Mah Bow Tan: PRs “under-represented” in HDB resale market
November 24th, 2009 | 
Author: Written by Our Correspondent
National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan told parliament yesterday that PRs do not add further to the demand of HDB flats.
“PRs are not eligible for buying new flats, even in the resale market, quite a lot of them actually rent. They are under-represented as far as purchases are concerned,” he said.
Mr Mah said PRs occupy less than 5 per cent of all Housing Board flats, and are living in estates across the island. He did not quote any source to substantiate his claims.
An earlier report by real estate agency ERA revealed that 40 per cent of buyers of resale flats are PRs.
The Straits Times reported an Indonesian PR forking out $653,000 for a 4-room flat in Queenstown though he could well afford a condominium.
The prices of resale flats have sky-rocketed over the last few months, hitting a record high in June this year.
PRs are allowed to purchase resale HDB flats in Singapore. Mr Mah stressed that this is so because PRs also need a place to live:
“PR families are not eligible for housing subsidies that Singaporeans enjoy. They are not allowed to buy a new flat from HDB or enjoy any housing grant. However, PRs need to have a home in Singapore. Therefore, they are allowed to buy properties from the open market, including HDB resale flats.’
Despite the escalating prices, HDB is adamant that public housing remains affordable in Singapore.
In response to mounting complaints from first-time home buyers that they were unable to purchase a flat of their choice, Mr Mah retorted that they were too “fussy”.
He reiterated his stance again in parliament that expectations of first-time buyers are too high, with many demanding for flats in prime estates or on higher floors.
“I cannot build flats only in the mature estates, only in the city area. I cannot build flats that are only on high floors,” he said.
Mr Mah claimed that HDB will be building between 10,000 and 12,000 new flats per annum over the next five years to meet the housing demand in Singapore.
He did not explain why the supply of new flats was not increased between the years 2006 and 2008 when the influx of foreigners is at its peak.
The number of foreigners working and living in Singapore has increased rapidly over the last few years as part of the government’s policy to boost the nation’s declining birth rates via immigration.
Foreigners now made up 36 per cent of the population, up from 14 per cent in 1990. This means that one out of three residents in Singapore is a foreigner.
According to the National Population Secretariat, about 90,000 foreigners became PRs last year with another 20,000 taking up Singapore citizenship.
Mr Mah did not reveal the exact numbers of PRs and new citizens who bought resale flats as well as new flats.
The numbers of PRs who made a profit from the sale of their resale flats after they left Singapore is also unknown.
The question on whether there are sufficient HDB flats for first-time buyers was actually fielded by a PAP MP. The three so-called opposition MPs in parliament have remained mute on the issue so far.
Singapore’s ruling PAP won only 66.6 per cent of the valid votes in the last elections, but occupied 82 out of 84 seats in parliament.
With an absolute majority, they are able to pass bills and legislation unhindered in parliament with little or no debate.
Without a sizable opposition presence in parliament to demand detailed answers from Mr Mah, it is unlikely that Singaporeans will ever know the real impact of foreigners on the cost of public housing in Singapore.
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this nee ah mah must have studied creative accounting in college.
+ resale value of flat -subsidy of flat= selling price of new flat.
what a joke.
only timid singaporeans would not question their policy.
if the asset bubble increase, hot money going after properties. It will artificial inflate the resale prices.
Then the new flat will be more and more expensive.
Who can buy the flats?
Old news, ST today published something new.
This Million $$$$ Minister is speaking through his arse, as usual.
The fact that he did not give any figures to back his claim says a lot about the matter. He is lying through his teeth.
However, the big disappointment is the silence of the Opposition members on this hot issue of “affordable” new HDB apartments and PRs buying re-sale HDB apartments and inevitably pushing up the prices of both, new and re-sale HDB apartments.
Wake up…. PAP as well as CST, LTK and SL.
We NEED the answers from that short arse.
this highly paid minsiter must have studied creative accounting in college.
+ resale value of flat -subsidy of flat= selling price of new flat.
what a joke.
only timid singaporeans would not question their policy.
if the asset bubble increases, hot money going after properties. It will artificial inflate the resale prices.
Then the new flat will be more and more expensive.
Who can buy the flats?
it’s a wonderful twist of events. freakish it might be.. Didn’t MBT said there are sufficient supplies of HDB recently? then suddenly our gov wanna up supplies to 10,000 hdb flats for the next few years.
exorbitant rentals due to the influx of PR are also not reflected. This make it bad for Singaporean and PR alike. I bet the 2mm okotomo is not gonna burst anytime soon with the gov backing. high price, crazy resales price. high property tax. crazy loan package.
low to mid income Singaporean and PR are going to suffer alike no thanks to our gov.
