Singles Continue To Vie For Two-room HDB Flats

Since starting for launch on 22 May 2014, the third Housing Development Board (HDB)’s sale for the year witnessed over-subscription for its 2-room HDB flats, as of 29 May.

For this latest sale launch, HDB introduced 6,454 HDB flats altogether, with 3,071 Build-To-Order (BTO) flats and 3,383 Sale of Balance Flats (SBF). Located in both mature and non-mature estates, the types of flats range from 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-room to 3Gen flats.

First introduced in the September 2013 BTO sales exercise, 3Gen flats are meant only for multi-generation family made up of at least a couple and their parents. Subsequent sales of the flat must also be made to multi-generation families. These flats come with four bedrooms – two with attached bathrooms – and has an internal floor area of about 115 square metres. Demand for 3Gen flats has been brisk so far, with a take-up rate of 94% (or 79 out of 84) for its first launch. They have been introduced in all the later sales exercises, and response has been positive.

3Gen flats’ tiny counterparts – 2-room flats – likewise experienced healthy demand. In fact these compact homes topped the chart in application rate since the July 2013 BTO exercise when HDB liberated its rules to let singles purchase 2-room flats in non-mature estates directly from HDB. The average number of singles vying for each flat hit a staggering 57.5 then. This prompted HDB, in last October, to allocate leftover 2-room flats not taken up by first- and second-timer families to singles; in addition to doubling the supply of 2-room flats to about 5,000 this year.

While the application rate for 2-room flats among singles dipped to 27 in the November 2013 BTO launch, demand remained robust even in the current sale launch based on the figures on the HDB website for 29 May. For the flats at Bukit Batok, there is on average 6.8 singles applying for each flat. Similarly, for the Woodlands flats, demand is 9.4 to a flat. The application period will close on 28 May.

So far, application rate by singles outstrips those for the other flat types by a wide margin. The only other flat types with application rate over one are among second-timer families for 5-room flats at Bukit Batok and 5-room/ 3Gen in Woodlands, with rates at 2.4 and 1.3 respectively. For 4-room and 5-room flats, second-timers have 15 per cent or less of the BTO flat supply allocated to them which explains the stiff competition.

In Table 1, we present the annual number of flats (BTO and SBF combined) launched for sales by HDB since 2007.

Table 1: HDB Sale Launch

Source: HDB

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