Ridiculous HDB Prices
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Originally posted by Summer hill:
huh? I didn't say you was jiani
I am not.
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housing is not affordable at all.
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Originally posted by Itedino:
housing is not affordable at all.
Nonsense.
Salary $1000 a month can afford hdb flat.
Unless you earning less than $1000?
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Originally posted by charlize:
Nonsense.
Salary $1000 a month can afford hdb flat.
Unless you earning less than $1000?
100 years loan can lah,
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Dun buy those big ones lah, getting a 1bdrm or 2bdrm types still affordable lah...even 1K salary also can buy...
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Damn stressed.
30 year mortgage loan for hdb flat.
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Originally posted by Demon Bane:
Dun buy those big ones lah, getting a 1bdrm or 2bdrm types still affordable lah...even 1K salary also can buy...
Of course. Remember to have more babies.
Afterall, last time in kampong, your relatives can sleep side by side in the house.
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Originally posted by Nelstar:
Of course. Remember to have more babies.
Afterall, last time in kampong, your relatives can sleep side by side in the house.
Babies can contribute to cpf next time.
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For a HDB in Singapore (500k SGD), I can buy a 3x bigger house in California.
Life is surreal
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Originally posted by motoway:
For a HDB in Singapore (500k SGD), I can buy a 3x bigger house in California.
Life is surreal
I can buy a 4 x bigger house in Malaysia, a 5 x bigger house in China, a 8 x bigger house in Vietnam....
Life is surreal
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Originally posted by sgdiehard:
I can buy a 4 x bigger house in Malaysia, a 5 x bigger house in China, a 8 x bigger house in Vietnam....
Life is surreal
1 HDB = 3 House in California = 4 Houses in Malaysia = 5 Houses in China = 8 Houses in Vietnam.
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Next time, you all will need to get coe to buy a hdb flat.
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Originally posted by charlize:
Next time, you all will need to get coe to buy a hdb flat.
3-room bidding price $297k
4-room bidding price $320k
5-room bidding price $403k
HDB not included.
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Originally posted by Nelstar:
3-room bidding price $297k
4-room bidding price $320k
5-room bidding price $403k
HDB not included.
lose the bid, lose the money.
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Originally posted by Summer hill:
100 years loan can lah,
Don't need 100 years.
Mr Khaw Boon Wan say Tharman is right. Based on 2-room HDB with $60k grant and subsidised price of about $100k and 30 years loans.
Mr Khaw even say it was referring to the recent BTO for 2-room HDB flat.However, they also tell us to have more babies if not they will recruit more FTs.
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Originally posted by Summer hill:
lose the bid, lose the money.
Of course.
Every month you want to bid, you need to put upfront $100 + GST for admin fees related to your bid.
That is to deter those who are not serious in buying a HDB flat and who just want to tikam tikam.
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Hdb prices huat ah.
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Next, people will start living in the streets
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Originally posted by Summer hill:
Next, people will start living in the streets
Singapore (streets) a place we call home.
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Housing crunch easing, says Khaw
But we're not out of the woods yet, says National Development Minister
Jessica Cheam
Political Correspondent
The Government hopes to ease home prices in a "gradual manner" even as it guards against policy changes that lead to major price corrections, National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan said last week.
After a year as housing minister, Mr Khaw believes recent policy moves to ease the public housing crunch are working but "we are not out of the woods yet", he said in an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times.
In the year since housing emerged as one of the hottest issues in the general election in May last year, queues for new HDB flats have shortened and prices of new flats stabilised.
New HDB figures show an 85 per cent success rate for first-time home buyers in the November 2011 launch of new flats- up from 45 per cent in May last year.
Some 5,800 couples became eligible to buy new flats after the monthly income ceiling - unchanged for 17 years - was raised from $8,000 to $10,000 last August.
These measures have helped ease worries among young couples buying their first home.
To prevent demand running ahead of supply again, the HDB is thinking of holding an inventory of unsold flats, Mr Khaw revealed.
"Some stock of unsold flats is a good thing to have. It will cost us money but it's a cost that we may need to bear," he said. A decision will be made when the backlog is cleared.
Panic among home buyers in recent years- when property prices hit historic highs - was "totally understandable". But he gave this assurance: "Having gone through many (property) cycles, I can only advise and remind that things don't go in a straight line.)"
There is now more certainty of supply, with HDB's launch of a record 50,000 build-to-order (BTO) flats in two years.
