GMS on his housin policy vs SDP

[Goh Meng Seng]

It also means that Singapore will end up with highest mortgage rate per capital dude. That will expose to higher risk in times of uncertainty in market conditions.


Goh Meng Seng

Singapore have one of the highest home ownership rate in the world. You stupid brain need to be checked if you think our houses are unaffordable

 

[aurvandil]

I believe that the debate is about renting out bare units as opposed to furnished units. JTC and HDB has been doing it for years with regard to commercial property. Recently they have even moved into renting out residential property for FT under the SHIFT program. The administrative costs have been manageable and there have been no reports of any of these issues you have raised.

Moving in and out of a unit is one such consideration. There are cost relating to matching renters with units available, costs for managing flat inventories, costs for non-market pricing and adjustments of rentals, costs of refurbishing units between tenants, and much more. And these are only operating costs. Impact to the public housing market, impact on private housing, etc remain uncertain. A badly implemented policy could cause unintended consequences to the behaviour of people that may not be foreseeable.

 

[skponggol]

.....

One aspect of SDP policy has actually been implemented by HDB: Studio Apartment, which allows HDB flat to be bought by elderly citizens who can use this to unlock their current flat value and cash out. It gives them a roof over their head without relying on their children or others. So it may be good if SDP can expand this scheme to other population segments.


One disadvantage of having too many rental flats is that it may give too much power to the landlord, ie HDB. People may not want to live at the mercy of the landlord and prefer to be their own master. Tenants may become fearful and too obedient to HDB and government so that they can continue to rent the HDB flats.


30% of HK people are living at government flats. But it also gives too much power to the government bureaucrats who may abuse their power when determining who to stay. It may also explain why pro-Beijing parties are doing so well in elections as they are able to utilise administrative resources to mobilise the tenants during elections.

.....

 

[yellowarse]

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[TD]GIC economist: SDP housing plan "excellent"[/TD]
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Added on: Monday Today
Total comments: 0Singapore Democrats

Former GIC chief economist Mr Yeoh Lam Keong praised the SDP's alternative housing plan for Singapore as of "remarkably high quality and in-depth piece of research."

Mr Yeoh made the remarks at the launch of Housing A Nation: Holistic Policies For Affordable Homes at the Quality Hotel yesterday. (Download the entire paperhere.)

Mr Yeoh, who is also a senior research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies and an adviser at the National University of Singapore and Singapore Management University, described the paper as "excellent".

"Not only is the theory and methodology sound and rigorous, the empirical work seems well researched and remarkably detailed as well," he said.

On the policy itself, Mr Yeoh said that the Non-Open Market (NOM) proposal is "coherently laid out and makes much sense in terms of the objective of potentially giving low-income and middle-class Singaporeans access to affordable, high-quality public housing."

He added the SDP's principle to de-link HDB prices from the private cost of land is a "fundamentally sound one."

He also highlighted the paper's discussion of the causes of asset price inflation and the dangers of an asset bubble in property, commenting that that these issues "are currently insufficiently tackled and highlighted by policy-makers."

Mr Yeoh, who was Director of Economics and Strategy and Chief Economist at the GIC from 2000 to 2011, said that the paper "goes a long way" towards achieving its goal of outlining a holistic policy for affordable public housing in Singapore.

"Considering the authors are approaching a complex, technically arcane area with not much available data, it discusses the main arguments and alternatives cogently, rigorously and very competently," the prominent economist pointed out.

But Mr Yeoh also had a few suggestions to improve on the policy. First, he said, the NOM scheme was unnecessarily restrictive. He suggested allowing resale of NOM flats on the open market after a period of 10 years.

The 10-year period should minimize any adverse impact on existing free-market prices of resale HDB flats.

Furthermore, he added, HDB should allow singles to buy flats irrespective of age (currently at 35).

He also wanted to see more emphasis on the need for a more extensive subsidised public rental market. Singapore needs to make such rental housing available to a large section of the population.

Another well-regarded analyst, Mr Leong Sze Hian (pictured, right), also viewed the SDP plan positively, saying that the policy "may help to reduce much of the financial that so many Singaporeans face today."

"I therefore suggest that the Government, stakeholders and Singaporeans engage with more ideas, feedback and suggestions, and to explore the possibility of refining and using some, if not all of the features in the SDP Housing Plan," Mr Leong urged.

Mr Yeoh concurred, remarking that the policy "is a much needed kick start to a crucial national debate on affordable housing."

 

[tanwahp]

.....

One aspect of SDP policy has actually been implemented by HDB: Studio Apartment, which allows HDB flat to be bought by elderly citizens who can use this to unlock their current flat value and cash out. It gives them a roof over their head without relying on their children or others. So it may be good if SDP can expand this scheme to other population segments.


One disadvantage of having too many rental flats is that it may give too much power to the landlord, ie HDB. People may not want to live at the mercy of the landlord and prefer to be their own master. Tenants may become fearful and too obedient to HDB and government so that they can continue to rent the HDB flats.


30% of HK people are living at government flats. But it also gives too much power to the government bureaucrats who may abuse their power when determining who to stay. It may also explain why pro-Beijing parties are doing so well in elections as they are able to utilise administrative resources to mobilise the tenants during elections.

.....

Good post.

When you are not writing all these silly Chinese drama stories with poor attempts to create parallels to WP, you do write well.

