SINGAPORE: Newly minted Minister for National Development Chee Hong Tat said on Wednesday (May 28) that he is making affordable public housing a priority.
Mr Chee spoke to the media for the first time since assuming his new role after visiting the Toa Payoh Ridge Build-to-Order (BTO) project. He said that the price of resale flats is expected to moderate starting from next year, when more new units meet their minimum occupation period (MOP) and more BTO flats enter the market.
“This is also an important area for my ministry and I. We want to see how we can help to address this concern. At the heart of it, it is actually a supply and demand issue,” CNA quoted the minister as saying.
At the visit to Toa Payoh Ridge, the final block of which will be completed next month, Mr Chee underscored the MND’s focus on housing.
“We want to make sure that we continue to have a strong supply of new HDB flats to be able to meet the needs of different groups of buyers. Young couples, singles, and seniors, so that they can have more choices and they are able to get their new flats more quickly,” he said.
“We are on track to launch 100,000 new flats from 2021 to 2025, and will build at least 50,000 new flats in the next three years. We expect to hand over keys to 19,000 households this year. So far, HDB has completed about 7,000 flats across 14 BTO projects, with more to come,” he added in a Facebook post.
Commenting on Mr Chee’s remarks, some local Reddit users raised other concerns.
“He forgot to mention that there is a more important priority for public housing, and that is its key function as a retirement nest egg; and that future generations bear the burden of funding the retirement of previous generations,” wrote one.
To this, another replied that “The ultimate problem is the lack of sufficient social safety nets in Singapore, especially for retirement. That’s why everyone is banking on asset enhancement and rent seeking to save up for retirement. Unfortunately, this issue is outside the purview of MND. The government really needs to sit down together and tackle this as a cross-ministry issue.”
“As far as I can recall, housing affordability issues have been a concern since 2011 and earlier,” a commenter weighed in.
Earlier this week, the Singapore Business Review reported that HDB resale flat prices in Singapore rose by 1.6 per cent in the first quarter of 2025, slowing for the second quarter from 2.6 per cent growth in the final quarter of 2024 and below the 1.8 per cent quarterly increase recorded at the same time the year before.
Citing OrangeTee & Tie’s latest report, it said that softer demand is partly due to heightened competition from newly launched BTO and Sale of Balance Flats. More than 10,000 new flats were released under these exercises in February.
However, the demand for premium resale unit flats remains strong, with a record 348 million-dollar flats sold in the first quarter of this year, up from just 285 in Q4 2024. The most expensive flat sold was a DBSS unit in Toa Payoh Lorong 1A that went for S$1.6 million. /TISG
Read also: 141 HDB resale flats sold for at least $1 million in April