Mr Khaw said: "Over time, hopefully we can ease (prices) down. This depends on interest rates and the global economy."
The Government's job is to manage this transition gradually and it must not cause major corrections in the market as this would be "very painful" for home owners.
Mr Khaw also points to "signs of stabilisation" in home prices. The pace of growth in resale flat prices has moderated - it inched up 0.6 per cent in the first quarter of this year. the slowest since 2009. Cash premiums paid for resale flats, known as cash over valuation (COV), have started to ease.
Even private home prices in the central region are moderating, with the exception of mass market "shoe-box" units of 500 sq ft or less. That is a sector Mr Khaw is watching closely.
"Overall, we are not out of the woods yet. But I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel," he said.
Mr Nicholas Mak, SLP International research head, noted that based on the analysis of BTO flat prices in five HDB estates, prices of new flats in the majority of new projects have been risen marginally by 1 per cent or 2 per cent since the May 2011 Election.
In contrast, the price movement of BTO flats corresponded more closely with the movement of resale HDB flat prices, which rose more than 10 per cent in the year before general election.
As for COV's ERA Reality's Mr Eugene Lim said ERA's transactions showed average COV's eased from a high of $38,000 in August last year to about $27,000 last month.
PropNex chief executive Mohamed Ismail said the risk of over-supply in the near future is low as pent-up demand means new units are being absorbed.
"More broadly, the stabilisation of the property market will take at least a couple of years. It's not going to be something you can achieve overnight," he said.
The Sunday Times, June 3 2012. -
8 million population huat ah.
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Staying cool in the hot seat
National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan talks about the science and art of keeping in step with the market
Jessica Cheam
Political Correspondent
Hot Button ISSUE Housing
You could say he asked for it. When Mr Khaw Boon Wan volunteered for the hot seat at the National Development Ministry, it used him many sleepless nights initially.
Housing had emerged as a highly emotive topic in the General Election in May last year and he was under pressure to fix the problem fast.
So why did he volunteer for the job?
Mr Khaw tells Think he could have stayed on at his old job in the Health Ministry but chose not to.
"Housing was politically hot and PM (Lee Hsien Loong) was looking for a new person to take a fresh look...I had some ideas on how they could be addressed. So I volunteered. Somebody has to do it."
A year has passed and Mr Khaw says he now sleeps "much better".
The reason is a calmer, more stable housing market in which queues for first-time buyers of HDB flats have shortened significantly. Even second-time home buyers have been allocated more flats - 15 per cent of new flats launched, up from 5 per cent. Price growth in the resale market has also slowed.
But some sticky facts remain.
Home prices are still at historic highs. Some home buyers chafe at having to shoulder loans that they will take 30 years to repay, so as to own a home. The situation is causing many to ask if this is the new equilibrium for Singapore's housing market.
Mr Khaw take a long view on the situation. He says: "I've gone through many property cycles and at the height of each one, everyone worries that it will remain that way. But what goes up must come down, so I'm more relaxed."
For him, what matters is that prices are no longer spiking.
He admits that the gap between income growth and home prices has widened. Resale HDB flat prices, for example, have risen by more than a third since 2009, but wage growth for most has lagged far behind.
So the gap must narrow, says Mr Khaw. The question is how?
"You can do it the drastic way in a sharp correction which Will cause a lot of hardship, or gently do a 'soft landing'," he says.
"That's what we've been trying to do, and so far, so good. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed because the global economy and liquidity are beyond our control."
Part of his arsenal to control prices is to tackle supply and stabilise new flat prices.
But the HDB's ambitious building programme of over 50,000 new flats in two years has a flip side - the danger of oversupply.
Analysts have cautioned that a glut of homes in 2014 to 2015 may cause a price correction in both private and public housing markets - something that happened in the late 1990s, when the HDB built tens of thousands of flats according to the number of applicants on its waiting list.
This demand vanished overnight when the Asian financial crisis struck in 1997, leaving the HDB with a large unsold stock - with high holding costs.
This risk, says Mr Khaw who joined politics in 2001, is one that the Government "must always be mindful of" and that is why it is important to closely monitor the market and not be complacent.
"It is both a sdence and an art. And we also need a lot of good luck," he said. For example, if the global economy collapses because of the euro zone crisis, demand could evaporate quickly and many units will be unsold.
