I’ve been helping with residential real estate in Hawaii for 30 years. People continue to say that the real estate market will bottom out. I have not seen it happened and I don’t think it will. It not like we can split the stocks into half. But I have seen highs and lows in a cyclical fashion. It has not “bottom-out” in my experience but bounced back.

During the Great Depression, many bought real estate knowing that the market would rebound.

Here’s an example of real estate values in my country of birth. We are familiar with these roads and locations. As secondary school students, we were always admiring the big homes. Lee Kuan Yew‘s home is also in this area. Here is a new listing in Singapore. It’s asking for S$300 million.

” SINGAPORE – A sprawling mansion at 5 Oxley Rise, where Jewish businessman Manasseh Meyer and real estate tycoon Cheong Eak Chong once resided, has been put up for sale.

The hilltop two-storey bungalow, which sits on a 151,205 sq ft freehold site in prime District 9, is expected to attract offers in excess of $300 million, marketing agent CBRE said on Monday (April 18).

The property is owned by seven members of the same family, all sons of the late Mr Cheong, founder of listed developer Hong Fok Corporation and Tian Teck group, according to The Business Times.”

Here is another angle to this property and the people who used to live in it. It’s so fantastic that there are so many people who are willing to share their interests and knowledge in history.

“Sir Manasseh Meyer, a Baghdadi Jew who was said to have “owned three-quarters of Singapore” as well as being the “richest Jew in the Far East” being richer than the Sassoons (who were described as the “Rothschilds of the East”).

The opium trade, enriched many in the Baghdadi Jewish community including the Sassoons. Like the Sassoons, who operated in Shanghai and Hong Kong, those in the community who found themselves in Singapore, came through Bombay (Mumbai).

Many saw the trade, as community historian Eze Nathan would describe it “The History of Jews in Singapore, 1830-1945”, as a “legitimate short cut to wealth” and the members of the community in Singapore, such as Meyer, made a fortune from it.Having acquired wealth initially from the trade, Meyer branched out into other businesses and into property. He would come to live in Belle Vue, which was originally built by Thomas Oxley as Killiney House and among the properties associated with Meyer were the Adelphi Hotel, Sea View Hotel, Meyer Mansions, Meyer Chambers and the Crescent Flats.

Belle Vue was demolished in the 1980s to make way for a condo development of the same name. A reminder of Meyer’s estate off Oxley Rise does however exist in the form of the Chesed-El synagogue, one of two synagogues in Singapore that Meyer erected. “