Where I Stay Currently
Over the last six months since the proposal, we’ve managed to obtain most of the wedding services we need like venue, wedding boutique, photographers and even secured the help of a well respected (and our favourite!) surgical professor to solemnize our matrimonial vows. Everything has been pleasantly smooth sailing but one stand-out problem remains unsettled and that is the most basic issue of housing.
Property in $ingapore as we all know is broadly divided to cheaper public Housing Development Board (HDB) flat apartments and expensive private properties in the form of condominums and landed housing. In the typical scenerio, private property is financially beyond reach of a young couple starting out (sans generous parents & blank chequebooks), so the singular choice is only public housing. Now while our award-winning public housing policy has managed to allow most $ingaporeans to at least own their own roof, it is a flawed system that is an omnipotent ulcer in every young salaried $ingaporean couple.
There are two methods of obtaining a HDB flat – either a new flat from the HDB or 2nd hand resale from a previous owner. Paradoxically an old resale flat is more expensive than a new flat due to the standing policy to match resale market prices to private sector sales. On top of that, older flats are usually found in established mature towns and resulting high demand, thus causing the prices to shoot up to unrealistic values. Though there is a policy to subsidize new couples buying expensive resale flats, the subsidy comes with many stipulations and is usually insufficient to offset the high prices demanded from the previous owner.
The more favourable path is to buy a new flat that is not only brand new but also cost efficient. The catch is that purchasing a new flat requires you to toss your name in a hat to ballot with the rest of the country and the odds of success is usually 1 in 5 (we’ve personnally tried more than 5 attempts over the past 1 year and the trend is recurrent disappointment). New flats also take about 3-5 years to build which means unless you start looking for a flat once you start dating, chances are you’ll be standing right in my homeless shoes now. There is another option of privately-build public flats which take an accelerated 2 years to finish building but again, they seem priced for profit of the construction companies rather than policy of cheap housing for the citizens.
What this all means is that our options are: 1. Take up a high loan to buy a ready resale flat. 2. Take up a high loan to buy a private-contract flat 3. Keep waiting for a new cheap flat and bunk in with your parents in the meantime, inviting ridicule and over-crowding tensions of the family. 4. Keep waiting for a new flat and pay exorbitant rentals in another place temporarily 5. Don’t get married at all. Okay the last point is pretty irreverent.
We are currently still exploring our options between a point 1 to point 4. Even though there is still more than year before our actual wedding, this problem is like a invisible mini-bomb constantly ticking at the back of our minds. Some days, just some days, you wish you had richer parents.
Ditch your car. You’ll be having nearly $700 – $1000+ monthly (after ditching the car) and then you’ll be able to use it to rent a condo / HDB flat in the meantime.
LKY expects us to stay with our parents until we rot and die. thats his fucking problem.
i wanna move out and i wanna move out. NOW.
The after effects of our govt’s Asset Enhancement Programme in the 80s and 90s.
Earlier buyers cash in when selling their flats while their young ones pick up the burden.
HDB had forgotten their motto – affordable housing for all.
frove: $700 for an entire condo/hdb flat? do you think it’s still 1990 or something?
a friend of mine just rented a room – yes, ONE ROOM – at a private condo in the east and it costs him $700 a month. the room may be spacious, but it’s still only a room… even HDB rooms are going for $500 and up depending on location nowadays.
i honestly doubt $700 (or even $1000) can get you an entire flat anywhere in singapore unless it’s way out in the boondocks. and even then it’s doubtful.
One room for $700 in a condo is cheap. I was earlier staying in Punggol HDB and paying $650 for a room.
[...] – ecstasy: Housing WoesTemasek & GIC suffers over US$10 billion paper loss on bank [...]
