Long story short, we both come from working-class families and the last year has not been kind to my parents, chiefly my dad who need hospitalization and long term care. My dad is fiercely private and independent so he doesn’t know yet I have been footing the balance of the hospital and community hospital bills – after subsidies etc, and now the home based care he needs – only child so no choice. My fiancee has her own family’s financial issues the she need to solve but that’s private. What I can say is that the aspirations and hopes of 2 sets of working class parents are resting squarely on our shoulders.
That may make some of my choices, decision making and frustrations clearer. One things is certain though, the climb up the financial ladder is much harder than expected.
My fiancee and I really appreciate each and every suggestions and sharing of personal experiences and we hope that people in future reading this reddit can utilize some of the suggestions to do better fitment of their own housing choices.]]
As a young Singaporean couple, we are priced out of the HDB resale market, yet have trouble getting a BTO flat queue number.
BTO
My fiancee and I have applied for multiple BTO exercises since 2019 to no avail. We are definitely not choosy as we applied for Tengah, Punggol North and Fernvale which are non matured estates in the outlying corners of Singapore and yet we have not received a single queue number. We were a bit kiasu and started applying during our final year at university as we wanted to get a head start on our marriage and family planning but, nope the early bird still doesn’t get the worm.
Seeing our MP for help, on our parents’ advice, turned out to be of limited utility as he said that he could write a letter on our behalf but the rest is up to HDB.
When we graduated, we were lucky to get full time positions almost immediately, but our combined income is now close to the BTO income limit, so the window of opportunity for getting a BTO is closing quickly.
We tried the HDB resale market which is even more frustrating. We understand that we are blessed to have a combined income close to the BTO income limit, which should strangely make us feel firmly middle class, but between paying off the student loans, giving allowances to retired parents, paying for parents’ medical bills and saving for our own family’s future (we hope to get married and have children young), given that we have worked for less than a year, there just isn’t much spare cash to go around.
Anyway, most property agents have been ignoring our messages. Those that respond tell us upfront tell us that the last offer was $6xx,xxx etc and ask us to top the offer to view the unit.
We made an offer for one particular unit that we liked. 30+ year old in the north east area but it’s not near the town centre or MRT. We were prepared to pay COV of $35,000, which we estimated based on the recent selling prices in that block. On the day we were supposed to sign the OTP, the owner accepted another higher offer so our hopes were dashed. And true enough, when we checked the HDB resale website a couple of months later, the flat was sold for about $15,000 above our offered price.
Since then, it has been a mad rush to view units before the prices climb higher and I have noticed that the sellers don’t even bother about the selling price anymore but are now asking for a fixed amount of COV aboved the valuation of the unit.
One incident stood out because the seller’s agent told us to commit to a minimum COV of $80,000 before we could make an appointment. We GTFO of that conversation real quick.
Public housing should be as described. Public housing for the good of the public. Not some asset-appreciation concept that burdens the subsequent generations.
Apologies for the long rant, but just had a long discussion with my future wife and we’re just dead beat.