HDB to allow singles into BTO balloting game
Your lottery winning prize
As promised quite some time ago, Minister Khaw Boon Wan announced yesterday that singles will be able to buy flats direct from the HDB starting with the next BTO exercise in July. Welcome to the great national lottery!
While many have been clamouring for this for so long, the news has so far been greeted with muted response. The cheers were dampened by the qualifying criteria and flat size restriction. The age restriction of 35 remains, which is to be expected, and income must be $5,000 or less. Also, singles are only eligible for 2-room flats.
Personally, I’m not surprised by the flat size restriction, having written a few months back about the surplus of such flats the HDB is sitting on. It makes perfect sense to satisfy the needs of some singles while at the same time help to clear up its inventory. The alternative is to stop building these flats altogether, but perhaps the HDB feels the need to have at least a certain number of it. Given HDB housing blocks’ homogeneous designs, they probably can’t build such 2-room units on one floor without having them on every other floor as well.
Some people are asking why only 2-room flats? Who would want to live in such small flats? But if singles are allowed to compete with limited 4-room and 5-room flats, you start getting complaints from the couples. So I think restricting to 2-rooms is fair when there is still a demand backlog. As for the size of the flats, I reckon 45 square metre or so is more than enough living space for a single person.
Others are asking why limit income to $5,000? The current income ceiling is $10,000 for a couple, so it’s simply halving that for singles. If you increase the ceiling to, say, $7,000 for singles, the couples will be asking why then isn’t the ceiling $14,000 for them.
So all in all, the rules are reasonable even if not fantastic. One thing we see from this announcement is that you can’t satisfy everyone. But it is still early days and the government could tweak these rules as they go along. The question now is how many singles out there are both eligible and keen on these flats?
I have yet to see any information on the minimum occupation period (MOP), but I would assume five years applies as well (this is not necessarily a given since there is no MOP for 1-room flats). As I mentioned in my earlier post, this could potentially put off many singles who has the intention to marry. If you are 35, you could be stuck with a 2.5-year wait and a 5-year holding period, so you will be 43 by the time you are allowed to dispose of your flat. We may expect further policy changes to allow such singles to dispose of their flats earlier should they marry, but they must have kids because that’s the all-important deliverable to the government!
There was also no mention of whether this counts as the precious first bite of the public housing cherry. Should it, or shouldn’t it? There may be split views on this, but it would probably count.
The announcement that should bring greater cheers is that the recently launched Parenthood Provisional Housing Scheme is now open to expectant parents, and will be extended to all married but childless couples from next year. This is great news for all couples who have more urgent need for a flat. They won’t be forced to turn to the very expensive resale market, nor pay market rate rentals that aren’t cheap as well.
But it is said that there are only 200 applications to the Parenthood Provisional Housing Scheme so far, even though the HDB has over a thousand such flats available. A case of simply not many married couples with kids but no flats? Or a stigma against rental accommodation as I wrote in another post last month?
Would you go for these rental flats?
I disagree with the income, age and size restrictions. Why should there be restrictions when public housing is the only game in town? Further, if the government is able to accommodate so many foreigners, and plans to import still more, it should not have any trouble meeting the demands of its citizens.
Some couples may decide to live together without ever getting married by choice. Then there is the LGBT group of people. Why should the state dictate where they can live? There aren’t many housing options for them to begin with.
Xmen,
I agree with you that this system marginalises all those who don’t follow the govt-prescribed path of stable careers and early marriage planning. I myself got ‘penalised’ for not following that path, and have in fact written to the press about that before. My personal gripe is that public housing in the last ten years have screwed up the lives of countless young Singaporeans.
But my take here is that, granting the current system as it is now, these restrictions they have for singles now are equitable and in line with similar rules they have for couples in terms of income and flat size.
Why do they still bother to build 2 room flats and not 3 room flats (2bedroom)? At least during old age, these singles can still rent out one bedroom for pension purpose. One more bedroom will not take up so much land space but will give so much benefits to the lease holders. This party is really made up of a bunch of evil, greedy, self serving assholes. HDB should stop building anything smaller than 3room flats.
We’ll see what’s the take up rate for these 2-room by singles. If there are little takers, they should really stop building 2-rooms.
I feel very sad that family of six have to squeeze into a one bedroom flat.
[…] a few heads – Thoughts of a Cynical Investor: PAP listening to SDP? – The Void Decker: HDB to allow singles into BTO balloting game – Limpeh Is Foreign Talent: Limpeh vs Lila: on the issue of British vs Singaporean housing […]
Good point about the MOP and the possibility of selling at 40 yo.
Retaining the age limit of 35 is outdated and did not work to encourage Singaporeans to marry and have children.
I’m really surprised by KBW’s statement today that 80% of singles over 35 are eligible, meaning they earning below 5k, though I suspect it may be skewed by including very old folks, retirees and widows.
I like the layout of these little one-room flats. How refreshing it is not to walk into the kitchen or the dining room, which is more and more the case in today’s very poorly designed flats.
There is nothing “fair” or “equitable” about the current scheme. The intent is two fold, to appease a vocal electorate and eliminate excessive supply. KBH initiated restrictions against private developers for shoebox apartments, why should there be a double standard in promoting the use of these flats? $5K income ceiling seems fair based on the assertion that couples are restricted to $10K income ceiling. However, we should not forget that couples earning above $10K are entitled to other subsidized housing such as DBSS that singles ain’t. In any case, this is hardly the point – 17 years ago, the income ceiling is $8K, based on today’s inflation levels and appreciation in property prices, how can $10K couple income ceiling be even remotely considered as equitable or fair?
$5k for singles is fair if it’s $10k for couples, which it is when we are comparing plain HDB to plain HDB, not DBSS. If there’s DBSS for singles, then $6k will be fair.
But I totally agree that $10k is too low with many couples easily exceeding it but not able to afford private housing.
[…] Last thing to note, as was reported in the media as well, is that 2-room flats continue to be under-subscribed. I have written about these unwanted 2-room flats before. Despite the low demand, HDB continues to roll them out . It must be glad that rules will be relaxed next month for singles to purchase such flats. […]
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