THE Housing Board has stressed that new flats are affordable because first-time buyers use on average less than 30 per cent of their household income to service their housing loans.
As resale flat prices soar, calls for the HDB to revise its $8,000 household income ceiling have been going up too
To shore up this finding, the board has also compared average prices of new flats launched from January to August this year with the median household income of first-time applicants, to show how buyers will spend an average of 22 per cent of their monthly income servicing a 30-year-loan on their properties.
The fundamental problem with this data is that it does not take into account home-seekers who fall through the cracks of the HDB system, argues real estate academic Lum Sau Kim from the National University of Singapore.
As those who feel they cannot afford these homes will not apply for them in the first place, their income data may not show up in the board’s statistics.
Dr Lum says: ‘It is not enough to look at people within the HDB system. We should also be looking at those outside the HDB system and asking why they are not able to access it.’ Continue reading
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