Singapore property's next 'Sail' moment not on the horizon

Singapore

ALMOST exactly 13 years ago, Kwek Leng Beng, the billionaire chairman of City Developments Ltd, then Singapore's biggest builder by market value, did something outlandish.

Together with partner AIG Global Real Estate, he launched Sail @ Marina Bay, an ambitious, 245-metre-tall waterfront skyscraper, in a market that was down 45 per cent from its 1996 peak. The city-state's home prices, ravaged first by the Asian financial crisis and then by the Sars epidemic, would rise between 5 per cent and 10 per cent annually for seven years, he predicted.