels), Singapore isnt that far behind London (especially after tax) and hence the cost of housing is hardly surprising. SIN is expensive for what it is, but to say it should be dirt cheap cause its a provincial city is naive. Theres not enough land for everyone, but if you stay in a HDB you can save a lot more money on the same gross salary than you ever would in London (without living in a cheaper province). Find me a provincial city where you can do that. Look at Dubai, middle-upper class housing can be horrendously expensive (its come off quite a bit however) and its not exactly London or NY either.

[simple mind]

I have read all your postings.
My my my seems that all of you are earning far more than any one of the average singaporean.
as a Singaporean, the average pay for manager level (not MNC company) is about 2500-5K, and we survived "comfortably" in a HDB flat environment.
By the way, the modern HDB are NOT pigeon holes.
90K works out to be 7.5K per month and that seems a lot for an average joe like me.
It seems to me being an expat in Singapore, you all are living in a world of luxury, hahahahahahaha

[New Here?]

You are new here

“perhaps a third to half of the world's multinationals have their regional hq here, the other half being in HK. This means there are plenty of high paying positions relative to other cities”

For western, Japanese expats, that might be true. Your average local working in a multinational get S$2,500

“but if you work in London you can find cheap housing an hour or so away from the city, this is simply not possible in Singapore thanks to the limitations of its size”.

Ahahahahaha : take the PIE to Jurong: 20 km of greeneries !!! Plenty of space. Just ask yourself why it is not being built!!! Due to your own naivety, you will say to protect nature, save the environment and fight global warning.

“In terms of salary and compensation levels (white collar mid-upper levels), Singapore isnt that far behind London (especially after tax) and hence the cost of housing is hardly surprising”.

SG Median salary S$2,200

20 % of the population earns less than S$1,400. NO ONE earn this king of salary in London or Paris (it is against laws on labor wages)

[Troll critics]

I second PP's comments. I reckon the whiner who is continuing trashing HDB apartments is one desperate agent. Woe betide agents here if expats feel HDB is emminently livable. They stand to lose big in commissions from renting out overpriced, mediocre condos to expats. 

Agreed. The harshest critic of HDBs are not expats but locals - LLs and agents who are afraid that if more and more expats rent HDBs, they will have fewer tenants to fleece. 

[Pripps]

Personally I find the HDB's apartment that I have seen so far to be pretty decent however I have seen a couple of condos that weren't  If there were more pools around HDBs I would try HDB next time. I saw around HV a nice large pool in the middle of a bunch of HDBs, something like that would be cool.

[To New Here?]

Im not new but I dont think you know how to read; there are plenty of high paying jobs/positions relative to other cities due to its status as a regional hq, ie most of the managerial positions are clustered here, hence there are more of these positions here than other cities, which generally means more opportunities to score a higher paying job than elsewhere if you are suitably qualified.

Land is scarce in SIN, everyone knows that, hence its not possible to have cheap private housing. There is not enough land in SIN to build houses for the masses, whether it be Jurong or anywhere else - do the math on population density.

I also said mid-upper level professional jobs pay roughly the same (not all incomes are similar), since the general theme here revolves around professionals in middle management. There will always be discreptancies between pay levels for specific industries between different countries, SIN is no different. I dont know where you are getting your stats from but I doubt the median income in Singapore is S$2200. In any case the median income is hardly relevant to the point at hand, which is that SIN is not a provincial city. If you look at similar jobs between SIN and KL (which probably IS a provincial city), salary levels for professionals in SIN are generally far higher and there are more of these high paying technical, professional and managerial jobs here than in KL due to the fact that more MNCs set up operations/HQ here.

Yes there are plenty of people on low incomes in SIN, and no doubt there are disparities in and with the distribution of income/wealth amongst the population. Guess what? there's plenty of that all over the world, especially in HK. What you can get in SIN and not say London or NY is good quality government housing, cheap public transport that is first rate, cheap food and drink (non alcoholic) and the ability to live relativelty comfortably (by normal standards) on far less than almost any other first world city. Why is this relevant? because 1400 here can go a lot further than in London or Paris. You have to take into account the purchasing power of your wages. Lets not forget taxes are also higher and more numerous in most other nations (without undertaking tax evasion). But again, none of this is relevant because the status of a city as a financial powerhouse or provincial backwater is not always determined by the median or average income across the entire population.

[Myanswer]

“there are plenty of high paying jobs/positions relativeto other cities due to its status as a regional hq,”

Yes, plenty relatively to other… provincial cities in Asia but not NY, London or Frankfurt

“Land is scarce in SIN, everyone knows that”

Wrong - largely enough land for all, but not properly used. Plenty of areas with nobody around. If you work or live in Jurong or Tuas, you know what I mean.

