Malls, more malls everywhere

By EUGENE MAHALINGAM
eugenicz@thestar.com.my

WITH the opening of 20 malls in the Klang Valley with a total net floor area of 4.4 million sq ft this year, the retail property market is likely to face an oversupply situation with pressure on rental rates, property consultants say.

Many shopping mall projects that were put on hold are back on track, and shoppers can expect to see a plethora of new retail centres on the horizon, especially within the Klang Valley area, comprising Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Putrajaya.

According to statistics by the National Property Information Centre, as at March 2010, there were currently 49.98 million sq ft of existing retail space within the Klang Valley. Another 7.18 million sq ft is under development and 7.5 million sq ft of new space under planning.

 

Elvin Fernandez feels mall developers should conduct a study and understand the market before constructing.

 

Henry Butcher Retail managing director Tan Hai Hsin believes the new malls that are coming on stream will create an oversupply situation in the market.

“With the completion of at least 20 retail centres this year, the retail property market share will be squeezed,” Tan says, adding that the negative impact will be focused on certain locations with multiple malls.

“For example, the retail market in Cheras will be even more competitive when at least five new retail centres enter the market this year. In Subang, existing shopping centres are facing more challenges with four new players.”

He says newly-completed shopping centres will face pressure on rental rates.

“There are indeed too many malls within the Klang Valley. Newly-opened shopping centres in the last few years have been facing problems in securing sufficient tenants and shoppers. Many of their problems are due to market saturation, not the financial crisis.”

However, not all new malls will be casualties, even when there are already other existing, established shopping centres within the vicinity, says Malaysian Association for Shopping & Highrise Complex Management member Richard Chan.

“The Wangsa Walk Mall was opened in August last year in Wangsa Maju. Despite several prominent shopping centres (Jusco, Giant and Carrefour) already established within the area, retail space for the new mall (Wangsa Walk) has been fully taken-up,” he says.

A new mall can always be successful if it can meet the needs and wants of customers that were not met by existing shopping centres, he says, adding: “Malls are taken up because of a retail gap that cannot be met by the other malls. If you can fill up this gap, to the point of attracting the crowd from far away areas and meet the demands of the people, it will be a success.”

Chan cites KB Mall in Kota Baru, Kelantan, which is attracting customers from as far as Thailand.
“People from Thailand are going to the mall to get things that they cannot get in their own areas,” he says.

Khong & Jaafar Sdn Bhd managing director Elvin Fernandez believes that the success of potential new shopping centres is dependent on two key factors – their management and locations.

“Mall developers should conduct a study and understand the market before constructing.

Sometimes, they (the developers) will own part of the mall, say 50%, and divest the rest to different parties to manage. When that happens, you lose control,” he says.

Chan concurs that the number one criteria for the success of a shopping mall is management, rather than location. He says the next most important requirement is “accessibility.”

“The Mid Valley Megamall in Kuala Lumpur is strategically located but would it be successful if it didn’t have all those roads surrounding it? Your shopping centre might be in a good location but it would be pointless if it can’t draw the crowds,” he adds.

Fernandez says rental rates of downtown shopping centres (namely Suria KLCC and Pavilion in Kuala Lumpur) and suburban shopping centres (like Mid Valley in Kuala Lumpur, One Utama and Sunway Pyramid in Selangor) have been holding steady for a while.

Even during the global economic crisis, rates remained fairly steady and we expect them to remain steady for the remainder of 2010, he says, adding that he does not expect a “shoot-up” in rates.

According to Fernandez, rent for average prime space at downtown and suburban shopping centres are currently averaging RM50-RM60 per sq ft and RM30-RM35 per sq ft respectively.

“(Healthy) consumer spending and (good) tourism levels have managed to help keep the (retail) rates up,” he says.

With the improved economic conditions, the outlook for the retail sub-sector in Malaysia seems positive, regardless of the multiple malls, Chan says. “There are more festive holidays in the second half of the year and shopping malls also tend to have sales (in conjunction with the holidays) and year-end sales that will help boost business for the (retail) segment.”

