2019

Indonesia's property outlook: Will it goes up indefinitely?

Property industry in general, especially in Jakarta/Jabodetabek area, is generally still really high.
In my opinion, there are 3 options that may happen in the near future:

1. It will be flat for several years, and when the conditions are good/stable later, so it will go up, but it will drop afterwards.

2. It will be flat for several years, and will never go up again. Must wait for a large cycle of bullish property sector (can be more than 10 years)

3. It will be flat for several years, then prices continue to rise indefinitely.

I think no.1 is most likely to occur. Why?

Property in Jabodetabek area was in continuous rise for many years (from 2000-2013, maybe not the exact timeline, but close to that). Many property companies/ speculators made a lot of fortune at that time.

Property sales /contractors are very certain that property price will never go down, because in Indonesia the population is still growing. Hence, more people need houses. As long as people still want to have a child, they will still need a home.

But there is one important fact that is not considered. The land around Jabodetabek area is still plenty.

If this is in Hongkong / S'pore / Tokyo, it makes perfect sense to say that property price will go up forever.

Then, if we learned from what happened after the 2008 US subprime mortgage crisis, property price did fall. The market there is more mature. We can learn the economic cycle from there. More often than not, big economic cycle will always repeat itself (in different time/format).

Other thing is to consider the new generation. They may not necessarily think that they have to buy a house and settled in one place for the rest of their lives.

Well, it's just an opinion. Nobody knows the future. We could only learn from historical economic cycle; while it could still not be predicted, it always repeat by itself in the end.

IEF Jeju 2018 제주 국제 스포츠 축제

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDml6c5jPKk

The Krakatau

I don't know why I liked the drama/documentary about the Krakatau mountain. Usually I only watch a more modern documentary. It is intriguing as it portrayed the events leading to the eruption.

I remember one of the scenes where villagers were confused on the low tide. Kids ran to collect as many fish as possible. Not knowing that a giant curtain of tsunami waves is approaching within minutes.

In another unrelated scene, there was this one Dutch ship which was supposed to sail to Lampung/Sumatera when the volcano erupted.

Soon after the explosion, the captain of the ship decided to continue the journey/ even sail closer to the mountain. A decision that was instantly protested by everyone on board. The captain must be losing his mind, they said. But they didn't know that he actually saved everyone in the ship, as they survived the tsunami.

If they had sailed away or returned to port, their ships would be smashed to the land along with all the debris. He saved everyone, and after the incident, probably months or years later, Dutch queen awarded him with an honor.

Maybe the whole point is that Krakatau had once exploded. And now, it is rising up again, to about a third of its previous size. It keeps growing with the speed of around 20cm per day if I'm not mistaken.
Even a Bbc/Natgeo documentary once reported that they were confused why the Indonesian govt didn't have any disaster plan for people who lived nearby the mountain, even made it as a tourist spot.

As they know, scientist/volcano experts know, and now we all know, that this mountain had once caused one of the biggest tsunamis ever recorded on history..., and unfortunately yes, it would explode again...

Maybe the decision to move the capital to Borneo is a wise decision after all.

The Pale Blue Dot

Imagine the whole life journey is like climbing the everest, and throughout the climb, the ups and downs, the struggle, the sadness, the joy, the loss, the grief, the awekening, that we know, that we are nothing but a tiny dust in a pale blue dot of the universe.

“The Pale Blue Dot” by Carl Sagan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot

Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken on February 14, 1990, by the Voyager 1 space probe from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles, 40.5 AU), as part of that day's Family Portrait series of images of the Solar System.

In the photograph, Earth's apparent size is less than a pixel; the planet appears as a tiny dot against the vastness of space, among bands of sunlight reflected by the camera.

Voyager 1, which had completed its primary mission and was leaving the Solar System, was commanded by NASA to turn its camera around and take one last photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space, at the request of astronomer and author Carl Sagan.

Property market: Could it be in the start of a "bull trap"?

I often ask to people who understand the property market in Indonesia about the chance of property price to fall. Most, if not all, would say it's impossible, it will keep going up. Now is even the best time to enter, as it's stagnant for quite some time.

But this is my view:
Many young people nowadays aren't thinking too much about buying a house as their main investment concern. It may already be too expensive for them.

And in the future, the next (after Z) generations, may prefer to spend their money on travelling, while working remotely or away from city centre (as the trend starts to unfold now). As such, the demand to stay within the big (or expensive) area would decline.

Then, it's fairly reasonable to say that there are many vacant lands nearby the surrounding Jabodetabek area.

In comparison with Singapore/ Hongkong/ Tokyo, where there's very limited land; it would make sense for the property price to go up even further there.

Meanwhile, there is still vacant land here (though not in the city centre, but it's realtively not too far away),thus logically, if there is supply, and prices continue to rise, it means that one day it must go down in order to continue its rise. As simple as that.

In Indonesia, it seems that the only time the property went bust was in 1998, and it was also a very quick "correction". So it shouldn't be considered as a proper correction at all.

Nobody could precisely predict the market, any type of market. But maybe we could learn from other more advanced or matured market.  In America, it fell in 2008, and it took several years to rebound to its previous position. It's arguably not the same market and situation here, but when we are exposed long enough to the dynamics of equity and market as the whole, we surely know that it may... and will be repeated.