“I dont know where you are getting your stats from but I doubt the median income in Singapore is S$2200”

My stats are correct. This kind of information is widely available.

Let me add that 10 % of the population live with less than $700 a month.

Comparison with KL salaries is meaningless. Salaries in SG are higher than in KL, but cost of living is also higher. So it is not better to be in SG. I know people who earn less in KL but enjoy a higher standard of living due to lower costs.

[Pripps]

As a side note check out this for various ways of showing median income in Singapore, unfortunately the statistics don't seem to include people who don't work so the values are probably on the high side

http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/papers/people/op-s15.pdf

hopefully BM will not delete this post also 

[Whats in a label]

“there are plenty of high paying jobs/positions relativeto other cities due to its status as a regional hq,”

Yes, plenty relatively to other… provincial cities in Asia but not NY, London or Frankfurt

“Land is scarce in SIN, everyone knows that”

Wrong - largely enough land for all, but not properly used. Plenty of areas with nobody around. If you work or live in Jurong or Tuas, you know what I mean.

“I dont know where you are getting your stats from but I doubt the median income in Singapore is S$2200”

My stats are correct. This kind of information is widely available.

Let me add that 10 % of the population live with less than $700 a month.

Comparison with KL salaries is meaningless. Salaries in SG are higher than in KL, but cost of living is also higher. So it is not better to be in SG. I know people who earn less in KL but enjoy a higher standard of living due to lower costs.

NY, London and Frankfurt are also provincial city what?

[To Myanswer]

“there are plenty of high paying jobs/positions relativeto other cities due to its status as a regional hq,”

Yes, plenty relatively to other… provincial cities in Asia but not NY, London or Frankfurt

“Land is scarce in SIN, everyone knows that”

Wrong - largely enough land for all, but not properly used. Plenty of areas with nobody around. If you work or live in Jurong or Tuas, you know what I mean.

“I dont know where you are getting your stats from but I doubt the median income in Singapore is S$2200”

My stats are correct. This kind of information is widely available.

Let me add that 10 % of the population live with less than $700 a month.

Comparison with KL salaries is meaningless. Salaries in SG are higher than in KL, but cost of living is also higher. So it is not better to be in SG. I know people who earn less in KL but enjoy a higher standard of living due to lower costs.

Mate, you've just proven my point. Plenty of jobs in Singapore relative to other provincial cities in Asia, thats what I am trying to say. Not as many as NY or London, of course thats true, no one would dispute that but who is saying SIN is London or NY? We're saying its similar in the sense that its  regional hub, along with HK and Tokyo(which is more domestic than regional hub), and arguably the smallest of the three. The only point here is that Singapore is not technically a provincial city if it has the majority of senior positions within the Asia region excluding Japan. Frankfurt isnt exactly a goldmine either but thats another story.

As for the land issue, even if there was enough land in Jurong for everyone, the fact is that it is not available for sale for whatever reason. That might well be an issue with government plans, but the fact remains that practical land for use is limited and frankly availability is all that matters.

Median income in Singapore is around S$5000 according to Pripps' link, and this sounds more reasonable -of course household income is open to interpretation as to how many workers per family. I think youve misread the avg income per member of the household as the avg per worker.

Once again you should read everything in the proper context, I compared SIN to KL in terms of the volume of high paying positions, there are more in SIN and the comparison with KL was merely to highlight which city has the higher number of high paying jobs. I beg to differ on SG vs KL, KL has a lower cost of living but the opportunity to earn is also significantly lower in paid employment (and enough to eclipse any advantages in cost of living), hence I doubt there are many (if any) who would pick KL over SG in terms of employment and remuneration opportunities alone, especially at a professional level. Of course there are plenty of people who earn less in KL but have a higher standard of living, but you have to compare them against their peers in the same jobs in SIN and chances are that they are earning more and their standard of living would be roughly similar for middle income jobs, and for those in higher positions/incomes the salaries/living standards in SIN far exceed those in KL, and in some cases (regional heads etc) these jobs dont even exist. This is relevant because if you want to earn these salaries you have to head to a major city and not a provincial one.

10% of households live on S$1300 a month; again you will find inequitable distributions in every city, I dont see how that is relevant to the argument that Singapore is not a provincial city. You are simply taking every point out of context, picking out parts of statements as you see fit without considering the entire sentence, putting on your bliders and ranting away. 

[MoreInfo]

To the guy who wrote that the cost of living is high in Sg because it is a banking city, Frankfurt is a counter-example.