Todays housing market is ridiculous.
Don’t get me wrong, the HDB scheme is amazing and through this scheme the housing authorities really do take care of those who are within that income band with various support measures for those who are struggling to make ends meet as well.
However, there is a group of people that have fallen through the cracks.
With this economy in place, wages have been rising and our government has not been keeping up be evolving their income limits together with the growth in wages. What group is that? They are the ones who are early in their careers, hence having a low amount of capital, but holding a well-paying job that puts them just above the income ceiling for affordable housing.
I fall into this category, and even though my girlfriend and I are ready to take the next step to look to live together, we can’t find anything that we are able to afford. We don’t come from affluent families who are able to help us with the downpayment, but our combined income doesn’t allow us to apply for HDBs or ECs. The next level that is available to us would be resale HDB flats or condos.
But looking at the housing market today, Punggol resale flats going for 1 mil, new launch 2 BR condominiums going for 1.8 mil. Floating mortgage rates expecting to hit 2+% by the end of 2022, how are we going to afford housing in this market? In addition to that, some basic renovation will at least cost 50-100k. This housing market right now is unattainable. Our governments policies of attracting the rich and wealthy from overseas are backfiring on their own people, with entire clans of mainland chinese moving to Singapore and keeping the bubble growing.
Just frustrated with the inability to move our lives forward, subsidies don’t work for us, affordable housing is not available for us and the next level of housing is getting more and more unattainable.