The fear factor in property

Rehda said some people are buying as they are worried prices will go up
 By THEAN LEE CHENG leecheng@thestar.com.my

PETALING JAYA: Property developers and consultants from Penang to Johor are generally bullish about the residential property market and do not think there is a bubble.

They are of the view that there are two types of buyers, one who is buying out of need and the other out of fear that prices would go up further. The speculative element which was evident a few years ago has dissipated.

Real Estate and Housing Developers' Association (Rehda, Penang) chairman Datuk Jerry Chan said: “Buyers have money which they would like to park somewhere.

“Sales this year have been better than last year, driven by fear rather than the speculative element,” said Chan who is also group managing director for Penang-based Asas Dunia Bhd.

Chan was commenting on a report Debunking the property bubble myth by CIMB which said that talk of a property bubble was overstated as the sharp rise in residential property prices over the past few years was confined to selected areas.

“Affordability is near its all-time high and prices have to surge 50% to 100% before affordability falls to pre-Asian financial crisis levels,” the report said.

The report said it was surprising that residential prices had not risen at a faster pace as new supply had fallen significantly over the past few years.

Chan said tourism was also very big in Penang and if China and Indian nationals were to buy in Penang, it would “turn the market upside down.”

“So I foresee Penang prices would continue to rise because of inadequate supply of land, not because of inadequate developments,” he said.

In the Klang Valley, Reapfield Properties Sdn Bhd chief executive officer Gerard Kho said domestic demand for residentials was expected to be strong until the middle of this year.

Managing director for the Khong & Jaffar group of companies Elvin Fernandez said “it is not a question of whether there is a bubble or not but whether prices in certain areas are tied in to fundamentals or not.
“And we know in certain hot spots, they are not,” Fernandez said.

In Johor, KGV International Property Consultants Samuel Tan said the state was undergoing a transition because of the Iskandar Malaysia factor.

“New houses entering the market are priced a lot higher than three years ago but the market is accepting it,” he said.

Wife of China next president Xi Jinping

China's Singing Future First Lady

BEIJING, (AFP) - For the first time since Mao, China's next leader will have a wife who is famous in her own right: Xi Jinping will ascend to power with hugely popular singer Peng Liyuan at his side.

The soprano, who holds the rank of general in the army, is renowned from Shanghai to Urumqi and starred for 25 years in CCTV state television's Lunar New Year gala, a broadcast watched by hundreds of millions of viewers.

Her husband is widely expected to become China's president next year and will be under the spotlight at the annual set-piece session of the country's parliament, which opened Monday.

Since the fall of Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong's last wife and the widely-loathed leading member of the Gang of Four blamed for the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese leaders' spouses have been expected to stay in the shadows.

''After the Mao era, the wives of senior Chinese leaders stopped appearing in public,'' said Zhang Yaojie, a researcher at the National Academy of Arts.

But Peng will be a deeply atypical first lady. In videos seen on the Internet, the 49-year-old seizes the limelight with her high cheekbones, thick jet-black hair, and radiant smile.

Her costumes range from military uniform to richly embroidered ethnic dress, and her repertoire includes syrupy melodies and folk songs whose lyrics have been altered to glorify the Communist Party.

Apparently in perfect harmony with her husband, a Party ''princeling'' with strong military links, her ver-sion of one traditional Tibetan tune describes the People's Liberation Army (PLA) as ''the saving star of the Communist Party''.

Peng, who comes from an area in the eastern province of Shandong known for its peonies and was nicknamed the ''Peony Fairy'' by her admirers, joined the army at the age of 18.

A semi-official biography posted on Chinese web portals tells how she began as an ordinary soldier, but began performing at PLA shows to boost troop morale.

In the 1980s she was one of the first people to take a master of arts in folk music in China. Her professor has spoken of her dedication to her studies.

Peng has performed in 50 countries and won many awards, but it was the Lunar New Year gala that propelled her to stardom.

When she finally retired from the television show in 2008, some speculated that it was to avoid overshadow-ing her husband, who was then far less well-known than her but had just joined the Politburo Standing Committee, the party's highest-ranking body.

''As an artist, she may suffer, in the way that Carla Bruni has a bit,'' said Michel Bonnin, director of the Franco-Chinese Centre at Tsinghua University, referring to the former model and singer who married French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

But Peng can help Xi ''to have a less dull image than Chinese politicians usually do,'' Bonnin added.

