SINGAPORE - Southeast Asian city-state is losing international talent as some expats report rent hikes as high as 80 percent.
Australian national Ben Dunn and his family consider themselves “Aussie-poreans”. He has lived in Singapore for the last 16 years and his children, aged 10 and 13, were born here.
Drawn to Singapore’s “melting pot of people and ideas”, sunny climate, and liveable environment, the Dunns enjoy soaking up the greenery at Botanic Gardens, visiting Queenstown Library and eating hawker food at the Tiong Bahru Market.
But after watching the monthly rent for the family’s condominium soar from 7,000 to 11,000 Singapore dollars ($5,242 to $8,238) in a matter of months, Dunn and his wife made the difficult decision to return to Australia when their lease ends in June.
“Since the pandemic, we’ve been thinking about how it’s the right time to return home after being away for so long,” Dunn, 51, who works in finance, told Al Jazeera.
“We love living in Singapore but with the cost of living going up and wages not rising proportionally, this rent increase will cause a serious impact.”
While there are no official figures, Dunn is among a growing pool of expats leaving Singapore because of soaring rents, prompting concerns about whether the Southeast Asian city-state is at risk of losing its allure as a regional business hub.
Average rental prices in Singapore, where about 40 percent of the population is foreign-born, surged by 30 percent in 2022 – the fastest pace in 15 years, according to data from Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority.
The surging prices have been blamed on a range of factors, including a shortage of housing supply due to pandemic-caused construction delays and strong demand from companies and talent to relocate to the city, driven in part by China’s crackdowns on private industry and Hong Kong.
The number of Employment Permit and S Pass holders – the main visas issued to foreign professionals – grew from 323,500, in 2021, to 365,200, in 2022.
International and local business communities here have also raised concerns over the rising cost of residential and office spaces.
Seven in 10 foreign and local businesses are ready to relocate staff if costs do not come down, while half of expats who renewed their residential lease recently saw their rent rise by more than 40 percent, according to a survey by the European Chamber of Commerce in Singapore (EuroCham), according to Aljazeera.
