Daily Briefing: HDB loans outpace bank loans again; How to assess Sheng Siong

And here's three developers likely to ride on the property market's recovery.

From iCompareLoan via Yahoo!:

If you’ve bothered to check the interest rate on your HDB loan (and congratulations on being part of the minority who bother), you might know the interest rate: that’s 0.1 per cent above the prevailing CPF rate. The CPF rate has been 2.5 per cent* for quite a while now, so the interest rate on HDB loans is 2.6 per cent.

But here’s what you may not know: borrowers who use bank home loans, such as for private properties and Executive Condominiums (ECs), have been paying much less for almost a decade now. Back in 2008/9, when most home loans were pegged to the Singapore Interbank Offered Rate (SIBOR), bank loans could be as low as 1.4 per cent per annum. Even today, when SIBOR rates are practically double what they used to be, interest rates tend to be around two per cent per annum.

Read more here.

From The Edge Property via Yahoo!:

CIMB Research is keeping its sector “overweight” view on Singapore’s property development and investment sector following the URA property price index’s (PPI) reversal from its downtrend in 3Q17, bringing private residential prices back to around 4Q16 levels.

In a Monday report, analyst Lock Mun Yee notes that while property stocks – which are currently trading midway between average and -1 s.d. discount to mean – have outperformed year to date (YTD) and she believes the sector will continue its strong performance given the evidence of volume and price recovery.

The PPI’s 0.5% q-o-q improvement reaffirms her view that the private residential market is on the mend, on the back of higher y-o-y buying demand, she adds.

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From The Motley Fool:

Sheng Siong Group Ltd (SGX: OV8) is one of the largest supermarket chains in Singapore with its network of 42 heartland-centric stores.

Right now, the company’s stock price is just 2.8% higher than a 52-week low of S$0.89, after falling by 14.8% over the last 12 months. This captured my attention and got me interested in finding out if Sheng Siong has a high quality business.

There’s no easy answer, but a simple metric can help shed some light on the question: The return on invested capital (ROIC).

Read more here.