Not only will they get extra help to buy their first homes, lower-income Singaporeans will, in a possibly unprecedented public housing scheme, be allowed to unlock the value of their flats as hard cash in their old age. What's more, they can do so without having to move out.
Changes to home ownership schemes, long seen as a keystone of socio-economic policy, were announced by Mr Lee Hsien Loong as part of a wider plan to narrow the income gap and ensure Singaporeans a nest-egg.
The Housing and Development Board (HDB) will launch a scheme to help those aged 62 years and above living in two and three-room flats, and who have had just one bite of the housing-subsidy cherry.
The HDB will buy back the tail end of their flat's lease, assuming the lease period is more than 30 years.
So, if an elderly flat-owner has 50 years left in his lease, he can sell off 20 years to the HDB and stay on in the same flat for 30 years.
He will receive payouts in two parts: A lump sum upfront and monthly payments for the rest of his life.
The Ministry of National Development is looking at alternative arrangements in the event that a flat-owner outlives the 30-year lease period.
PropNex CEO Mohamed Ismail called the scheme "significant", citing how ageing flat-owners, because of their familiarity with the existing neighbourhood, often find it difficult to move out and downgrade, say, to a studio flat.
Low-income home-buyers feeling sidelined by a bullish property market will also get help owning their first homes.
An additional CPF housing grant introduced last year for low-income citizen households will be increased to a cap of $30,000, up from a $20,000 cap.
The household income ceiling will also be raised by $1,000 to $4,000 — enlarging the pool of applicants to about half of all households in Singapore.
Mr Lee stressed that home ownership is the "best form of social welfare for citizens because it gives every Singaporean a stake in Singapore's success".
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