Tan believes that the local retail industry will grow by 5% this year, with total sales turnover expected at RM74.6bil

Welcome to a speculator’s market

COMMENT
By THEAN LEE CHENG

SINCE the last quarter of 2009, property prices have not gone up incrementally. They have escalated, especially for landed units. In certain locations, prices may be unsustainable.

Up to the first quarter of this year, intermediate two-storey houses in a popular part of Petaling Jaya were transacting at about RM650,000.

Yesterday morning, an agent said the company had sold several houses facing T-junctions (which are not popular units among buyers) in the same township. These were 2 1/2-storey houses. One was sold for slightly more than RM1mil, among the highest he has ever seen in that location for a house located opposite a T-junction while another was sold for RM950,000, the lowest among the three.

Even at RM950,000, he felt that it was rather high. He is also rather concerned about valuations these days. “I like this property business. I want it to grow. But not this way!” he said.

In certain locations, especially in gated and guarded communities, it has come to a point where valuers are reluctant to put a value on a property.

How do you pin a value on a house when next month the price will be different? Prices are simply moving too fast.

Due to pressure, the valuer may have to value it. If the previous transaction was RM1.6mil, he may then reluctantly value the next one at RM1.63mil. The result is that the price of houses in that gated and guarded development becomes increasingly higher. It eventually becomes a speculator’s market, not a buy-to-stay market.

While valuers play their role by succumbing to pressure to put a value to properties, banks do the same when they promote various kinds of creative financing. When banks advertise free legal fees, it is not truly free. That amount is already packaged into the scheme.

Banks too play a part in today’s increasing property prices. As banks consider the buoyant property market, and as competition among banks heats up, mortgages seem to be a good way to increase their loans business.
So they create all sorts of attractive schemes.

Last year, banks were promoting lending rates at base lending rate less 2.2%. Earlier this year, it was base lending rate less 1.9%. Today, a foreign bank is promoting base lending rate less 2.3%.

It is this which encourages people to sign up for several loans.

Over in the condominium sector, prices are driven by various factors. In a matter of weeks, a serviced apartment project will be delivering units to buyers. When it was launched several years ago, it was priced at about RM160,000 to RM170,000 for a 400-sq-ft unit.

Even before the keys are handed to buyers, prices of RM250,000 and RM260,000 are being bandied about today.

In the next 12 months, barring any contagion effect from their souvereign debt situation in Europe, developers will be having more launches. They are aggressively gearing up to launch their projects today.

So ultimately it looks like the resounding performance of our residential properties today is due to a lack of other better investment alternatives, including the volatile equity market.

So from buyers who are at a loss where to put their money, to the banking sector eager to give out more loans, to valuers pressure to put a value on a property, to agents eager to get their commission, and developers, at every level, all are part of the market forces at play.


Back to that house at the T-junction, here is some food for thought: Whether it is RM650,000 or RM1mil, the rental remains at RM1,500 a month.

·The writer remembers the US subprime crisis and how it pulled down the global financial system. There needs to be some prudence in our property market too.

Investment valuation using price/earnings ratio

WE have used the P/E ratios more often than we know in our lives concerning purchases and investments. Few realise how important this financial ratio is. At present, this ratio is primarily used for shares or company valuation.

In simple terms, a P/E ratio is the ratio of the price of an investment divided by its earnings. A more technical definition for a company or share valuation would put it as valuation ratio of a company’s current share price compared to its earnings per share (EPS). Let’s say Venecio Bhd shares are trading at RM20 and the recently concluded financial year, resulted in net earnings of RM125mil with 50mil shares issued. Therefore, the EPS is RM2.50 per share (RM125mil/50mil), and that gives a P/E ratio of eight (RM20/RM2.5).

This means that for every ringgit the company makes, investors are willing to pay RM8 for it. There are long debates on the applications of P/E ratio for shares, but we shall not delve into this, rather I’d like to touch on P/E ratios for personal investment evaluations.

