4,500 Build-to-Order flats to be on market within 6 months
JUST three years ago, it was saddled with more than 10,000 unsold units. Today, thanks largely to a buoyant property market, there are just about 3,500 unsold Housing and Development Board (HDB) flats, and the stock could shrink further to some 2,200 units by the year's end.
Acting on the rosy outlook and feedback that public housing is in demand, the HDB will put 4,500 new flats for offer under the Build-to-Order (BTO) scheme in the next six months. Already, 2,700 units were made available in the first nine months of the year.
Said HDB chief executive officer Tay Kim Poh in a briefing on the statutory board's annual report, which was released yesterday: "The main focus will still be largely in Punggol and Sengkang.
"For Punggol, this is part of our plans to build up the catchment so that we can provide more facilities.
"In Sengkang, there is also land available, and these two towns happen to be very popular towns with flat buyers.
"We will also be looking at other estates where we have run out of unsold flats."
In addition, the Design, Build and Sell Scheme (DBSS) — in which the private sector is involved in developing public housing — has met with such positive response that the statutory board will release another three new DBSS sites, with a combined yield of about 1,500 flats, in the next six months.
The sale of the first batch of the DBSS at The Premiere@Tampines was almost 10 times oversubscribed. The tender for the second site in Boon Keng was awarded in June while the tender for the third site in Ang Mo Kio will close next month.
In the last financial year, the HDB received 8,455 bookings for new flats — 7 per cent more than the previous year.
Property agents have welcomed the move to build more new flats, saying increased supply will stabilise prices in the resale market. Interestingly, despite the strong demand for new flats, there was a 7-per-cent reduction in resale applications in the last financial year — attributed to rising interest rates, rising resale prices and the new requirement for the letter for loan eligibility.
Said Mr David Poh, director of Strategic Planning and Development at PropNex: "I believe the resale prices will continue to climb in the next few quarters for a few reasons. First, the demand is going up. Next, the spillover from the en-bloc fever.
"For the fourth quarter this year, it should be in the region of about maybe 5 to 7 per cent, and after Q4, it should grow in the region of 3 to 5 per cent."
The HDB's Mr Tay said: "Our prices do move with the market but if you compare private resale prices and HDB's prices, the movement for HDB is not as high."
Other than catering to a majority of middle-income Singaporeans, the HDB also caters to the lower-income, as it resumed selling two-room flats from July last year. So far, 539 units have been launched for sale under both the BTO system and through balloting, with a high take-up rate.
It also converted larger flats to two-room flats in Jurong West and Sengkang. Out of the 184 converted two-room units offered for sale, 177 units found buyers.
To allow elderly home-owners to generate income by renting out their flats, the subletting policy was eased. Said Mr Tay: "Our figures showed that the number of HDB flats in the rental market has gone up from 12,000 last year to about 16,000 now."
As for response to the reverse mortgage scheme, as of Sept 30, NTUC Income had received 57 applications, of which 17 were approved and 27 withdrawn.
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