Doesn’t matter. Just build flats which will be priced much cheaper and more spacious (at least 3 and 4 rooms) for new SINGAPORE families who never got homes.
Those rich PRs can buy those tiny 2-rooms since they no need to bother about what give-birth-best-4 policy, or they can just rent.
And stop all those repossessions of people’s homes. It’s HDB’s duty to ensure all Singaporean families at least have a decent roof over their head which belong to them.
Singapore is small and resource-less enough, if their own government can’t even take care of the people, we can’t expect those PRs to.
Its Strange and Puzzling to a citizen that although he could come up with 2 bln deficit, why he could not explain what he did not or could not.
The bigger question is why are singaporeans apathetic about this issue? These are more responsible.
We pay millions for these ministers to justify and rationalize why they should screw us instead of solving the real problems ie rising costs. They are in fact screwing up again and again and making us pay up.
I am sure the day of reckoning is near unless they have even more dirty tactics in the next election.
“Mr Mah said PRs occupy less than 5 per cent of all Housing Board flats, and are living in estates across the island.”
Did I hear this repeated by a snake oil saleman on the street side?
Fair dinkum. PR is maybe 10% of population and we have been giving PRs for 44 years, 90% of that, perhaps, in the last few years.
Isn’t it true that 90% of those 5% PR component rushed in over the last few years caused a SUDDEN STAMPEDE IN DEMAND SQUEEZE forcing price up through the roof which caught MBT with his underwear down that he had to offer more than 10,000 new flats in a frenzied hurry against a backdrop of very angry electoral screams in the few months ago?
So there is statistics, there is also statistical lie, there is blatant lies and there is also “true” ( if you dare trust those unidentified source of credibility of statistics claimed) statistics, they are twisted to present as truth when reality is a complete falsity of context.
In simple words, it this not rhetorical manipulation of public deception or Singaporeans are all stupid?
Come on, MBT, which one of these is true for you? Or is this another election furphy?
HDB didn’t increase supply from 2006 to 2008 while last year, they approved 90,000 PRs and 20,000 new citizenship would indicate irresponsibility on the part of Mr. Mah.
Since HDB monopolize 100% public housing or 85% of the residential market. Its the biggest real estates speculator.
Its to late now after damage has already been done to the younger generations.
Mr. Mah! you have killed the sandwich class.
“PR” under-represented also in PARLIAMENT!
WE NEED MORE OPPOSTION MEMBERS to be PERMANENT RESIDENTS
in Parliament…convert NCMP and that stupid NMPs-they can’t
or won’t do much.
If GAHMEN thinks they need more PRs,i say we got enough;so many loyal citizens themselves don’y have a home or worse,when you,gahmen,stole our jobs,you also stole some of the poorer
citizens’ home…they got to sell their flats to survive?!
what 1st world type are you mumbling about..oh yes,for youselves and your equally highly paid cronies only.
we need opposition “PRs” in the HOUSE as these are truly
under-represented,MBT,PLS get your data right???
we only have ourselves to blame if we didn’t manage to dig the minister and put him in a corner. we have one chiam see tong asking the questions. the minister has his president scholars formulating creative answers. so mr chiam has to work pretty hard.
in retrospect, now that we know what kind of phrasing tricks they use, we actually now know how mr chiam could have asked the question differently. maybe we’ll learn and the next round we can ask it well.
for e.g.
we don’t let them talk about PRs from 2000 to 2009. we ask them specifically – what are the figures for new PR accepted in the years we know have high import rate. and these figures are not top secret. they’re plainly available on department of statistics website. it’s just that to get to the figures, you need to be pretty savvy not just with the net, but with numbers as well.
ask about PRs for 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009.
also, when asking about hdb prices, ask when land prices are not taken into account. and to be fair, ask also what kind of land price was factored in, yearly basis, from 2000 to 2009.
and ask that the minister not compare an apple (3 room punggol) with an orange (5 room tiong bahru) in order to distract and misdirect the people so that they cannnot interpret the figures properly. that is very sly and we have to hand it to the scholars – they know how to dodge when they need to.
we can complain here all we want, but it’s through learning from these mistakes that we can avoid their tricks the next round.
HDB does valuation for HDB flats.
When HDB started over valuing their new flats, they also allowed resale flats to come out with “COV” added to justify their actions.
By encouraging higher COV, and holding back new supply, HDB artificially created demands and price inflation.