Calculation of P/E ratio for a property investment evaluation is pretty straight forward. For a house that yields a rental income of RM1,000 per month, that works out to be RM12,000 per year. With the house valued at RM240,000 that derives to a P/E ratio of 20 times. Based on my experience, this rate seems to be the valuation point of landed properties in the Klang Valley. To be more accurate, some would deduct direct expenses to derive at the net rental income less expense. Rates lower than these could either entail a bargain or a low valuation placed by investors, while rates above would translate as either a premium, or over valuation by investors.

We can also calculate the annual Return on Investment (ROI), simply by dividing the annual rental against the investment value, and this derives to 5%. This is actually the inverse of the P/E ratio, whereby 1 divided by 20 gives 0.05 or 5%.

What this means is that at 5% annual ROI, it will take 20 years (at current rate excluding inflation and other factors) to recoup the investment.

The P/E ratio can also be used if you are evaluating to sell your property (besides having a market price evaluation). For instance, if you had purchased a RM240,000 property, and three years down the road the rental has increased to RM18,000 per annum. Assuming the property P/E ratio remains, then the property should have a valuation of RM360,000 (RM18,000 X 20). This represents a three year cumulative average growth rate (CAGR) of 22.5% which can form a benchmark.

Based on the tables on a few tabulations for properties around the Klang Valley for comparison purposes, a few deductions can be made from the information gathered, as follows :-

● Landed properties generally has higher P/E ratios, as compared to condominiums.
● Condominiums on the other hand, generates better ROIs as compared to landed properties.
● Well established areas calls for higher P/E than new townships, and generate lower ROIs. This can be interpreted as higher investment return potential for new township properties.
● Lower P/E condominiums seem to generate higher ROIs.

A high P/E ratio can mean an over-valued property or a property in which the market places a premium therefore “approved” by market forces. Likewise, a lower P/E can translate as under-valued with a potential to increase. The tabulation has also not considered the maintenance fee that usually entails condominiums, and if this is lessened from the rental, the ROI may reduce to approximate the landed properties.

Depending on your budget and purpose of purchase, you can fit your requirements within this ambit of selection process. There are other considerations as well which should not be excluded. These would include, freehold land or leasehold, built-up, land area, maintenance fee, close approximate to shops, schools, facilities, etc.

The P/E ratio and ROI can be a valuable tool in your property decision making process as shown above. While some of the findings may defer with a bigger sample or new locations, it’s a start to a whole new definition to your house hunting process. You can also track P/E ratios over time, to build a trend in which a growing trend would denote appreciating value.

P/E ratios can also be used to evaluate other investment options, so long as the parameters required for the decision making process can be ascertained.

COMMENT
By RAYMOND ROY TIRUCHELVAM

● The writer, a business planner with Sabic Group of Companies, is “doing more homework today, to make up for those he missed in school.

Family-friendly game attempts to unlock creativity

 
CO-OPERATIVE: The PS3, 360, PC and Mac versions of Create allow level sharing via the Internet.

 

EA's UK outpost have revealed their pet project, Create, promising to provide a digital playpen in which families can club together to beat each challenge.

With a strong DIY aesthetic, players pick from a toolbox of props and objects, altering levels in order to clear a path for buggys, barrels, bikes and dodgem cars.

In some challenges, the chosen vehicle must make its way towards an obstructed destination - like the ooze in Pipe Mania or the cliff-loving mammals of Lemmings - and players work out how to avoid or use the items in its way.

In others, objects must be ferried safely to their destination by tweaking a makeshift transport.

Though popular web browser titles such as Wake The Royalty, Cargo Bridge and Transformice have already shown that games can integrate physics and engineering without losing a sense of fun, Create balances its challenge mode with a level creation suite that allows the construction and decoration of more domestic scenes.


A passing resemblance to two other well recent console titles that came with integrated level-editors, LittleBigPlanet and Joe Danger, may not be entirely co-incidental as EA Bright Light are located in the same city as LittleBigPlanet studio Media Molecule and Joe Danger makers Hello Games.

