Saturday, May 9, 2009

Out of Our League

Last night our friends had us over for dinner, and it was so nice. Wonderful people, great food - just a lovely evening. I believe it was six couples in all with a few kids thrown in for fun.

One couple was talking about how they are looking to move, and they said rents really haven't come down. Matt and I jumped in, because our lease is up at the end of this month, and we have found that rents have come down 30-50% (we are staying in our place until August at 60% of our previous rent!). We said, "we have seen places that were previously $4,000 or $5,000 now in the reasonable range of $2,800 or $3,000 (these are Sing dollars - so 2/3 of US dollars). We said, "we are paying $2,000 for our rent that was $3,000 for the last two years.

Then came the explanation from the other end of the table - apparently the $10,000-$15,000 range of apartments hasn't dropped so much, because the people at the $15,000 and higher end have been sent home or are watching their costs, so demand has gone up for the $10,000- $15,000 PER MONTH rentals in Singapore. That's more rent in one year than I probably will ever make as salary. We were just out of our league.

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