National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan revealed in his Housing Matters blog on Friday about some policy changes that his ministry will administer.
“Given robust demand, I told them (HDB) to proceed to build, knowing that the orders will definitely come,” wrote Mr. Khaw.
“In other words, build ahead of demand, during this period of demand backlog. We can return to normal BTO approach after we have stabilised the situation.”
Under the existing system, a tender to develop HDB flats is called after 70 percent of orders have been confirmed — hence the term “build to order.”
But with the new policy, HDB will call a tender as soon as the tender documents and architectural drawings are prepared.
HDB will also advance the projects planned for Q1 2012 by several months, which will enable it to raise the number of new units this year to 25,000 from the initial 22,000.
“As we intend to ease the S$8,000 income ceiling on HDB flats, we can expect additional demand and we have to prepare for that.”
In addition, the minister also hopes to enable more young couples to purchase their homes directly from HDB. Presently, 70 percent of new couples obtain their first homes through HDB’s BTO system, while others buy their homes on the resale market.
“This is not bad, but I think there is scope to do more. I think we should strive to have the vast majority of new couples start off their first set of homes in HDB, preferably via the BTO route,” he wrote.
“One priority is to help young couples own their own homes as soon as possible, so that they can start their family and have babies. This is a national priority — promoting marriages and births — and the Ministry of National Development must facilitate it to its best ability,” he added.
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