One key difference is that unlike those two PlayStation3 exclusives, Create is multi-platform, coming out on Wii, PS3, Xbox 360 as well as PC and Mac.

The PlayStation3 version also has Move functionality so that those with the console's new motion controllers can point and click just as on the Wii. Like LittleBigPlanet 2, it's targeting a mid-November release. - Relaxnews

Source: http://www.techcentral.my/news/story.aspx?file=/2010/8/4/it_news/20100804161125&sec=it_news

Can Google Get Social Networking Right?

The company has many social projects, but may struggle to improve on Facebook. By Erica Naone

 Rumors that Google is building a new social network have persisted since late June, when Kevin Rose, CEO of Digg.com, posted on Twitter that the Web giant was working on a challenger to Facebook. The company's recent actions--its reported investment in Zynga, a social gaming company, and its acquisition of Slide, a company that makes various applications for social networks--have fanned the flames.

Credit: Technology Review

Google already owns several products that encourage online social interaction--including YouTube, Google Talk, Google Reader, and Blogger. But it has struggled to deliver a successful dedicated social networking service. Its existing social network, Orkut, has far fewer users than Facebook (around 100 million, compared to 500 million), and is mainly popular in Brazil and India. And the launch of Buzz, a social network built into Gmail, was botched after users complained that their privacy had been invaded. Google has acquired several promising social services, including the microblogging site Jaiku and the location service Dodgeball, only to hold back on investing in them.

Some argue that Google has failed to deliver the kind of overall experience people expect from a social network. "Google has never come out with any [social networking product] where the experience drove it," says Jared Spool, founding principal of User Interface Engineering, a consulting firm based in North Andover, MA. "It was always the technology and the engineering that drove it--the experience was sort-of layered on afterward."

Spool notes that other failed social offerings from Google, such as Lively, its foray into virtual worlds, and Wave, an experiment in online communication and collaboration, originated as side projects for the company's engineers. Spool says that it is hard for side projects to be expansive enough to become a fully featured social network.

Nick O'Neill, a social-networking industry expert who runs the blogs The Social Times and All Facebook, says Google is desperate to get more involved in social networking because Facebook is collecting commercially valuable information that Google can't access.

O'Neill says that sharing content with friends provides important data on users' interests and behavior--useful both for providing better search results and delivering more effectively targeted advertising. To maintain its dominance in both fields, O'Neill says, Google needs to hone its search results by considering a user's social connections and the information shared with friends. Google may believe it needs its own social network to get the best social information, he says.

Google's existing social offerings are scattered, and it will take a focused effort to pull them all together, Spool says. He thinks users will expect nothing less than a spectacular new product from the company. "Google has way too much baggage," Spool says. While users might forgive a startup social network for lacking features, they'll want any offering from Google to have full integration with Gmail, Docs, and its other products.

Google already has popular communication tools, and plenty of content being shared on sites like YouTube, Picasa, and Google Reader. It is also involved with OpenSocial, a system for adding third-party applications to social networks, and has FriendConnect, a service that lets websites add social features that allow users to interact with each other and pull in content from social networks.

But Google will have to tread carefully as it tries to gain traction against Facebook. "A social network only works with a social graph in place," says Spool, referring to the connections between users on a social network site. With Buzz, Google tried to populate its social graph automatically, using links between Gmail users. But the resulting backlash--as users felt their privacy had been violated--shows that Google cannot easily exploit the user data it already holds.

Spool compares Google's Facebook problem to trying to compete with a popular frat house party. Another group can try to get a better keg and a better band, he says, but if most people are still at the frat house, there's not much that can be done. Users need a good reason to switch to a new social service. Google may have been hoping that an innovative social service, such as the now-canceled Wave, which offered a completely new approach to online communication and collaboration, could draw users away from Facebook, he notes.

Facebook, meanwhile, has its own problems, and some of these could turn out to be opportunities for Google. Ben Gross, an expert in online identity, notes that Facebook and other social networks don't accurately differentiate between people's social connections, making their social graph information less valuable to users and advertisers. For example, social networks tend to put all of a user's connections into a single group of "friends," and expect users to manage complex privacy settings to sort out family, work connections, and bar buddies. "Social network services should not assume that networks are flat, or that people are willing to put in the effort to articulate these networks or that they even want to," he says.

