In a recent parliament speech, Minister Mah spoke again about HDB flats being 'affordable'. To support his assertion he gave a few examples to illustrate what affordable means:
" In the case of new HDB flats in non-mature estates, the average mortgage payment for new flats in non-mature estates sold in 2009 was 22% of monthly household income, which translates to a DSR of 22%. This is 1-2% marginally higher than the level seen in the last decade, but well within the affordability benchmark of 30-35%. This also means that about 80% of Singaporean new flat buyers are able to service their housing loans entirely from CPF without any cash payment. In my opinion, this is a significant fact and a very real measure of affordability" - Minister Mah's Speech in Parliament 5 March 2010[Link].
Do go through the other examples in his speech to fully understand what he means by affordability. He is basically saying if you can service your 30 yr mortgage loan today, things are okay...the HDB has done its job well and there are no real issues here. You noticed he used 'average' mortgage payment ...hmm so what happens to the 500,000 families who are below average? What happens to the bottom 20-30% where income has fallen off steeply due to the income gap? Public housing is for everyone right? Not just the average and above average families. His choice of using the average to demonstrate affordability is just a small spin ....I'll show you why this whole affordability argument from Minister Mah is bogus.
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pharoah88
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07-May-2011 16:42
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The tussle over national issues Workfare, foreign labour and the implications of Opposition proposals are at the forefront Neo Chai Chin chaichin@mediacorp.com.sg If you set a minimum wage for Singaporeans, you must decide to set something for foreign workers, you cannot say Singaporeans at this wage, foreign workers no minimum wage — then you’ll definitely lose jobs to foreign workers. PAP’s Lim Hng Kiang I’ll tell you who is out of step: It’s the PAP. They’re out of step with Singaporeans, not just out of step but three steps behind. RP chief Kenneth Jeyaretnam |
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pharoah88
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07-May-2011 16:38
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Healthcare at the heart of it SDP team proposes shadow plan but PAP incumbents question its feasibility Cheow Xin Yi cheowxinyi@mediacorp.com.sg You cannot formulate a health strategy based on a collection of populist wishes. You certainly cannot whip up a sound healthcare plan in the heat of a GE campaign. PAP’s Khaw Boon Wan Healthcare should not be a profit industry, but we also believe there should be some responsibility of co-payment between government and patient ... As it stands, the PAP Government has pushed the bulk of financing to the people. SDP’s James Gomez |
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pharoah88
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07-May-2011 16:33
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Contest in Tampines centres on national housing policies Ansley Ng ansley@mediacorp.com.sg If being able to use less than a quarter of your income and no cash to finance your flat is not considered affordable, what exactly does NSP’s Mr Goh (Meng Seng) define to be ‘affordable housing’? PAP’s Mah Bow Tan The income ceiling is an obsolete policy. By scrapping it, you actually provide a mechanism to re-adjust the private property prices when it’s too hot. NSP’s Goh Meng Seng |
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pharoah88
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07-May-2011 16:27
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What’s the point of a nice facade, or even walls that are painted with 18K gold, when you open up your rice barrel and find that it’s e m p t y. You might as well use money (for upgrading) to lower the GST tO ZERO. NSP’s Christopher Neo |
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teeth53
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07-May-2011 16:23
Yells: "don't learn through life, learn to grow with life " |
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Just for info sharing. Hong Kong in most recent day had set minimum wages of US$3.60 cents per hour.  When asked if the policy is more of a theory than realistically applicable, Tan argued that it has been practiced in other countries. Where they are known to be economically competitive and have introduced a minimum wage system. |
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pharoah88
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07-May-2011 16:23
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Battle royale hinges on perceptions of Opposition’s ability
Lin Yan qin yanqinl@mediacorp.com.sg Compare that with the Opposition. What do they have? Nothing. [NO GRAVE MISTAKE ? ? ? ?] PAP’s Wong Kan Seng, comparing the party’s track record with that of the Opposition in Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC In order for democracy to grow, you must have Opposition. And in order to reach democracy, you must have transparency and accountability. SPP’s Chiam See Tong |
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pharoah88
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07-May-2011 16:17
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Two different approaches for a young constituency (Pasir Ris - Punggol) Can we be sure that the path will be smooth for us in the future? ... That is why we need a strong government, a stable government and a united people to see us through any challenge that may come. Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean If we (Opposition) are not given the chance ... we will never be ready in the next 100 years. SDA ’s Harminder Pal Singh |
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07-May-2011 16:12
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A last-minute challenge in AMK If they can’t even do this in the beginning, will they be able to solve your problems? PAP’s Inderjit Singh, noting that RP posters were nowhere to be seen two days into the election campaign Can the posters listen and address your issues and understand your difficulties? RP’s team leader Osman Sulaiman |
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07-May-2011 16:08
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Voting for change Mr Yeo vowed that, granted a strong mandate, his team would be the force from within for a new, transformed PAP that would communicate more and listen better. Mr Low, however, said the only way the PAP would listen to Singaporeans and change its policies is if there were a strong Opposition presence in Parliament. jUdge dOes nOt lIsten tO defendant jUdge lIstens Only tO Defense Council Defense Council lIstens tO defendant dO yOU have Defense Council ? ? ? ?
