http://home.nzcity.co.nz/news/article.aspx?id=91485&fm=newsmain,nup
15 October 2008
A new home ownership scheme has been announced by Labour, aiming to get more people into their first home.
Prime Minister Helen Clark has announced details of the scheme on a public estate development in West Auckland this afternoon.
Under the scheme, the homeowner will pay for their new house to be built, but the Crown will own the land. Miss Clark says the plan will dramatically lower the cost of home ownership. She says 1,500 sites will be made available over the next four years.
The scheme effectively makes the government leaseholders. It has been targeted towards low income families and follows on from the Shared Equity and Welcome Home schemes.
Therefore, HDB should NOT factor in the landcosts because the LAND does not really belong to the HDB dwellers but is technically state land. HDB dwellers occupy only the AIRSPACE over the land.
The artificially inflated HDB prices only serve to suck dry the CPF accounts of new applicants and burden them with hefty mortgages that will leave very little cash funds in their CPF accounts upon retirement.
Their ability to 'benefit' from the downgrading to a smaller flat will only result if there are ready buyers (young married couples planning a family) for the old, less than desirable 4/5 room flats which have probably less than 65 yrs of leasehold left.
Will there be ready buyers by that time as S'pore has less than replacement fertility levels and an overall aging population? There will be a large pool of old people downgrading to 3 room flats and few young people to buy over the larger but older 4/5 room flats. In short it will be a buyers market and prices by then would be severely depressed.
The retirees would be faced with a triple whammy of
1. No takers for their overpriced, old flats with a reduced tenure of lease probably less than 65 yrs left
2. hardly any cash in their CPF accounts.
3. What ever cash present in the CPF would have been DRASTICALLY eaten away by the rate of inflation.