Straits Times’ Urban pages today, the nation’s self-appointed purveyor of all things hip, did a cover on Designer Bed Sheets today and educated us on the differences between cotton percale, cotton jacquard, cotton sateen and pure linen(‘cotton percale is made from high quality cotton and is crisp and cool to touch, launders well, lasting and durable, cotton jacquard comes with an alternating matt-sateen pattern in the fabric, cotton sateen made from a finer thread than percale and pure linen for its crispness, coolness and breathability). I’m not familiar with the terms but cotton percale comes closest amongst the options above vis a vis what I’m looking for in my bedsheets. I love Egyptian cotton- and sadly, not all egyptian cotton is the same(don’t ask me why- it just doesn’t feel the same) and as far as I’m concerned, threadcount does matter.
A neophyte running her fingers through the sheets at Takashimaya’s bedlinen section whenever there’s a sale, my favourite is Karen Neuberger’s. This year, Armani Casa comes close- I love the colours and the coolness of the sheets come close to Karen Neuberger’s but I’d take Karen Neuberger’s odd spacey blue colours(the brand does have white, but I will not live with two whites) than the fashionably muted tones of Armani’s. Karen Neuberger’s website looks like it caters more to the Martha Stewart crowd but nothing in my takashimaya finger-running experience beats the cool, crisp, amazingly high threadcount sheets. A salesman ran the threadcount by me- was particularly impressed but I daren’t recall it online in case my memory reveals a tendency to exaggerate
I do not understand the deal with Frette other than its particularly inspired marketing point-of-experience(is that a new marketing term?) with boutique hotels and I do tend to remember houses with Frette linens;-)
Some guy interviewed mentioned buying sheets from the W Sydney. I didn’t find W Sydney’s sheets to be particularly memorable but was in earthly heaven in Dubai’s Hilton. The pillows were particularly soft, as were the bathrobes and the sheets. Never thought of asking the people at Hilton Dubai during my particularly harried stopovers there but I did make a call to Hilton Singapore when I was back and they pointed me in the direction of Ploh, a Singapore- based pillow manufacturer that reputedly supplies the top hotels in Singapore(and regionally). I sampled the pillows(Ploh retails at a few places- find their retail points online) at John Erdos, didn’t find those like the ones in Dubai Hilton, and bought pure down pillows at Tangs, which I found to be the most similar(but not quite, although comfortable pillows must have seemed more comfortable to a weary traveller) to the ones in Hilton Dubai. A call from the owner of Ploh informing me of a hotel-only line that’s not available through the retails points came 10 minutes after I purchased those down pillows. Do check Ploh out nonetheless- there’s been a lot of good press about them.
A professor of mine wrote an excellent book on how policy makers often use analogies poorly in making a decision- not only to justify a decision that arguably, has already been made, but also for the process of rejecting options.
The same could be said of investment decisions (vis a vis real estate as per the theme of this blog). Despite the fundamentals of buying land- from the simple Mark Twainian school of philosophy:’coz they can’t make more land‘ to the evil genius Lex Luthor: People are no damn good. But they will always need land, and they will pay through the nose to get it‘. , the transacted prices on landed properties is always a precursor of the overall market in a typical top-down approach.
When politics get mixed in to the fray, however, strange things happen.
Foreigners are not allowed to buy land in Singapore (unless you satisfy certain criteria) – aside- a notable exception is Sentosa Cove where a concession has been made- and look how much prices have gone up- so foreigners looking to invest in real estate in Singapore find it much easier to purchase apartments or condominium units.
Those who benefited through buying land in the 1980’s saw an exponential increase in their wealth come mid-1990’s. Some of these people went on to become real estate developers(developing condominiums which saw people queuing overnight, or paying someone to do so on their behalf, to get first dibs on the new launch. theoretically, you’re then able to turn around and flip the option to another guy a few spots down the queue and pocket a cool profit) and were burned when the crash came. The analogy that they’d naturally come to would be to buy land and give condominium units a miss.
And therefore when there was a turnaround in the market signalled by a buying spate in landed properties, these same people bought into land- at the point of entry where a purchase of apartments would have yielded much higher profit.
And if I learnt my lessons in class correctly, aside from the George Ball’s of the world, there really are no sure ways to ‘learn’ a correct application of analogies. All we can hope for is that the George Ball’s be identified and we’re able to get our cues from them.
There’s a lot of buzz going on about discount brokerages on US-based real estate blogs. At 6% commission on a sale, I’m sure there’s a market for discount brokerages.
In Singapore, where the standard agency commission is between 1-2% on a sale, talk about discount brokerages has hardly registered- although recently there has been a lot of debate on the practice of buyer’s agents paying the 1% commission for a purchase transaction on a HDB flat.(Read about the debate here )
I do remember though, an agency advertising cash back schemes (not to be confused with HDB’s cash back ) where the buyer does his/her own property search through calling up various seller’s agents through the classifieds, arranging for their own viewings with these individual seller’s agents and then inform the seller’s agents that they are being represented by their own agents when they are ready to make an offer. The incentive in doing all the legwork yourself and then calling in the ‘discount brokerage’ to represent them is that the discount brokerage would be willing to share their commission with you and would return you a certain percentage of their commission.