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07-May-2011 15:53
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Opposition makes its case for a stronger presence
Loh Chee Kong SINGAPORE
Spread across the island at four sites, the first round of rallies on April 28 saw the Opposition taking the PAP to task for what they argued were results of the Government’s mismanagement: The recent flooding incidents, the influx of foreigners, the congestion on public transport, the growing income disparity, the rising cost of living and high property prices.
Contrasting the high ministerial salaries to the sums that those under the Public Assistance scheme receive, some of the Opposition candidates also criticised the PAP for not caring enough for the people.
That the current batch of PAP leaders do not match up to their predecessors was also a common refrain at Opposition rallies.
“Old ministers like Goh Keng Swee ... were very Socialist, they took care of the people,” said National Solidarity Party (NSP) secretary-general Goh Meng Seng.
These shortcomings, the Opposition argued, buttressed their argument for greater checks and balances on the PAP.
As the hustings reached the midway mark, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong urged voters to refocus on the longer term issues — living costs, economy and jobs, housing, education and healthcare — while various ministers held press conferences to outline their future plans and what the Government had done to address the challenges facing the nation.
The Singapore People’s Party (SPP) for one was “very happy to see the PAP go back to fundamentals”, said Bishan-Toa Payoh Group Representation Constituency (GRC) candidate Benjamin Pwee. “I’m hoping voters will see this is exactly the role of Opposition — to bring our Government ... back on track.”
Taking the cue from the PAP, several Opposition parties unveiled new plans in the second half of the campaigning period, adding on to earlier proposals: The Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) rolled out a shadow healthcare plan and a proposal to revitalise Sembawang GRC the Reform Party unveiled its five-year plans for the Ang Mo Kio and West Coast GRCs and the Workers’ Party shared its municipal plans for Aljunied GRC, relenting from its earlier stance that it would reveal such plans only after being elected into Parliament and taking over the town council finances.
The Opposition parties also capitalised on the Prime Minister’s decision to apologise for mistakes made by the Government in the past five years. The move showed precisely why a stronger Opposition is needed in Parliament, they said.
The apology provided ammunition to the Opposition’s earlier call for political leaders to be held to the same standards as leaders in the corporate world.
SDP candidate Vincent Wijeysingha had said: “Their salaries are pegged to the highest earners in the private sector. But they forgot ... hat, in the private sector, if the CEO doesn’t perform ... the shareholders get him out.”
All said and done after eight days of rallies, the Opposition parties last night returned, in their final party political broadcasts, to their battle cry of sending more alternative voices into Parliament to improve the policy-making process.
Singapore Democratic Alliance candidate Harminder Pal Singh said the “last five years has also seen many major policy failures and caused much discontent, dissatisfaction and pain to Singaporeans”.
RP chief Kenneth Jeyaretnam noted that “policies are bulldozed through the Parliament with little or no genuine debate”, adding: “Just as competition encourages innovation and, progress in the private sector, competition in politics will result in a stronger more vibrant, more engaged Parliament.”