In interviews with Chinese media, Peng heaps praise on the ''ideal husband'' she married 25 years ago, and with whom she has a daughter, now a student at Harvard.

''He is simple and honest, but very thoughtful,'' Peng told the China News Weekly, adding that he has told her: ''In less than 40 minutes after I met you, I knew you would be my wife.''

But Peng's parents were not keen to see their daughter marry such a senior figure, fearing she would not be treated well because of her humble origins.

''He treats me like a little sister. Jinping is always busy. He is concerned about thousands of households, without thinking of himself,'' she said on the government site China.org.cn.

''When he is at home, I cook the dishes he likes to help him relax.''

Peng has been keen to convey a homespun image, telling the People's Daily's Huanqiu Renwu magazine she has simple tastes, enjoying ''going to the market by bicycle and bargaining with vendors''.

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Learn to ‘sow to reap’

TRANSFORMATION is the catchword in schools nowadays. Every headmaster and principal seems to be enthusiastically talking about transformational change.

They aspire to see their schools attain better grades and higher rankings in public examinations, gain more medals and awards in sports and co-curricular activities, and own a well disciplined student populace.

All these are very well and good. The Education Ministry deserves commendations for having thus inspired the schools.

While the objectives for school improvement and advancement are noble, the same nevertheless cannot be said of the means and ways by which some school heads use to arrive at them.

To achieve higher and more, some heads think it right to just do more and more of what they have been doing all along.

So, to secure more and better grades, they direct more/extra holiday classes, more workbook exercises/homework, more trial exams/tests, more scores/exam analyses, more motivational seminars/workshops, and etc.

To gain more and greater sporting medals, awards and honours, they want to see more training/practice sessions, more trial runs, more friendly matches and more competitions.

To improve discipline, they want school rules and regulations more stringently followed and enforced. And, if the need arises, new rules and regulations are introduced and implemented. More teacher “power” is also deployed to catch and punish the culprits.

This “doing more of the same” approach seems to be the understanding of these heads and their application of transformational change. While their putting in more efforts does drive results upwards to a certain extent, their advocacy of the “doing more of the same” culture has certainly driven their charges up the wall.

Doing more of the same, even more efficiently, is merely managing a cause. Schools will go forth all right, but very much stereotypically. It is not transformed. It experiences no innovation, no creativity, no paradigm shift; it is, in fact, still in the same old band of performance.

To execute transformation, school heads must play the role of both manager and leader. It is not just about managing efficiently; it is more about leading effectively.

School heads must come out of their comfort zone of doing the same old and routine things right, even if it is with greater intensity and frequency.

They must begin to think of new, innovative and creative approaches to doing the right things. It’s then and only then that their schools will truly move forward, reach new heights and acquire a new, more enriching learning culture.

I have seen schools that had gone all-out to achieve better grades in exams using the “doing more of the same” approach, having their results moved up by a certain percentage point for a year or two, and then dropping again in the following year(s).

The results behaved like a yo-yo within a fixed range of percentages. These schools were not really out of the deep, so to say. The year’s results depend very much on the available crop, with the schools’ efforts making an insignificant difference.

Instead of just focusing on teaching students how to study to get better grades in exams, school heads should encourage their teachers to impart upon students the importance and the know-how of learning effectively and efficiently.

I always believe that when a child wants to learn, his/her grades will take care of themselves. Of course, it is more difficult to teach learning for the sake of acquiring knowledge than to teach studying for the sake of scoring in exams. Here indeed lies the essence and the challenges of transformational change.

There is much truth in the cultural proverb “Sow a thought, reap an act. Sow an act, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character”.

School heads need to initiate activities that will facilitate sowing. It is wrong simply to prioritise and busy themselves with drafting and establishing new rules and regulations to restrict and constrict further, and to catch and punish undisciplined students.

A mind that is made to conform by “laws, rules and regulations” is not going to be transformed. “Sowing to reap” is a leader’s calling; the essence and challenge of transformational change.

Transformation is not about doing more of the same.

Some school heads need to reassess and reorganise their approach to transforming their schools lest their teachers be unjustly and overly burdened.

LIONG KAM CHONG, Seremban.