QUOTE “Mah Bow Tan told parliament yesterday that PRs do not add further to the demand of HDB flats.” UNQUOTE
Its due to HDBs action which created fears and frenzy.
also, when you talk about “housing demand” from PRs, you also do not ignore how much they contribute to rental market.
they may own 5% of the flats but they may participate in a large proportion of the rental market. therefore the returns are good for rental, such that the price of the flats are kept very high because it makes good business sense to rent them out to the 300000 PRs in the last 3 years.
interestingly if the government is such a good judge of the market, how come the supply figures jump like jumping beans?
from a small number in the beginning of this year, muttering everything’s under control, to a jump into 5 digit territory still muttering everything’s under control, when price appreciates more than 100 times the savings interest rate.
which idiot would believe this is “everything under control”?
Would newly granted citizenship be allowed to buy new HDB flat directly from HDB despite having just sold their property in their home country.
Note: **HDB stipulated rule i.e. 30 months grace period restricting Singaporean buying new HDB flat directly after having sold their private property.
Many older Singaporeans were caught by this 30 months restriction despite urgently in need to downgrade to HDB after having sold their private resident due to recent financial crisis.
I hope the above HDB rule** which presently applies to Singaporean should also be equally applied to new citizens
Creative accounting with Creative speech, a perfect match to fool Singaporeans and then sweep all their lousy policies under the carpet until the election is over and then to screw us up again. This kind of exploiting cycle must be stopped to prevent Singaporeans from endless sufferings.
> HDB didn’t increase supply from 2006 to 2008 while last year, they approved 90,000 PRs and 20,000 new citizenship would indicate irresponsibility on the part of Mr. Mah.
the PR import last year is already less than the year before, and the year before that.
and Mr Mah has explained to us that he didn’t increase supply because:
> QUOTE “Mah Bow Tan told parliament yesterday that PRs do not add further to the demand of HDB flats.” UNQUOTE
therefore he is not panicking when he changed the HDB supply from a small number from about 2003-2008 to a big number for the next few years. this is not panicking. remember that. does he look like he was panicking on TV? no.
another interesting statistic is CPI. i think when we hear “CPI” we think of “inflation”.
i sense they’re very glad to announce that CPI dropped recently. also, every day you read the news of the world (not our local news lah) that the world is afraid the loose monetary policy leads to a lot of inflation – because they observe that many countries (like singapore) are developing asset bubbles with fast rising (unrealistic) prices. i think the world people are trying to say that this is inflation hor?
and while we spend the “correct” 30% of our monthly income in instalment payments to get this HDB flat, we rest happily assured that this is not inflation. that this is the correct way (was it this correct 4 years ago?), that CPI dropped, and we should celebrate.
Mr Mah taught us that years ago, his 3-room HDB flat which he didn’t have to struggle to pay for, was like buying a palace.
let’s see how many HDB recent buyers who paid these current prices for the flats, felt like they’re buying their 5-room palaces.
i.e. years ago, small money buy simple things that felt great.
now, big money buys simple things that don’t feel so great.
suk hoi, don’t be silly. How would the government enforce such a regulation for new citizens? Instead of dreaming upof silly rules, why don’t you put your mind to thinking of ways to emigrate out of Singapore if you don’t like what is going on instead of being petty and begrudge the good fortunes of new citizens. Has ‘old’ citizens been reduced to such a sorry state of mind?
I have served my 2 1/2 years fulltime NS just b4 it reduces to 2 years, and I am now married BUT we, my wife and I are without a HDB flat.
Why like that?
NS fighter
At least you were lucky to do only 2.5 years for your NS. I did 3 years before your time (it was reduced to 2.5 years in 1972/73).
As mentioned before in another “HDB Prices and PRs” related posting, we should (at least those citizens who have the opportunity) turn this to our advantage…since these PRs have lots of money to spend, we should squeeze them and take as much of their money as we can. Make them pay unreasonable COVs and i think it shouldnt just stop at housing…we should charge them extra for anything and everything under the sun. $3 chicken for locals, $5 for Prs and foreigners!! Let’s all show them how much we welcome their money!! We should learn how its done from the way our govt treats us(ie make us pay for their dumbass mistakes), and inflict it onto our “new” foreign friends, afterall they might as well get used to it if they are gonna become citizens!
MBT is obviously throwing smoke bombs to confuse Sinkies.
The percentage of ALL outstanding HDBs owned by PRs is NOT the appropriate statistic to look at. He should tell us the proportion of PRs that bought resale HDBs in each of the past 3 years or so.
he said it himself, they don’t just buy flats, they rent flats too. and they can do it as a business, sublet their flats for income.
“While public housing is mostly for Singaporeans, Mr. Mah noted that PRs need a place to live.”
so i think Mr Mah finally decided maybe he should build a few places for them to live, rather than have them mop up the rental market and resale market and drive up rental and resale prices.
Benjamin Disraeli:”There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”
didn’t know that NS was 3 years? wow!