I totally sympathise – fiance and i were in same problem. in the end settled for a resale flat, and a 30 yr loan. current new hdb flats cost more and are smaller than the old flats, so decided on a resale.
oh well.
my fiance and i are going through the same ordeal as you. we dislike options 2-4. 2 because we don’t want to lose out on the hdb subsidy (which would be void once you buy private, right?), 3 – no way i’m going to stay with mine or his parents (i love my mum and dad, but it’s time to move out!!!). and 4 is just a no-no. wait 3-4 years for a flat in god-knows-where??? and yes, of course we don’t even get a chance to ballot.
due to the crazy high prices now, we are unable to find a suitable flat for option 1. in the meanwhile, we’re just not getting married – option 5. so yep, waiting for the PRs to stop driving the prices up. waiting for more supply so the demand goes down. and they ask us why we’re not having kids? this is why.
salaries perhaps have gone up 10 times. but prices of houses? more like a 100 times. sometimes it does get quite unbearable.
*sianz*
Initially HDB was really affordable. It was called LOW COST HOUSING. The word ‘LOW COST HOUSING’ was silently dropped years ago, so silent that not many people did not notice it.
Sorry for the typo error in the last line.
Initially HDB was really affordable. It was called LOW COST HOUSING. The word ‘LOW COST HOUSING’ was silently dropped years ago, so silent that not many people noticed it.
Geez, and the $ingapore government is asking why we’re not tying the knot and having more li;’ $ingaporeans…how rhetorical can they be?
How in the world are couples supposed to settle down & procreate when they’re slogging their working lives away trying to finance their mortgage? And yeah, whatever happened to every $ingaporean having an AFFORDABLE roof of their own?
they said ‘affordable’ housing. they didn’t say cheap
they said ‘affordable’ housing, they didn’t say central
they said ‘affordable’ housing, they didn’t say available anytime
what a wimp! must have the best and ideal solution. no one owes you a marriage or a property!
it’s tough being a “start-up”.
people will always reduce your problems to you, individualising these problems by saying you’re “wimpy” or “poor” or “lazy”.
but we forget that singapore is structured in way that creates barriers to early marriage and (moving out). and the funny thing is, the government has the same mentality as mentioned in the previous paragraph, and they’re wondering why birth rates are low.
by “birth rates”, they might be referring the educated ethnic chinese, or maybe not. who knows.
the people who created public housing live in private housing.
Come to Malaysia, buy a 4,000sf bungalow for the cost of a resale HDB! Imagine, 6R5B. Space for 4 cars right outside the door. Don’t use up too much of our petrol though, and don’t cause too much articial inflation :D
Some more the politics is better than Spanish soap operas…
You cannot buy a HDB flat. You pre-pay 99-years worth of rent. It is transferable but it is still a LEASE. Why commit to such a long lease? And pay INTEREST on it? Won’t a 1 or 2-year lease make more sense financially?
It is a highly risky “investment”. You greatly increase your real estate exposure that is multiple times your net assets. No financial planner would recommend anybody “investing” 500% of your net assets in a single “property”. It is a highly leveraged bet on HDB rentals.
Take option 6: rent within your means until you have enough assets.
[...] – ecstasy: Housing Woes Temasek & GIC suffers over US$10 billion paper loss on bank investments – Sgpolitics.net: Just [...]
Hmm. We got a 5-room flat in faraway Jurong West that cost 153k. In total we took a loan of 96k and will be paying it off in 10 years. We don’t intend to sell the place.
With a roof over my head until I am very old, I don’t really care how far it is. As much as I gripe and moan over how far it is to everywhere by public transport, I am always humbled by the fact that in other countries like the US – people DRIVE for hours to get to work.
So I suck thumb and call 65521111 lor. Then again, it’s still more affordable than buying a car.
With my home paid for, I don’t have to slog for 30 years to keep that said roof over my head.
Try getting one of those walk-in selection flats lah. We did, fuss-free. Still better than staying with our parents!!!!
Slog now, slack later, die young. My motto. Sollie ah.
[...] Housing Woes is another issue. Belonging to the middle class means that there is no way i’ll be able to afford private housing, which means i’ll be paying off my HDB loans after successfully getting a new flat (chances are about 20%) which will probably take up quite a lot of my income as it is. [...]