More new housing units will be added to the market, giving home buyers more choices. HDB will put two residential sites in Sembawang and Sengkang up for sale today.
It will also put two other sites in Yishun and Punggol on the Reserve List for public tender in early May.
The sites are expected to yield around 1,970 dwelling units. About 60 percent or around 1,215 are Executive Condominium (EC) units.
According to market watchers, this supply of ECs will provide more rooms for the "sandwiched" class to choose from.
The land parcel in Sembawang sits in an established private residential area. It is near the bus interchange and Sembawang MRT Station. It is also close to neighbourhood shopping malls and schools like Republic Polytechnic and the Singapore Sports School.
The site can be developed for landed housing, flats or condominiums, and can yield about 290 units. The tender for this site will close on June 8.
In Sengkang, the land parcel is accessible by LRT and two expressways.
HDB has proposed around 465 EC units.
The tender for this site, which has a minimum offer price of S$103,800,000, will close on May 25.
In May, two more sites, with a 99-year lease term, will be launched for public tender at Yishun for condominiums and in Punggol for ECs.
HDB said that the total potential supply quantum of 10,550 units from the Reserve List and Confirmed List of the Government Land Sales Programme for the first half of the 2010 is the highest in the history of the programme.
Aside from the GLS programme, there is also a supply from projects in the pipeline, which have been initiated earlier, both from the private and government land sources.
As of Q4 2009, about 60,500 private residential units were in the pipeline, which would be completed over the next few years.
Out of the 60,500 private residential units, there was also a record of about 34,200 private housing units left unsold, and can be launched for sale within the year if property developers opt to do so.
The potential supply of land together with the supply from projects in the pipeline will be more than enough to meet the demand for private housing, said HDB.
The government will continue monitoring the market and ensure that there is sufficient supply.
If necessary, more supply can be injected in the GLS Programme for the second half of the 2010.
Mr. Mohd Ismail, chief executive officer of PropNex, said the new supply of Executive Condominiums can provide relief for those who have been feeling the squeeze.
“There’s been a fair bit of concern about this ‘sandwiched class’ not being able to afford private property because of the increasing prices of the private property as well as rising prices of the HDB resale market. As such, the ECs will come in very handy,” he said.
Mr. Nicholas Mak, a real estate lecturer from Ngee Ann Polytechnic, said that interest from developers will be high, expecting over 10 bids for each site.
“Some of these sites are actually in established residential areas, and one or two or them are even fairly near to MRT lines or LRT lines,” he said.
Mr. Mak added that pricing for ECs usually ranged from S$250 psf to S$320 psf.
New ECs are usually about 25 percent lower than new private condominiums.