shoeboxmickeymousehouse

2011 feb 20 SMALL CHANGE Shrink from shoebox apartments By Dennis Chan , DEPUTY MONEY EDITOR There is a Foochow fishball noodle stall at a Zion Road coffee shop that I used to patronise regularly as it was near my office. While the noodles lacked the springiness of, say, the Pontian version, the fabulous fishballs - stuffed with minced cuttlefish and fish fillings - more than made up for it. For $3 a bowl, you got a decent serving of noodles plus six fishballs of various varieties. My patronage dropped sharply in 2002 when my office moved from Kim Seng Road to Toa Payoh North. There were the occasional visits when I needed to satisfy my pangs for Foochow fishballs but over time, they grew less frequent. After a while, they stopped. A few months ago, I dropped by for a meal as I was in the vicinity. The taste was as good as I remembered it and the price remained the same. But to my dismay, the portion had shrunk visibly and I got two fewer fishballs than before. And this was ...

2011 jan 19 http://www.propertyguru.com.sg/property-management-news/2011/1/29534/demand-for-shoe-box-apartments-to-stay The demand for “shoe-box” apartments will likely stay, said Ching Chiat Kwong, CEO of Oxley Holdings. “If you look at the way Singapore is developing — high economic growth, rising home-owning aspirations, more local and expatriate singles, young couples who prefer dogs rather than kids — you can see a very clear demand pattern emerging,“ he said. “There is a market for good-quality, affordable private homes in good locations.” Oxley hopes to capitalise on this demand. The Catalist-quoted company specialises in developing 350 sq ft to 400 sq ft private apartments with one bedroom, living room and fully fitted kitchenettes. Three months after its October 2010 listing, Oxley has already sold out five of its “shoe-box” apartment projects. Loft@Holland was totally snapped up within two hours of its launch a week ago. This year, the company will launch at least two com...

2010 dec 18 A penchant for shoebox housing by Ong Kah Seng Updated 04:21 PM Dec 17, 2010 Gone are the days where size matters for home seekers. Smaller apartments are making their presence. In the public housing sector, 3-room and studio flats have been re-introduced in new Build-to-Order HDB projects, while new private residential offerings seem to be increasingly smaller, yet popular. Colloquially referred to as "Mickey Mouse" or "shoebox" apartments, there has been an increased demand for such residential units. The year 2007 saw a spike in sales of units smaller than 500 sq ft, from an almost inexistence to 325 units. The story continued from there, to 883 transactions last year. While it can be argued that last year was a recession year and therefore small apartments found favour among financially cautious buyers, the heightened interest in shoebox units this year seems to confirm the growing penchant for smaller apartments. This year, a total of 1,4...

2010 nov 16 http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/11/12/japan.ultra.tiny.home/index.html?hpt=C2 By Kyung Lah, CNN November 15, 2010 -- Updated 1653 GMT (0053 HKT) (CNN) -- Fuyuhito Moriya is 39 and still lives with his mother, but in circumstances you would call a tad unusual. Moriya, an unmarried man, and his mother, Yoko, live in a house that's built on 30 square meters, that's the same as the size of a parking space for one car. They live in what's called an ultra-small house, a genre of single family homes bred of Japan's economic stagnation and brought to life by architectural ingenuity. Moriya wasn't sure that the land, which was originally sold as a parking space for a car, would be big enough for a single family home. But when he started doing research into ultra-small homes, he began to realize it might work. "My imagination was that it should be doable to build the rooms virtually on top of each other instead of side by side," says Moriya...

2010 oct 3 Leasing out a shoebox flat While Mickey Mouse flats may be relatively affordable, buyers should be aware that rents depend on location and proximity to amenities By Joyce Teo While buyers are paying more for shoebox apartments, rental projections at the launch may not always pan out. Buying a shoebox apartment for lease sounds like a very attractive proposition because such units are relatively more affordable. But investors should know what to expect because not everyone will want to rent such small units, experts said. A record number of these small-format homes - also known as Mickey Mouse flats - have been sold in the first three quarters of the year, and at higher and higher prices. The sale of 906 apartments of 500 sq ft and below in that period is 84 per cent higher than that in the same period last year, said CBRE Research, citing URA Realis. This has also exceeded the full-year sale of 722 units last year, it said. Median prices of such homes have ri...

2010 sep 14 http://www.h88.com.sg/article/Mickey+Mouse+condos+distorting+prices/ Sales for 'Mickey Mouse' or shoebox apartments have skyrocketed, which is a good thing for developers, but analysts are saying that these sub-500sqft studios are keeping prices above $1,000 psf. Just look at the numbers. The median price quantum of private homes sold by developers has fallen from about $1.4 million in April this year to $1.1 million in July yet the median psf prices have hovered above $1,000 psf for most months this year. Many such shoebox condo projects, such as Siglap V, Parc Elegance, Suites @ Katong, Parc Somme, Centra Studios, La Brisa and Casa Aerata, have been selling very well since April. Could it be that these small apartments are driving up the median psf of certain districts, creating an illusion of increasing prices? Here are some shoebox apartment projects and their average prices, if you’re interested: Siglap V: Located across Siglap Centre, this condo saw three...

2010 sep 14 http://lushhomemedia.com/2010/09/13/shoe-box-units-shrink-median-price-of-developers-sales/ Increase in transactions of small units keeping prices above $1,000 psf Small unit size is not only the new popular; it’s also what has skewed per square foot (psf) prices upwards in recent time. The median price quantum of developer sales has dropped from about $1.4 million in April this year to $1.2 million in May and June and $1.1 million in July – but median psf prices have hovered above $1,000 psf for most of this year. Also, the median unit size of new homes sold has shrunk to below 110 square metres (1,184 sq ft) since April this year – after staying at or above this size for most of the preceding 12 months, according to caveats of developer sales since January 2007 based on URA Realis data captured as at Aug 25. CBRE executive director Li Hiaw Ho said that the figures could be due to an increasing number of caveats lodged for ‘small-format’ or ‘shoebox’ apartments from pr...