"This is why I regularly remind Singaporean about buying houses within their budget, and assuming a normal interest rate, not the current unreal interest rate. Prudence will avoid problems."
He also revealed for the first time that once the HDB clears the current backlog of demand for homes, it is thinking of keeping an inventory of unsold flats. That was a move some industry watchers called for previously, to enable better management of demand.
Some stock of unsold flats is a good thing to have...but it will cost us money," says Mr Khaw.
While the Government will do its part to keep prices in check, the minister also wants home buyers to do their part - by buying flats of a size and price commensurate with their income level.
On complaints that buyers have to shoulder 30-year home loans, he says: "If your income level affords you a three-room but you insist on getting a five-room, then of course you may even need 40 years."
He noted that HDB had extend the maximum loan repayment term from 25 years to 30 years in 1997 because the public had demanded it.
It all boils down to whether home buyers "want to burden" themselves unnecessarily, he says, adding: "We can only offer advice.It's your decision."
He hopes couples will buy a first home that suits their income. When their salary goes up, and if the economy is doing well, the home value should also appreciate and "that escalation helps you to be able to afford a larger unit" - or even upgrade to a private property, he says.
That is what he himself did. He started off in a Bedok three-room rental flat, then bought a small 30-year-old terraced house of 900 sq ft, and then upgraded to a semi-detached house where he now lives.
The bottom line, he says, is young couples should not worry.
"I can understand that they worry a lot, seeing prices, day in and day out, keep going up...but just as interest rates will not always remain low, they should not assume that prices will continue to go up."
And even as many are looking for ways to cash in on the property boom, he sees it as his job to urge prudence.
"I know when the party is hot, party-poopers are not popular. They get booed. But it is my duty to sound the alert. It is an occupational hazard to be jeered at sometimes, for doing what is right. Fortunately, I believe most Singaporeans appreciate the reminder. From time to time, they email me to say so."GOVT'S INTENT OF PROMOTING HOME OWNERSHIP 'HASN'T CHANGED'
Q: Has the Government's fundamental approach to housing changed since the general election?
The strategic intent of promoting home ownership has not changed...What made housing hot was a sudden rapid expansion in our population in recent years, without commensurate investment in housing. The imbalance in supply and demand led to a sharp increase in property prices. Meanwhile, global liquidity- and the associated very low mortgage loan interest - encourages property investments and further pushes up property prices.
Low interest rate will npt stay forever.lt is bound to creep up again, to its normal level. While global liquidity and interest rates are beyond our control, supply of new housing units is. Hence, my focus is on ramping up supply, both HDB'and private condos.
After a year at it, the market has shown signs of stabilising, though there are still some pockets of hot actiVities. which merit close attention.Q: The pricing of build-to-order flats was a hot political issue and there was a debate on a cost-based versus marketbased pricing. Analysts have noted that new flat prices in the past year have decoupled from resale flat. Has the fundamental approach to pricing changed?
HDB pricing is a complex subject as it has to take into account a number of factors, including land cost, construction cost and the market price of similar units in the vicinity. This general approach has not changed.
The pricing takes into account both the cost as well as the market price. You can make adjustments here and there... to help stabilise the market, which is what I've done in the past 12 months. But you cannot completely decouple it. For example, if we did not work on the supply side, the market will continue to escalate and you can't keep holding prices because you'll find the gap getting wider and wider. And when you need to make adjustment, it'll be very painful for everybody.
But because we've been deliberately aggressive on the supply side...the pricing can also be more stable. To be very clear, it's not a mono-dimensional sort of formula, it's multi-factorial. Supply is a big factor and is Within our control fortunately.Q: Some analysts say there is a risk of a supply glut in a few years - do you agree?
This is a risk, It is very difficult to match supply perfectly with demand.Hence, there is bubble and bust. Currently, it is undersupply. Next, it may be oversupply.
You must have some general idea of what you want to do over the next five to 10 years, but quarter by quarter, you should be mindful and make adjustments. Even then, it'll be hard to match perfectly, because no one has been able to do so.Q: You mention that HDB might hold an inventory of unsold flats, can you elaborate?
That's something for me to think about...some stock of unsold flats is a good thing to have; it will cost us money, but it's a cost that we may need to bear, then it's a question of how to make better use of the unsold units, and what is a good level of inventory?
Maybe we can rent them out at market rates...those are the possibilities I'm thinking of but I didn't have to make a firm decision until I have cleared the backlog.