And WP chairman Sylvia Lim asked voters: “Do you want a PAPdominated Parliament, which will be unable to object to the PAP Government’s use of public funds for upgrading HDB flats to punish those who did not vote for them?” |
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pharoah88
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07-May-2011 15:41
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https://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/the-coming-s270-billion-bailout/ The coming S$270 billion bailoutLet me make a digression and talk a little about SERS. These initials stand for “Selective En-bloc Redevelopment Scheme”, under which the Housing and Development Board identifies certain old blocks of flats and buys them back from leaseholders. The Board then tears down the blocks in order to build new, taller blocks on the same site, increasing housing density. At this point, let me point out that this process exactly illustrates what I said above: The government is able to create new quanta of “property” by slicing up more blocks of air it only proves my point that there is no natural scarcity. Unfortunately, my block has not yet been identified for SERS, so I don’t have detailed and personal experience how it works. But I have two friends who have benefitted and from them I understand that the process involves the government buying back the leasehold based on market value. The purchase price can then be used towards the price of a new flat somewhere close by. If the new flat’s price is more than the old flat’s market value, you will have to top up the difference. The thing to examine closely is the market value of the old flat. As I described above, it is based on mass delusion. This means the first people who enjoy SERS will get a bubble-based valuation for the old flat. Once the bubble bursts the remaining people will find their old flat’s market value crashing. To get a new flat to stay in after being evicted by SERS, you will basically have to pay all over again virtually the full price of a new flat. And the bubble has to burst. At some point, people are going to say: Oh, your block is nearly 80 years old and your lease has only 22 years left, no way I will even consider buying your flat, just like how cars with less than five years left on their COEs don’t find much of a market. * * * * * However, the government has given an implicit promise to sustain a rising value of HDB flats, as you can see from Lim Swee Say’s words above. It will be political suicide to let prices crash because people’s retirement savings are tied up in the value of this make-believe asset. When the crash looks like it will happen, the government will likely step up SERS, making themselves the biggest buyer of HDB flats in order to reassure the market when all other buyers are fleeing. Then when market valuations are pointing south, the government is likely to establish a floor valuation (i.e. decoupling it from the fast-sinking free market price), to reassure existing leaseholders that they will get more or less the expected value of the flat based on previous bubble delusions. Effectively, the government will be forced to underwrite near-worthless “assets” and bail out citizens whose nest-eggs are evaporating. What is the cost of that bail-out to come? It’s hard to say because we don’t know what stratospheric prices HDB flats will have reached. But if we assume today’s average price of about $250,000 per typical flat, and add a bit more, say to S$300,000, and multiply this with the present stock of over 900,000 flats, it comes to S$270 billion. [Already hIt 1 mIllIOn flats in 2010 ?] Like most big numbers, it’s hard to visua lise S$270 billion. But we can compare it to the annual gross domestic product of Singapore, which is S$304 billion. Yes, that’s 90 percent of our present GDP. Still hard to visualise that? Let’s take the experience of another small country. Soon after the Irish government was forced by circumstances to take on the debts of its overextended banks in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, it found its commitments too heavy to bear. The country, facing bankruptcy, had to run to the International Monetary Fund for a bailout, in the process of which, severe austerity measures had to be implemented. What was Ireland’s commitment to its banks as a percentage of the country’s GDP that precipitated the crisis?
Half of GDP was enough to break Ireland. There will be a difference, of course. Unlike the acute crisis that Ireland faces, buying back a stock of flats over an extended period of time makes it a chronic crisis. But don’t kid ourselves, going broke slowly is still going broke. You might say, what does it matter to me personally so long as I get back the value of my flat? Yes, you will get back its value, e.g. all S$300,000 worth of it. Except that when Singapore is considered broke internationally, you will have in hand 300,000 scraps of banana money.
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pharoah88
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07-May-2011 15:27
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https://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/the-coming-s270-billion-bailout/ The coming S$270 billion bailoutPublic housing in Singapore is also governed by its own kind of “COE”, though we call them title deeds. They have a life of 99 years. The oldest flats, built in the 1960s, are now approaching 50 years in age. 
However, Singaporeans have totally different expectations about value. We expect it to go up as the termination of the lease approaches. Cabinet minister Lim Swee Say assured Singaporeans that this is in fact government policy as well, in a Chinese-language debate with other political parties televised on 3 April 2011. Using a translation provided by Donaldson Tan of the NewAsiaRepublic website, this is what he said:
It is inconceivable for this government to allow the values of public (“HDB”) flats to decline, when through law people are forced to set aside a big part of their incomes in the Central Provident Fund (CPF) and then encouraged to commit a huge part of their existing and future CPF savings to pay for a flat. The flat effectively becomes the primary form of saving for retirement. Yet, the asset is a declining lease. The brick and mortar aspect of it too can barely be expected to survive 70 years let alone 99. The perennial complaints of spalling concrete should tell us that our HDB flats are not in the same league as Egyptian pyramids when it comes to withstanding the ravages of time. It’s as if every citizen is encouraged to put his savings into a longer-term COE+vehicle with the government promising one and all that COEs will increase in value as its lifeterm decreases and the vehicle becomes a boneshaker. Where is the logic in this? There seems to be widespread delusion about what the HDB market is really all about. We call it “property” and, fooled by language, we think the market has the properties of property. It does not. In a classic property market, the asset changing hands is a freehold title to physical piece of land. Land has a natural scarcity the title is in perpetuity. Neither of these critical attributes apply in the HDB market. It is certainly not in perpetuity, nor is there any natural scarcity. 
