Can shed some light on Singapore.
Here, the banks require a down payment of 20% for your first property, 50% for the second one, 60% for the third one and 80% for the fourth one onwards if it does not exceed 30 years. Crazy, I know, but so is the market. In addition, 2nd and third purchases will have 7% and 10% tax levied (about $70,000 to 100,000 when private properties here cost about 1 million dollars on average.)
Having said that, almost everyone in Singapore owns a house as there is a public housing scheme called HDB Flats, and 80% of homeowners own one this way and in many cases, after waiting about 10 years the value would have gone up by quite a bit. For example, the neighbourhood I'm at, if bought in 2005 new, it will roughly have appreciated from 300,000 SGD to 750,000SGD today. However, it doesn't quite stack up against the private housing prices where values would have increased 4 folds since.
Our market is primarily a capital gain one (Ultra low 2-3% Cap rates here, not too far off Vancouver or Toronto I say but still lower) and a few years back before the restrictions came out, it was increasing very quickly at rates of 8-10% a year. It has been on the decline however ever since due to the restrictions. Mortgage rates are about 2-3%, extremely low.
Tenants here always pay their rents on time, never had to chase one myself and that's a good thing.
Our listing service is called property guru where pretty much everything is listed there and I think it's like the Redfin equivalent.
The biggest difference here is the prices for renovation. It should be much lower compared to the US. We have very low labour costs comparatively and no official minimum wage so most people here just call someone to do everything, almost no one fixes anything themselves here. We have a renovation forum called Renotalk where people spread word-of-mouth referrals for GCs and Interior Designers. It's like a BP for home renovations. $10-20,000 for the whole house including new laminate/vinyl flooring, paint, washroom redo, kitchens, air conditioner and built in wardrobes is about the market price.
Finally, no capital gain taxes!
