These are just a few things to note when buying a property for investment.

  1. High volume of lease transactions – Just like trading, a high volume means that many Tenants/Buyers are looking at the particular project(s), it’s easier to Rent/Sell when you required.
  2. Near to MRT for tenants who don’t drive (>90%)
  3. Reasonable maintenance cost
  4. Preferably a condo where >50% of tenants are from the same country (e.g Japan, France, US etc). Usually, they would recommend their friends to stay in the same place so that they wouldn’t feel home sick. This is based on personal experience, when I was doing my exchange programme in Finland, I prefer to stay in a place or near where all the Singaporeans are staying so that we can look after each other.
  5. Check the area competitor $psf and rental price and calculate the % yield returns.

Take a look at the chart. Look at the volume of lease that is expiring in 2016 and 2017.Lease expiry by district

You can find some interesting data from this chart provided by URA and squarefoot website.

Good luck in searching for your GEM!