RESIDENTIAL MARKET
Next-gen HDB flats will be better designed: Khaw
The future of Singapore will look like Punggol, National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan said yesterday, but just how might this pan out?
Mr Khaw told Parliament that the next generation of public housing would be even more comfortable and better designed, holding up Housing and Development Board precincts at Punggol South as an example.
Newer neighbourhoods, such as Punggol, were planned as smaller estates, HDB said in response to queries. Each Punggol precinct is made up of between 1,000 and 3,000 homes.
There is also more intensive land use, it said, pointing to the gross plot ratio (GPR) of about 3-3.5 in Punggol.
This compares with earlier public housing developments in the 1970s and 1980s in older towns such as Ang Mo Kio, Bedok and Clementi, where GPR ranged from 1.8 to 2.8.
"In general, as gross plot ratio increases, the number of dwelling units within the same plot size of land increases. More families can then be housed in the development," HDB said.
To maintain liveability, planners had to exercise creativity.
For example, some carparks were integrated with housing blocks, covering the first few floors. To maintain a sense of space, HDB's planners executed ideas such as communal gardens on the rooftops of integrated carparks.
Each precinct at Punggol also shares a "common green" of about 0.4-0.7 of a hectare in size within walking distance from each block, compared with the 1-1.5 ha neighbourhood parks shared by 4,000 to 6,000 households in older estates serving a wider catchment.
"So what is our future? It is not to be a concrete jungle. It is to be a city in a garden, it is to be Punggol - multiply that many times. And the best is yet to be," Mr Khaw said yesterday.
Feedback about developments at Punggol South has been positive, Mr Khaw noted. He added that the same applies for preliminary plans for Punggol North. Planners are now working on Tampines North, Bidadari and Tengah.
"They will be awesome," Mr Khaw assured.
Source: Business Times –7 February 2013
Bill gives more teeth to Controller of Housing
The Controller of Housing will be empowered to require developers to disclose any benefits they provide to home buyers - including reimbursements of stamp duty, discounts and vouchers - and to publish the information, under an amendment Bill introduced for first reading in Parliament yesterday.
The move will boost transparency on home prices, say industry players.
This is one of the changes contained in the Housing Developers (Control and Licensing) (Amendment) Bill - which will be tabled for its second reading at a future Parliament seating.
The Ministry of National Development said yesterday: "The...amendments to the Act will further enhance protection of home buyers and promote transparency in the property market. These amendments have taken into consideration feedback from the general public, as well as developers, property agents, property consultants, solicitors and other real estate professionals."
The changes will empower the Controller of Housing to require developers to submit to it information on sales transactions in their projects such as the purchase price and agreements (for instance by a developer to reimburse a buyer for stamp duty paid on his purchase). The Bill will also allow the controller to publish the information or use it for compilations, analysis, research studies or surveys.
Developers already submit monthly sales data on their projects (including prices of units sold) based on options granted, to the Urban Redevelopment Authority, which then releases the data on the 15th of the following month. However, the prices captured in this exercise would typically not reflect the incentives which have not been received by the buyers at the point when they were granted the option - such as reimbursement of stamp duty (usually given after it has been paid by the buyer), a furnishing voucher, or even an expensive artpiece.
Such incentives may be given by the developer to the buyer only when the option is exercised several weeks later or even much further down the road, such as when the project has been completed, say agents. As a result, some of the developers' sale prices being submitted to URA each month and also reflected in caveats may be inflated. With such data fed into URA's private home price indices, this would mean that the indices may not reflect true property values.
Analysts reckon that when the new rules take effect, URA's price indices could take a downward adjustment.
A property consultant suggests URA could ask developers to adjust price data for units they have sold since the start of 2012. "Stamp duty absorption and other soft discounts became more popular again after the first round of additional buyer's stamp duty was introduced in December 2011. Such a refinement would allow us to see whether prices actually dipped around Q1 last year," he added.
Market watchers agreed that the impending change will promote greater transparency in the property market. With the end of this form of "price protection", the true property values will be made public and valuations would come down, said one property agent who declined to be named.
In addition to enabling URA to collect and publish more comprehensive and timely information on transacted prices of private homes, amendments to the Bill will also regulate the set-up of showflats, to ensure greater accuracy in developers' representation of housing units offered for sale. Moreover, the criteria for granting licences to housing developers will be tightened.
"For example, a licence will not be granted to a developer company with a director who has been convicted of, or has served a sentence of imprisonment for, a fraud or dishonesty-related offence in or outside Singapore within a period of five years before the date of the licence application," MND said.
As the fine amounts in the current Act were set in 1965, the Government is proposing to increase the fine amounts five-fold to sustain the deterrent effect.
"The amendment will also allow offences under the Act and subsidiary legislations to be compounded," MND added.
Source: Business Times –7 February 2013
Major shift in planning strategy: Khaw
The Government has made a major shift in the way it provides housing and public transport infrastructure - it will now invest and build well ahead of demand.
Complaints about overcrowding, congestion and the long wait for a Housing Board flat prompted the switch, which National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan described as "a major shift in planning and development strategy".
"We will do our best not to allow population to surge ahead of our infrastructure again," he told Parliament yesterday. "What we must do is to build infrastructure ahead of demand and where possible, we must also build in a buffer so that we can respond to unexpected developments and needs."