We are clearing it for first-timers, and also for second-timers...over the next 12 months, I hope we can allocate more flats to the latter group (from the current 15 per cent).Q: There was this issue of pricing of land. Some have pointed out prices of new flats can be further lowered if the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) priced it lower?
That's one I'm a price taker because I don't own the land. SLA sells us land, and land is valued by the chief valuer. Public housing is zoned differently. It is not priced the same as private condo land.
But of course, if the general property market is rising, even though it is zoned different, the price also rises.Q: But some say it's a matter of "left pocket, right pocket" for the Government since SLA prices the land? Can it be priced lower?
It is already discounted land. Of course everyone wants more discount, but at the end of the day, somebody has to fund the discount. So we have to see what is the long-term sustainable thing.
think, The Sunday Times, June 3 2012, Pg 35 -
Times are bad.
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Homes, homes everywhere, but what can you afford?
With property prices at record highs, buyers worry about earning enough to buy their own homes. What is the extent of the problem and is it likely to ease? Political correspondents Jessica Cheam and Robin Chan find out.
TWENTY-TWO months' pay, or $121,500 to be precise.
For IT executive Jeffrey Chua, 31, and his partner, that is the price difference between buying a new five-room flat from the Housing Board (HDB) in Bukit Panjang, and an equivalent flat in the HDB resale market instead.
The first costs $365,000, the second $486,500.
Of course, buying direct from HDB mean a three-year wait as the build-to-order (BTO) flat near his parent is being buit. This is on top of the two years the couple have already waited in the queue, during which they failed twice to ballot for their first home.
But it cannot be helped, as the couple, who have a combined monthly income of $5,600, can afford only the five-roomer bought directly from the HDB.
Mr Chua is relieved that things have worked out. "I'm glad we finally managed to get a new flat, and prices seemed stable in the past year. At least we can still afford to buy that. If you look at the resale market, prices are still very unaffordable," he says.
A year after a shortage of affordable homes became a hot issue during the 2011 General Election, the anxieties of first-time home buyers like Mr Chua have been soothed, thanks to a sharp increase in the supply of BTO flats.
The move shortened the wait for new flats and stabilised prices.
The income ceiling was also raised to allow more buyers to buy directly from HDB.
Still, housing affordability remains a concern because not all Singaporeans are willing to wait for a BTO flat, and not all are eligible for such flats to begin with.
Singles, for example, can buy only on the resale market. The same applies to couples where one spouse is neither a permanent resident nor a citizen, or whose combined incomes exceed the $10,000 a month threshold for new flats.
These exclusions matter in a market in which resale and private property price growth has far outpaced income growth.
Prices, incomes and access
THE gap between income and home prices has widened in recent years due to a confluence of factors.
Rapid population growth without commensurate investment in housing has led to an imbalance in demand and supply, putting upward pressure on prices.
Global liquidity and record low interest rates have also encouraged investors to park money in property - further fuelling price escalation.
As a result, HDB resale flat prices rose 87 per cent from 2006 to last year. The prices of private residential homes shot up by 75 per cent in that period.
In comparison, median monthly household income for resident employed households rose at half that rate - by 42 per cent from $4,952 to $7,037.
Many young home buyers have found themselves priced out of the resale HDB market, where prices are determined by market forces and buyers have to cough up a cash premium set by sellers above a flat's valuation, known as cash over valuation (COV).
The Government's antidote has been to offer more BTO flats, whose prices it has managed to stabilise in the year since the GE.
SLP International research head Nicholas Mak conducted a recent analysis of BTO flat prices in five HDB estates. He found that prices in most of the new projects rose marginally by 1 per cent or 2 per cent in the year since the GE, even as HDB resale flat prices rose by close to 10 per cent in the first quarter of this year from a year ago. That is a marked change from the price trajectory in the year before the GE, when BTO flat prices corresponded more closely to the movement of resale HDB flat prices.
With the change, BTO flats have been kept affordable for first-time buyers.
The HDB cited the example of a four-room flat at Fajar Hills in Bukit Panjang, a March BTO project. It costs $255,000, after a $10,000 government grant.
At that price, a household with the median monthly income of $4,200 pays a monthly mortgage of $915 with a 30-year loan that is 90 per cent of the purchase price and at the current HDB interest rate of 2.6 per cent.