 

[Kinana]

Hong kong model will end up with chicken coops for singkies, no thanks.

 

[wikiphile]

Hong kong model will end up with chicken coops for singkies, no thanks.

a coop is too good for you :oIo:

 

[godiva]

a coop is too good for you :oIo:

Kinana chicken housed in a coop. Perfect in all ways. Couldn't resist a dig.

 

[wMulew]

Fucking moron GMS wants us to live in this by following HK

Superior housing policy indeed

 

[Fook Seng]

Even at $100 per month, for the whole lease of 99 years, you will get back $118,800. Present value of construction cost would be taken into consideration.

Your simple calculation did not take into account the maintenance of the property.

Throughout its entire life, there should be several fairly major renovations and up keepings. Either this has to be factored all in at the beginning or increasingly added as an inflation to the rental, inflation likely to remain as a key part of everything else, unless they bring back the Bretton Wood System.

It is not good to have housing different from the other components of cost which will cause structural instability in some future time.

 

[Bigfuck]

I always keep laughing when people want to bring Hong Kong, a place made of opportunists and carpetbaggers which is not a country, in for comparison with SGP which is one. The land is now de facto owned by China both legal and in the ridiculously high price purchases by the PRC. A few families run the entire country's business and are ingratiated to PRC. HK is like Alcatraz with people masturbating about human rights and freedom. It is really comparing apples with durians.

 

[Cruxx]

Do Honkies have a public pension scheme like CPF? If not, allowing citizens to have higher discretionary spending power would just add to the risk of the city devolving into a welfare state further down the road. My preference is to have citizens take responsibilities for their own retirements. Don't live beyond your means. Your statement reflects exactly what I fear about a rental flat system.

Welfare state

 

[Bigfuck]

CPF is a brilliantly cheap alternative to pensions invented by the British and bastardized by dumb Lee Kuan Yew. CPF in its current bastardized form cannot serve as a sufficient source of income for retirement. The only way now is to supplement with public pensions. As for MPs they should be given pension taxes and retroactive taxes on their incomes for failed performance over 4 decades inclusive of inflation and punitive fines for intervention to cover up failure. I believe the tax percentage should be 1,000,000 percent or 500 billion (whichever is higher) in revenues for Singapore to return to Singaporeans.

 

[mojito]

I believe that the debate is about renting out bare units as opposed to furnished units. JTC and HDB has been doing it for years with regard to commercial property. Recently they have even moved into renting out residential property for FT under the SHIFT program. The administrative costs have been manageable and there have been no reports of any of these issues you have raised.

I thought GMS was referring to the government renting out bare units? Residential accommodation in metropolitan areas managed by private companies require additional overheads to manage leasing and re-leasing activities. These activities add to the cost of rentals. Units that are unoccupied, or require refurbishment between tenants would add to the cost of managing the program.

Perhaps you are suggesting that if this government is so accommodative to the needs of foreign enterprises, as your example of renting out residential properties under JTC's SHIFT program, it should not be an issue to do likewise for local born Singaporeans. I am unfamiliar with the program, but commercial instincts tell me the leases are signed by companies, not individuals. These are typically long term non-cancellable leases over several years, which would be easier to manage compared to individual leases which are cancellable given several months notice. The latter would entail commercial risk to the property owner, in the case of rental flats, HDB itself. I am unsure taxpayers would want to foot the bill for unoccupied units. This can turn out to be a substantial opportunity cost.

 

[mojito]

Apologize for pushing this thread up again. Finally found it buried somewhere in page 4. I just like to add another thought to SDP's plan.

It is a superior plan to the rental flat alternative that GMS and aurvandil would suggest. One plus point is, when the NOM flats are returned to HDB for various reasons, they could also be released to the re-marketed into the residential market as resale flats. This is something cushy pseudo-bureaucrats with their limited imagination can never come up with.

 

[Goh Meng Seng]

SDP's plan will create unintentionally, a poverty trap, worse than rental flats.

I applaud SDP for trying to come up with a housing policy on its own BUT, it must make sense.

We need to address some of the fundamental understanding of what went wrong with the present system before coming up with alternative policies. From the way SDP writes its housing policy, it is apparent that SDP has fragmented understanding of the problems we are facing here.

I will write about it after I am done with my work at hand.

Goh Meng Seng

Apologize for pushing this thread up again. Finally found it buried somewhere in page 4. I just like to add another thought to SDP's plan.

It is a superior plan to the rental flat alternative that GMS and aurvandil would suggest. One plus point is, when the NOM flats are returned to HDB for various reasons, they could also be released to the re-marketed into the residential market as resale flats. This is something cushy pseudo-bureaucrats with their limited imagination can never come up with.

 

[mojito]

SDP's plan will create unintentionally, a poverty trap, worse than rental flats.

I applaud SDP for trying to come up with a housing policy on its own BUT, it must make sense.

We need to address some of the fundamental understanding of what went wrong with the present system before coming up with alternative policies. From the way SDP writes its housing policy, it is apparent that SDP has fragmented understanding of the problems we are facing here.

I will write about it after I am done with my work at hand.

Goh Meng Seng

Looking forward to it. Please also write about how the plan would create a poverty trap, and how First-World nations around the world have created wealth for tenants under the rental accommodation scheme.