He said the Government had learnt "a valuable lesson" from the current problems.
"The congestion we experience today is real... We are not happy with the status quo. We are resolute in addressing these concerns... But we must also learn from this and be clear about the need to plan and build ahead of demand so that we will not be caught again with another infrastructure crunch like this one."
He was speaking on Day Three of the debate on the Population White Paper, which has drawn strong reaction for its projection of a population of 6.5 million to 6.9 million in 2030. That prospect has been criticised by the public as well as Members of Parliament.
"Many MPs have conveyed their strong sentiments. Singaporeans are upset. We know," said Mr Khaw. "Then why are we moving such an unpopular debate? Indeed, why is the Government, well aware that Singaporeans are already upset with overcrowding, still insisting on planning for a larger population?"
He pointed to the reasons given by Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean, who explained on Monday that Singapore was heading for a crisis given its rapidly ageing population and shrinking labour force.
Mr Khaw said that having been caught wrong-footed, with an infrastructure mismatch that has been painful for Singaporeans and planners alike, the Government was now planning on a "stretched scenario of 6.9 million".
"We hope never to reach this level. However, for long-term planning, it is safer to prepare enough land and infrastructure for a larger number."
Focusing mainly on housing, his message to Singaporeans was: Don't worry. He said there will be more than enough HDB flats for everyone, prices will stay affordable, waiting times will be cut, and the quality of life preserved.
His ramped up public housing programme will add about 200,000 new homes within the next four years, with more beyond that, and building all these new homes would need more construction workers.
Taking a swipe at the Workers' Party's alternative road map, he said he was shocked by its recommendation to freeze the number of foreign workers if the local workforce can be grown.
"My housing plan will be badly affected! I will not be able to deliver the new flats as promised to 200,000 families," he said.
Urging the opposition party to rethink, he said its plan would seriously disrupt his efforts to stabilise the housing market.
Acknowledging anxiety over HDB flat prices, including resale prices, he outlined efforts to keep flats affordable and cool the market. "We are determined to tame the property market, especially the HDB resale market. We think the recent cooling measures will make an impact. If necessary, we will do more."
Mr Khaw also assured Singaporeans that the quality of life would not suffer in a more crowded Singapore. He was confident that the opposite would be achieved, with plans for parks, nature reserves, well designed neighbourhoods in new estates all helping to ensure liveability here.
Among those who spoke yesterday was former national development minister Mah Bow Tan, who called the White Paper "the most important document regarding our future since Independence".
Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong praised Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong for raising the population issue for discussion now instead of leaving it for his successor to deal with.
"Singapore has succeeded only because of the courage of our leaders and people to face challenges squarely, and because of our will to succeed and our ability to work together to overcome issues of survival," he said.
Source: The Straits Times –7 February 2013
Enough homes so young S'poreans 'need not worry'
Some 200,000 homes will be ready by 2016, said National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan yesterday in Parliament, as he sought to assure Singaporeans that progress is being made in "relieving the strains we feel today".
Of these, 111,159 are HDB flats, 9,800 are executive condominiums and 76,600 are private property units.
And even as those projects are going on, the Government is continuing to launch more flats and sell land to developers.
Once the current backlog of demand is cleared, said Mr Khaw, the Housing Board will start to build up a "meaningful stock of unsold HDB flats to meet the needs of couples who may need housing urgently".
"In short, young Singaporeans, you do not have to worry," he said.
He revealed that for the longer term, the Ministry of National Development (MND) has reserved sufficient land to develop another half a million housing units.
If fully realised, this would increase housing stock at a proportion that is double the projected population growth, he noted.
This is a kiasu approach to give planners plenty of buffer, he said.
Mr Khaw also reassured young Singaporeans that flat prices are within their reach, especially since he has delinked the prices of Build-To-Order (BTO) flats from the resale market.
Since Mr Khaw took over the housing portfolio in 2011, he has unpegged the prices of BTO flats from resale flats in the vicinity.
So, BTO prices are stabilised by "increasing the government subsidy when resale prices rise, instead of following resale prices up", he explained.
This will continue until the resale market stabilises, he said.
"We are determined to tame the property market, especially the HDB resale market," he said.
Property cooling measures last month - the seventh in three years - should help to do that, he said, promising that "if necessary, we will do more".
Mr Khaw characterised his new approach to housing provision, and the Government's new strategy in infrastructural development, as being not just about building ahead of demand, but also setting aside enough space to provide options for future generations.
He described it as "planning for unknown unknowns", since no one could predict what the world would be like beyond 2020 and 2030.
"They (future generations) can decide what they want to do with the options, to create the kind of society that they want," he said.
Mr Khaw explained that new land reclamation and recycling the use of existing land was a key part of the move to create options.
He cited the Southern Waterfront City - to be created by moving port facilities at Tanjong Pagar, Pulau Brani, Keppel and Pasir Panjang to Tuas - as an example. It would serve as the western wing of the Central Business District where Marina Bay now serves as the eastern wing.
"So the CBD, eastern wing, western wing together will offer a bigger scope, much more than Marina Bay. This is an exciting option beyond 2030 and it is totally within our grasp." he said.
Source: The Straits Times –7 February 2013
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