Properties are the favourite investment class in land-scarce Singapore. Many people have heard and seen for themselves how a flat that cost their parents a few thousand dollars in 1960s could rise to hundreds of thousand dollars currently. The conventional wisdom is that land is scarce in Singapore, therefore, property prices has only one way to go, which is up.

I'm not a property investor. However, I did researched about the prospects of property investment in the long-term 10 years ago, and my conclusion was that it was not ideal to hold on to properties past the year 2017. This point was shared in a letter to the Straits Times Forum Page in response to a Special Report titled “Can You Afford to Retire?” on 18 Dec 2004. Because of this research, I have avoided property investment and missed the great property boom experienced in the last couple of ...