Benjamin Disraeli:”There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”
Hi Good Folks, please refer to below quote…
Quote from Thomas Jefferson
“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.
We must make our election between economy and liberty
or profusion and servitude.
If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and
in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and
our amusements, for our calling and our creeds…
[we will] have no time to think,
no means of calling our miss-managers to account
but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves
to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers…
And this is the tendency of all human governments.
A departure from principle in one instance
becomes a precedent for [another ]…
till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery…
And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt.
Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.”
This is not about PRs vs Singapore citizens. This is a red herring, a diversion tactic.
The real discrimination is against UNMARRIED singles. I know of many blue IC PRs who have worked here for many years and still can’t buy a modest resale flat because he/she is not married. Never mind that they make good money.
Clearly, this is not a pink vs blue issue.
Many single folks, including yours truly, are displeased with the high-handed ‘pro-family’ policies of the HDB. Our numbers are growing everyday, and transcend ethnic boundaries or backgrounds.
Ask him where the other 95% of the PRs is staying?
I don’t believe all 95% is staying in rented place or private housing.
Where did the other 95% of PR stay?
Don’t tell me they rent or live in private places…
@fpc …. Mr Mah said PRs occupy less than 5 per cent of all Housing Board flats ….it is below 45000 among 900000 HDB flats…. didn’t say 5% PRs only have flat .
the math is a bit sala. it’s a little closer to this:
95% of HDB owners are singaporeans. 80% of singaporeans are in HDB. 3.2 mil singaporeans around, that means 2.56 mil are in these 95% of HDB.
the remaining of 5% HDB can support roughly (by proportion) 0.135 million PRs.
5% of HDB owners are PRs. which represent 0.135 million PRs.
there are about 0.5+ million PRs around.
i.e. 365,000 PRs are not owning their HDB. i.e. they’re renting something or are in private property.
make a guess. a lot of them are renting HDB, probably.
95% of HDB are with singaporeans.
if half the PRs rent HDB, that’s 182,500.
by similar proportion again, 182500 PRs need 6.75% of HDB (1% can support 27000 people).
assume PRs like to crowd around and 1% HDB HDB can support twice as many. that’s 54000 people.
these 182500 PRs still will occupy 3.375% of HDB. that’s about 33750 flats (total of 900000+ in singapore).
most of these PRs came within the last few recent 3-4 years. now they rent about 33750 flats and own 45000 flats. total = 78750 flats. I suppose we forgot to build 78750 more flats for them, so they just grabbed whatever was lying around when they came.
sorry lah. people forget things sometimes. when you live in nice bungalows you also will forget that you’ve got 300000 new foreigner neighbours in the same island. cos u don’t see them near your nice bungalows.
@ bubble trouble ….. good statistics … but u forgot one thing …. a lot of PRs are sharing flat with others !!!! it is not uncommon for two family living in one flat…
@ bubble trouble ….. good statistics … but u forgot one thing …. a lot of PRs are sharing flat with others !!!!
sigh, crack my head do mathematics still wrong.
why don’t they just tell us the number? make me count count count …
I am a PR n I happened in the train when I happened to glance thru a the neww paper that with rergards to the govt flats, there were plenty of PR buying them or renting them. Anyway if they sold the flats, they can get a lot of money to buy a landed property in their countries.
//james
“@fpc …. Mr Mah said PRs occupy less than 5 per cent of all Housing Board flats ….it is below 45000 among 900000 HDB flats…. didn’t say 5% PRs only have flat .
”
If MBT really said what you posted, what is he trying to say? We are talking about PR driving hdb prices by buying hdb flats and he is telling us (as you think) that only 5% of PRs have flat?
Only 5% bought flats or only 5% bought the flats that they eventually stay in or what?
How are the numbers he cited relevant?
Another smoke is it?
//bubble trouble
How did you get 5% Singaporean HDB owners can support 0.135 million PRs?
There are 2 million foreigners here.
Where do they stay then?
All in private housing?
//james.
If what you said is true: “@fpc …. Mr Mah said PRs occupy less than 5 per cent of all Housing Board flats ….it is below 45000 among 900000 HDB flats…. didn’t say 5% PRs only have flat .
”
Still the questions is where does the other PRs stay?
All in private housing?
what about the foreigners?
All in private housing as well.
We have 2 million foreigners.
I am surprised private housing didn’t shot through the root.
The immigration policy also include new citizen. MBT should tell us the number and how they have affected the resale housing price. Is our immigration policy too aggressive in the last few years i.e. too many PR and new citizen accepted ????? If not, why the sudden surge in demand for property????????
MBT is trying to cover up for his incompetent master !!!!