Ah yes. I didn't get that far, but there is a heading in the table of contents which I should have noticed:
The piece is really just an exercise in crystal ball gazing.
One point of difference between China and Singapore is that in Singapore it is not just the land, but also the buildings that are owned by the government (with the exception of freehold, and perhaps some large industrial sites where the structures have been built by a company on government leasehold land). So whereas in China the developers have acquired land-use rights, built the apartment complexes, and sold the apartments passing on the land-use rights in the process, in Singapore the developers have been contracted by the government to design and build, and then the apartments sold on 99 year leases (by the government). This means that the leaseholder simply has a long-term government lease that will expire.
The government also uses the leasehold conditions to exert social control. For example, it is against the conditions of the lease for the premises to be used as a base for criminal activity. While I was in Singapore there was a case where a smuggling ring was busted. The HDB apartments of several members of the ring were found to have rooms stacked the ceilings with boxes of contraband cigarettes. As a result, the leases were terminated once the owners were prosecuted. The crims lost their homes in an action that was completely separate from the fines and prison sentences imposed by the court.
VMT Price at posting:
13.0¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)