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Good luck

They really need to hire some artsy design weirdos at Google if they want to stand a chance. I like the simplicity of their basic site but everything is fairly ugly from their docs through gmail. 

Also, internally, different software groups members follow other members using their "buzz". So, some frickin idiot thinks "let's do that for everyone ... automatically". Let's see: I email students about research problems, my old Grad school buds about that those LSD experiments, my parents about their health, my kids about the homework and various business people about various business projects.  Yea sure I want all these people mashed up together following my "feed"!  That's the biggest WTF?! I've ever seen.

Given that track record, my bet is on facebook ... it is really stupid about how to categorize "friend" too, but it grew up organically that way and so everyone there puts on an act. 

I do have use for something like Wave though ... and now it's "bip" gone.  It was not communicated well, and their slow beta invites put me to sleep waiting until I forgot all about it.  Hire some real product designers, preferably who can barely program. Steve Jobs is a nut, but where would phones be without him?

US enemployment facing full-blown crisis?

The Horror Show

The employment situation in the United States is much worse than even the dismal numbers from last week’s jobless report would indicate. The nation is facing a full-blown employment crisis and policy makers are not responding with anything like the sense of urgency that is needed.

By BOB HERBERT

The employment data for July, released by the government on Friday, showed that private employers added just 71,000 jobs during the month and that the unemployment rate remained flat at 9.5 percent. But as bad as those numbers were, if you look beyond them you’ll see a horror show.

Government workers were walking the plank from coast to coast. About 143,000 temporary Census workers were let go, and another 48,000 government employees at the budget-strapped state and local levels lost their jobs. But the worst news, with the most ominous long-term implications, was that the reason the unemployment rate was not higher was because 181,000 workers left the labor force.

With many of them beaten down by the worst jobs situation since the Great Depression, they just stopped looking for work. And given the Alice-in-Wonderland way in which we compile our official jobless statistics, they are no longer counted as unemployed.

Charles McMillion, the president and chief economist of MBG Information Services in Washington, is an expert on employment and has been looking closely for years at the issue of labor force participation. “Over the past three months,” he said, “1,155,000 unemployed people dropped out of the active labor force and were not counted as unemployed. Even ignoring population growth, if these unemployed had not dropped out of the labor force, simple arithmetic shows that the official unemployment rate would have risen from 9.9 percent in April to 10.2 percent in July, rather than — as it has — fallen to 9.5 percent.”

Because of normal growth in the working-age population, the labor force increases by roughly 150,000 to 200,000 people per month. If those folks were factored in, said Mr. McMillion, “unemployment now would be even higher than 10.2 percent.”

We are not even beginning to cope with this crisis, which began long before the onset of the so-called Great Recession. The economy is showing absolutely no sign of countering the nation’s staggering jobs deficit.

“We have a large number of people who have just given up hope of finding a job,” said Mr. McMillion. He pointed out that there are record numbers — “I mean lights-out record numbers” — of long-term unemployed people who are still looking for jobs. Of the 14.6 million men and women officially counted as unemployed, nearly 45 percent have been out of work for six months or longer.

The Times’s Michael Luo wrote a moving article last week about the people who have started calling themselves the “99ers,” meaning they have been out of work for more than 99 weeks and thus have exhausted the absolute maximum in unemployment benefits. Nearly a million and a half people have been out of work for at least 99 weeks — and not all of them qualified for jobless benefits.

Said Mr. McMillion: “When you combine the long-term unemployed with those who are dropping out and those who are working part-time because they can’t find anything else, it is just far beyond anything we’ve seen in the job market since the 1930s.”

They may be thinking about this in Washington, but they sure aren’t doing much about it. The politicians’ approach to the jobs crisis has been like passing out umbrellas in a hurricane. Millions are suffering and the entire economy is being undermined, and what are they doing? They’re appropriating more and more money for warfare while schizophrenically babbling about balancing the budget.

