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| HDB BTO |
First of all, people who are unable to afford public housing will not enter the market at all, thus not contributing to the statistics. Like me, they may instead look at squeezing in with one's parents or renting a place, which may not be the ideal conditions for starting a family.
Secondly, such statistics ignore first-time home buyers who have had to go into the red-hot resale market due to the under-supply of new flats. A recent Build-to-Order (BTO) project in March 2011 was over-subscribed by more than 10 times, and this has been the trend over recent years. In fact, over half of all resale flat buyers in 2010 were eligible to buy new flats from the HDB. I myself was balloted out of the queue in the recent BTO exercise, a queue made up of three times the BTO project's flat supply.
Thirdly, the statistics to cite afford ability do not address the most pressing issue here. Resale home prices, and by extension new home prices, have been rising non-stop for the last few years. Four rounds of cooling measures have only managed to slow the increase in home prices, but they are still increasing, and at a rate faster than Singaporeans' median incomes are increasing. Though Mr Mah may argue that new flats are still affordable now, this trend is simply unsustainable for future home buyers.
What I would have preferred to hear from Mr Mah is how the HDB is planning to achieve its primary objective of providing affordable housing to the people, now and in the long run.