Based on these numbers, new HDB flats are considered affordable by one international bench-mark known as the "debt-toservice ratio" (DSR), but not by another known as the "median multiple" or house price to income ratio, used in some countries.
In case of the four-room BTO flat in Fajar Hills, the DSR on a 30-year loan is 22 per cent.
The DSR looks at the proportion of monthly income used to pay the home loan, and the internationally recognised threshold for affordability is 30 per cent.
But some home buyers complain that a 30-year loan is too burdensome. So looking at shorter loans, a 25-year term works out to a monthly payment of $1,040, or a DSR of 25 per cent; for a 20-year loan, it is $1,230 or a DSR of 29 per cent - both still affordable.
However, that is not so with the "median multiple" method.
The "median multiple" is derived by dividing the median house price by the annual median household income. In markets such as the United States, a median multiple of less than three is considered affordable, and anything above three is not.
Using this method, the same four-room HDB flat has a median multiple of five - which is unaffordable by these standards.
Some real estate academics are of the view that this method is a "cruder" way of looking at affordability because it does not take into account mortgage terms and interest rates.
Associate Professor Sing Tien Foo of the National University of Singapore's (NUS) department of real estate notes that DSR is a "more direct indicator to measure the ability to pay for housing".
Banks widely use the DSR to assess the credit risks of borrowers and would keep this ratio between 30 per cent and 40 per cent.
He also points out that affordability indicators are more relevant compared over time rather than comparing them across different housing markets and countries.
This begs the question whether the median multiple of three is as acceptable a threshold for affordability here as it is in the US.
"It cannot be applied directly into different markets, and it would give a distorted comparison without taking into consideration the heterogeneity in different housing markets," he says.
Some factors that may increase the housing price to income multiple in markets like Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai include population size, density of land, housing preference, scarcity of land and interest rates, among others, he says.
There is yet another way to look at affordability, Called "housing accessibility", it is a shorterterm measure defined by the ratio of the cash a buyer needs to make all the upfront payments for a new home to his household savings at that point in time.
Factors influencing this include the COV needed to buy HDB resale flats and the loan-tovalue (LTV) ratio allowed for bank loans - which is now 80 per cent for the first mortgage, and 60 per cent for the second.
A study by the NUS Singapore Centre for Applied and Policy Economics (Soape) has found that housing accessibility for young buyers aged around 30 of a median-priced four-room HDB resale flat worsened from the second quarter of last year to the fourth quarter.
In the second quarter of last year, four-room resale flats were inaccessible to the bottom 20 per cent of income earners. By the fourth quarter, that increased to the bottom 30 per cent of income earners.
For this same group of buyers, private property remained largely inaccessible. Only the top 20 per cent of income earners could afford a median-priced condominium unit of about $1.1 million - for both the second quarter and the last quarter.
Using these definitions, we can draw some conclusions:
Compared to five years ago, affordability has eroded - for obvious reasons in a rising market.
But even at today's prices, BTO flats are largely affordable, going by the DSR measure. Prices have also remained largely stable in the past year. HDB resale flats and private homes, in contrast, are largely unaffordable, going by the same DSR definition for young buyers.
Using the median multiple definition, the majority of flat types are largely unaffordable to most buyers.
What lies ahead?
SO HOW will the affordability picture change in the years ahead? Analysts have painted three broad scenarios which will affect both home buyers and home owners in different ways.
The first is that the property market crashes due to a combination of a global economic recession and a a supply glut in the market.
Wing Tai chairman Cheng Wai Keung warned in a recent interview with The Business Times that home buyers could be bringing forward their purchases, causing demand to be much lower in subsequent years.
"This will create an even bigger supply and demand inequilibrium; it will create an oversupply more than we think," he says.
One benefit, says Mr Colin Tan, research head at Chesterton Suntec International, is that this would help bring public housing price levels "back to normalcy".
A sharp correction of 30 per cent to 40 per cent would bring the gap between household income and HDB resale and private home prices back down to 2006 levels.
But while the affordability picture for first-time home buyers would dramatically improve, such a sharp correction would also plunge many home owners into negative equity, especially those who bought in recent years at the height of the boom.
A global recession of this scale would also likely lead to a fall in wages and an increase in unemployment as businesses downsize. So it is unclear if affordability would really improve.
Credo Real Estate executive director Ong Teck Hui says: "If we experience a recession, the price corrections could be significant."
A second scenario is that the the US and Europe continue to keep interest rates low, while the Singapore economy keeps growing, supporting demand for homes. Property prices would continue to climb steadily.