Am not sureif it’s the best way, or most ethical way of conducting a home search, however. The theoretical basis is that the buyers would do all the legwork themselves, organising for viewing schedules and making their own way between viewings. What it could degenerate into is an abuse of the seller’s agent’s time- where the buyer has various seller’s agent picking out a few properties for them , arranging for viewing schedules, and then bring up the matter of representation when they are ready to make the offer.
Sellers’ agents are also wont to consider buyers who call in directly as ‘their clients’ , – which would obligate the buyers to inform every seller’s agent they contact that they are being represented by their own agent from the start.
As for the maths- and I’m sure this has been touched upon in a different context elsewhere- co-broking effectively halves the commission for sellers’ agents. Which makes them unwilling to negotiate on the asking price. And should we look at the overall picture- where the commission is 1% of the total sale price, the savings could potentially work in the buyer’s favour in the case where there isn’t any co-broking. Am going to throw hypothetical figures(which in all likelihood would be very much tempered in real life):
On a purchase price of $1m, the agent gets a commission of $10k.
Upon co-broking, it’s effectively $5k for each agent- with the discount brokerage giving you a refund of, say, 50%, which equates to a saving of $2500 for the buyer.
In the circumstance where there is no co-broking, however, the threshold for negotiation vis a vis how it affects the agent’s commission is a lot higher. Should the purchase price be negotiated down to $800k(might or might not happen in real life depending on the seller’s reserve price- but for this example connotes savings of $200k off the purchase price), the commission is still $8k as opposed to the co-broking fee of $5k at $1m-which would indicate that there is a greater incentive for the agent to negotiate on a lower sale price(although in real life there’s the issue of agent loyalties- the relationship with an established as opposed to a new client, etc). In real life, co-broking scenarios are common, with very little resentment on the part of the agents involved but sometimes, as the above(rather extreme but illustrative of the message) example shows, the savings in a cash-back, discount brokerage might not justify the overall price paid.
The issue of reconciling agent’s motivations/loyalties and the commission structure has been much debated- from Freakonomics to an excellent article I read in the Business Times a few years ago. Agents understand the motivation that comes with commissions and I have met agents who volunteer to pay for the agent’s commission(they’re on the buyer end in a private market- not typically necessitating a commission) should the transaction value be perceived as being too low to motivate an agent to source for apartments for them. Or the agents who buy their own apartments without trying to get a cut off the commission through co-broking because they understand it disincentivises the negotiation process.
Will continue touching upon the commission/motivation structure, and if there is ever an ideal model in later posts.
Update:-
Philip Greenspun suggests the 6% commission fees might be too low:
People who sell $1 million condos often complain that paying a 6 percent standard (read “fixed by collusion” among realtors) commission is too much ($60,000 for what might only be a few days of work). Economists who have studied the real estate market, however, find that in some ways the commission is too low because realtors don’t work very hard to sell clients’ houses compared to their personal houses. In other words they sell a customer’s house relatively cheap so that it will sell quickly rather than work for many weeks to get the best price and 6% of the extra.
Why haven’t we seen anyone propose a commission structure that says the realtor gets a 25% commission… but only on the amount above the assessed value of the property? Your typical $1 million NY or Boston apartment is assessed at maybe $850,000 and could be sold for that price with almost no effort in a few days so the commission paid on such a sale shouldn’t be more than $1000. If a realtor could sell the place for $1.2 million via clever marketing, however, she should be entitled to a fat commission.
And there’s a precious quote on Singapore’s commission rates and the kind of agents it spawns:
Can everyone stop claiming to unrolling the next web 2.0 site?
User participation and a more democratic platforms are great ideals but personally I believe more in Wikipedia’s model than Youtube’s. And while the philosophy of wikipedia is in delivering a democratic platform and accessibility to knowledge, it’s also (very) much moderated, which detracts from the ideals of democracy, doesn’t it?
I subscribe to that whole Foucauldian power/knowledge dialectic and Lutheran ideals of transferring knowledge(and power, according to Foucault) to the hands of many as opposed to a few but complete democracy as embodied by sites where just about (everybody) can post a video seems too indulgent, too wasteful, too pointless for it to be definitive of a whole generation of websites.
Condodomain never fails to yield interesting, blog-gable material.
In their post ‘Don’t be lazy and walk home’- the site’s inspiration is WalkScore which lists these reasons:
Why Walking Matters
Walkable neighborhoods offer surprising benefits to our health, the environment, and our communities.
Better health: A study in Washington State found that the average resident of a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood weighs 7 pounds less than someone who lives in a sprawling neighborhood1. Residents of walkable neighborhoods drive less and suffer fewer car accidents, a leading cause of death between the ages of 15 – 45.
Michael Slater
June 8, 2005 @ 10:28 am
6When I sold my house in the east bay of San Francisco, this is exactly what I did. The commission was tiered and he was better paid the higher the sale price of the house was (starting at 6%) And to be clear, I got significantly more for my house (even considering that I had bought it only 11 months earlier… thanks California Real Estate Market!)
By the way, if you think 6% is low or a lot, consider what the real estate agents in Singapore get…. One Percent.
And yes, the average real estate agent here is about as good as you’d expect for paying only 1%. It’s practically a hobby job for most of them — a bunch of Glen Gary Glenross losers, they don’t even get the steak knives.