At some point we’re going to have to claw our way out of this denial. With 14.6 million people officially jobless, and 5.9 million who have stopped looking but say they want a job, and 8.5 million who are working part time but would like to work full time, you end up with nearly 30 million Americans who cannot find the work they want and desperately need.

We’ve got more and more people in our working-age population and fewer and fewer jobs to go around. Mr. McMillion tells us that there are now 3.4 million fewer private-sector jobs in the U.S. than there were a decade ago. In the last 10 years, we’ve seen the worst job creation record since 1928 to 1938.

We’re not heading toward the danger zone. We’re there. The U.S. will not remain a stable society if this great employment crisis is not addressed head-on — and soon. You cannot allow joblessness on this scale to fester. It’s wrong, and the blowback will be as destructive and intolerable as it is inevitable.

David Brooks is off today.

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New technique announced to turn windows into power generators

August 10, 2010 Enlarge

Images depicting the inside of the deposition chamber were taken when scientists were depositing the insulating film. The different colors are due to the different gases being used. Credit: Prof. Chris Binns, University of Leicester

 

An international team of scientists and industrialists is to meet at the University of Leicester to develop of a revolutionary new technique for harnessing green energy.

Norwegian company EnSol AS has patented a ground breaking, novel thin film solar cell technology which they seek to develop commercially by 2016.

The company is now working with experts in the University of Leicester Department of Physics and Astronomy to develop the revolutionary new type of solar cell material that could be coated as a thin film on, for example, windows in buildings to produce power on a large scale.


Enlarge

Images depicting the inside of the deposition chamber were taken when scientists were depositing the insulating film. The different colors are due to the different gases being used. Credit: Prof. Chris Binns, University of Leicester

Experts will meet at the University from August 10- 11 to officially launch the collaboration between EnSol AS and the University of Leicester.

Professor of Nanotechnology at the University of Leicester, Professor Chris Binns, said the collaboration offered a tremendous opportunity to develop a new method for harnessing solar energy:

"The material has been designed by EnSol AS and is based on nanoparticles that can be synthesised in Leicester. In fact, following some initial investment by the company, the equipment we have here at the University of Leicester is uniquely suited in the world to produce small amounts of the material for prototypes

"The work is important since the solar cells are based on a new operating principle and different to Si solar cells. One of the key advantages is that it is a transparent thin film that can be coated onto window glass so that windows in buildings can also become power generators. Obviously some light has to be absorbed in order to generate power but the windows would just have a slight tinting (though a transmission of only 8-10% is common place for windows in the "sun belt" areas of the world) . Conversely the structural material of the building can also be coated with a higher degree of absorption. This could be side panels of the building itself, or even in the form of "clip-together" solar roof tiles.


Enlarge

Images depicting the inside of the deposition chamber were taken when scientists were depositing the insulating film. The different colors are due to the different gases being used. Credit: Prof. Chris Binns, University of Leicester

"Also since it is a thin film that can be coated onto large areas it could become very much cheaper than conventional devices.

"Photovoltaics are destined to form a key power generating method as part of a low carbon economy and the new technology will bring that a stage closer."

The material is composed of metal nanoparticles (diameters ~ 10 nm) embedded in a transparent composite matrix..

A spokesperson for EnSol AS said: "The basic cell concept has been demonstrated, and it will be the objective of this research and development project to systematically refine this PV cell technology to achieve a cell efficiency of 20% or greater.

"A thin film deposition system with nanoparticle source, will be designed and constructed in collaboration with the University of Leicester for the fabrication of prototype cells based on this design.

"This experimental facility will be designed to produce PV cells with an active area in excess of 16 cm2 (40 mm x 40 mm) deposited onto standard glass substrates. These prototype cells will subsequently be characterised and tested in collaboration with our academic partners.

"EnSol's next generation PV cell technology has tremendous potential for industrial scale, low environmental impact, cost effective production via standard "spray on" techniques."
Provided by University of Leicester (news : web)

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