Among those who think this scenario is the most likely are the property analysts at Standard Chartered. They said in an April report: "As we expect interest rates to stay low till 2014, mass market sales and prices could stay strong for the next two to three years."
If interest rates remain low and property prices continue to rise, first-time buyers will continue to find property unaffordable. But there will likely be more government intervention to prevent runaway prices, say experts.
Analyst Vikrant Pandey of UOB Kay Hian says possible measures include even more supply of new homes, further lowering of the loan-to-value ratio, an increase in cash down payment levels; additional stamp duties and an effective increase in mortgage rates, such as putting a limit on how low the additional interest charged over the benchmark rate can be.
The third and most ideal scenario is therefore for home prices to continue to ease gradually while incomes rise.
PropNex chief executive Mohamed Ismail says one possible outcome could be that wages grow 5 per cent per year in the next few years, and property prices ease by 5 per cent to 10 per cent, narrowing the gap.
This gradual easing is what the Government hopes to achieve, National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan said in a recent interview with The Straits Times.
He added that the Government would be wary of causing major market corrections due to policy changes.
It made that mistake once in 1996 when it introduced drastic measures, including a broad capital gains tax to calm the red hot market. But they were implemented just as the 1997 Asian financial crisis hit and caused the property market to crash, leaving home owners bleeding cash.
So while analysts have predicted anything from a 5 per cent to a 30 per cent fall in property prices in the next few years, whether that actually leads to increased affordability also depends on which way the global economy moves and its impact on incomes and interest rates.
To keep the local property market finely balanced between the needs and interests of both home buyers and owners, policymakers will need a good reading of the economy and a deft touch.
Balancing act
RECENT moves to boost and cool housing demand:
1980s• Opened up the resale flat market to permanent residents (PRs), removed income ceilings for resale flat buyers, and allowed resale flat owners to buy private homes for investment while living in their public flats.
1990-1995• Relaxed rules to permit singles aged 35 and above to buy resale flats.
• Allowed buyers to take larger HDB mortgage loans.
1996-1997
(Asian financial crisis)• Amid a frothy property market, the Government slapped a capital gains tax and an additional stamp duty on sales of residential property within three years of purchase.
• Placed an 80 per cent financing limit on mortgage loans and banned foreigners from taking Singapore dollar loans to buy homes.
• Raised resale levies and extended time bar from five years to 10, for those in the market for a second public flat direct from HDB.
1998-1999
(Crisis and recovery)• The Government later suspended the stamp duty imposed on sellers and introduced several other measures to support the market as the tighter rules had coincided with the Asian financial crisis that struck in 1997 and caused the market to slump.
2000-2004• In the years after the dot.com bust and the Sars crisis, the Government lifted the capital gains tax on property, and allowed buyers to use CPF savings to pay for 10 per cent of their initial down payment on private property.
• Lowered the minimum occupation period (MOP) to one year from 2.5 years for owners who bought resale flats without subsidies.
2005-2008• Lifted the loan-to-value (LTV) limit for housing loans to 90 per cent from 80 per cent and allowed non-related singles to use their CPF savings to buy private homes.
• Later withdrew a concession allowing property buyers to defer stamp duty payment in 2006, and scrapped the deferred payment scheme in 2007, as the property market started to run up.
2009-2010• Scrapped the interest absorption scheme as the property market remained frothy and further cooling measures were needed.
• Imposed stamp duty on those who flip their property within a year, cut the LTV limit back to 80 per cent and raised the MOP for non-subsidised resale flats to three years.
• Extended the holding period for the seller's stamp duty to three years.
• Cut LTV limit further to 70 per cent for those with outstanding home loans.
• Required private property owners who buy non-subsidised HDB flats to sell their private property within six months of the purchase whether it is here or abroad.
• Non-subsidised flat owners have to stay at least five years in their units before they can buy private property.
2011
• As property prices continued to rise, the Government raised seller's stamp duty for private homes to as high as 16 per cent, from up to 3 per cent.• Tightened mortgage restrictions.
• Slapped a 10 per cent additional buyer's stamp duty on foreigners buying first home, 3 per cent on PRs buying their second or more, and 3 per cent on Singaporeans buying their third or more.
Insight, The Straits Times, Saturday, June 9 2012, Pg D1-D3
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How to afford 30 year mortgage loan?
How?