Nova development news has continued to be quiet lately. I have always preferred to look at the reports to the Singapore Exchange by World Class Global (WGC) and parent Aspial rather than local media spin. Over the past two years WGC has consistently provided every quarter a table on pre-sales for developments. The most important thing to note in the most recent quarterly report to June 30 is that they didn’t.

I suspect this could be related to a  recent report in The Age: Residents of Melbourne’s Australia 108 tower complain of ‘cracking’

Now, I am a renowned inexpert on building and tradie things and it seems to me from this report that it is not a good idea to take ownership or occupancy in the bottom half of  a large high rise unit building when the top half is still being built.

However, our local media typically has portrayed WGC (Aspial) as some kind of global behemoth when it is actually a medium sized Singapore developer which ambitiously took on some huge developments in Australia at the height of a boom in apartment development.

The table that is no longer posted in reports to the Singapore Exchange last revealed that Nova pre-sales had to crawled to 61% after almost two years of marketing while sales in the Australia 108 building above had fallen from 98% to 88% in the previous year.

As previously suggested WCG is not a low risk itself total assets $SG628 million, total liabilities $SG506 million and net assets $SG121 million. WCG also has risk exposure to the $AUD. It is exposed to successful completion of Australia 108.

The current controversy of  building quality in unit developments is not before time. While it has so far avoided Queensland I am aware of two major unit developments in Cairns City which endured serious problems and expense some time after construction during the previous boom pre GFC.

I would also suggest a look at reports from the JCU Cyclone Testing Station on insurance claims and flaws in newer high rise buildings following Cyclones Yasi and Debbie. I have updated links at Insurance.

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