Jamus is concerned about price of HDB flats.
5 d ·
One topic that Singaporeans of all stripes have repeatedly flagged to us in recent times has been concern over housing, specifically pricing on HDB flats, given how four-fifths of Singaporeans live in public housing. Flats are getting smaller, and more expensive. New records for resale prices, widely shared in the news and on social, hardly help. Even those who already own their flats fear that their kids won’t be able to afford homes of their own.
In my view, this is the underlying context for why the Ridout Road episode sparked such wailing and gnashing of teeth. It wasn’t about the specificities of permits, the propriety of bidding, or burden sharing of renovation costs. It was about what Singaporeans had been repeatedly told about why HDB costs so much—limited land, high construction costs, and the need to price land according to market principles—versus the perception of how their leaders don’t seem to face such constraints. For example, Minister Tong stressed that pricing for black-and-whites excludes land, since rentals only consider built floor area. Fair enough, except that, in contrast, HDB prices fully incorporate the market price of land, backed out from resale prices of comparables.
This leaves many Singaporeans—who are repeatedly reminded that HDB needs to pay for land at genuine “market prices” just so that we don’t raid the reserves—suspicious, of how there is one market for rich B&W tenants, and another for poor HDB dwellers. But there isn’t! (Or, at least, there shouldn’t be). Even if we wish to take the estimates of the Chief Valuer at face value (see what I did there?
), how we price in the land component is entirely a policy choice. If we say that land has to be priced into B&W rental pricing—because, after all, there is amenity value to green spaces, and this extra land can also be “improved” with pools and tennis courts—then the valuation will automatically be higher for sprawling estates. By the same token, if we tell the Chief Valuer that land for public housing should reflect its additional benefits as a public good (there, I did it again
), then that land should be discounted to capture the spillovers of having a population sheltered and secure.
This is but one area where the
#workersparty thinks that fresh thinking (on a roll here
) can help improve our nation’s public housing model. Over the course of the coming week, we will release a series of videos to highlight our ideas. Stay tuned!
#makingyourvotecount
Postscript: Democratic strategist James Carville once quipped that if there was reincarnation, he’d not come back as the president or pope, but as the bond market. In Singapore, it seems like if we do choose to return, best to do so as the Chief Valuer.