The title is, in a sense, to a slice of air for a delimited length of time. How many slices can there be? As many as a government wishes to create by fiat, and technically possible by advancing construction technology. It is theoretically of infinite quantity. There is no natural scarcity, only man-made (and therefore man-reversible) ones. And yet, buyers bid higher and higher. Of course, the hope is that after they have purchased the flat, the market price will go yet higher and they will manage to cash out before the market comes to its senses and, recognising reality, c r a s h e s. What did I just describe? A bubble. And like all bubbles, it will b u r s t. * * * * * |
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pharoah88
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07-May-2011 15:10
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https://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/the-coming-s270-billion-bailout/ The coming S$270 billion bailoutPublished 6 April 2011 economy and finance , politics and government , urbanscape and environment There are very few cars in the second-hand market more than five years old. Given that cars have to be either scrapped or exported when they reach ten years of age, there are probably too few buyers for such cars, in the absence of which it is extremely difficult to discover a market price for them. The ten-year rule is related to the fact that Certificates of Entitlement (COE) have a life of ten years, though strictly speaking, the rule is separate from COEs. COEs, as most Singaporeans know (but foreign readers may not) are auctioned rights to own a vehicle. There’s a limited annual supply as determined by the government based on road and parking space capacity, adjusted by the number of decommissionings occurring simultaneously. In the second-hand car market, prices move inversely with the age of the car. The older the car, the lower the price. Another way of saying it is that the price moves more or less in tandem with the declining number of years left in the COE until somewhere around the halfway mark, when the price falls off the cliff. Old cars cost more to maintain in addition to having fewer years left. Most of us would say that such price trends reflect a perfectly rational way of assessing value. * * * * * |
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pharoah88
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07-May-2011 15:03
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Ministry Of National Development – News & Events – Speechesmnd.gov.sg3 Mar 2006 ... HDB stopped building 2-room flats for sale in the early 1980s, ... households at the 10th income percentile, which will qualify them for the additional ... It ranges from 15% for a 2-room flat and 20% for a 3-room flat, ...
www.mnd.gov.sg/newsroom/.../speeches_2006_m_03032006_01.htm - Cached- Block all mnd.gov.sg results |
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pharoah88
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07-May-2011 14:58
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http://singaporemind.blogspot.com/2010/03/housing-affordability-in-singapore-few.html Thursday, March 25, 2010The TRUTH about Housing affordability in Singapore.....Our public housing is the most expensive in the world and it causes Singaporean households to be deep in debt putting them at risk - 8% of HDB loans were in default in late 2008 even before the recession started[Link:HDB Mortgage Defaults Up 33,000 in October].
The need to service a debt over 3 decades make Singaporean households financially vulnerable - but there is something that make such loans even more dangerous......
How did people buy homes in the past anyway? My grandfather his home by leasing a piece of land from a landlord and he paid a house builder to build the attap house. I lived in it for 15 years - my grandpa was a baker, he had 6 children and never spent one day in debt. My father bought his HDB 4 room HDB flat in the early 80s. Those days HDB build 4 room flats the size of an $800K-$900K condo today. My dad paid of his housing debt in 7 years. His CPF was intact because they did not allow CPF to be used for housing in those days. Some time in the later half of the 1980s the CPF was liberalised for use in housing and this was what happened:  The surge in property prices was caused by the CPF liberalisation (according to this research paper[Link]. The housing loans to GNP ratio went up from 0.1 in 1980 to a whopping 0.49 in 1997 [Link]- a 500% jump! So CPF was emptied for purpose of buying homes and households became highly indebted - now housing becomes intertwined with retirement. ...Some of you may be asking what is wrong with debt anyway? You have a steady job, you make more than enough to cover your monthly instalments ...so what is the big deal about borrowing $300K to buy a flat or $500K to buy a condo if you're making $5-8K a month...30 yrs later you will be off the hook and along the way there is a good chance you can off-load to some other person for a profit of $100-200K if the timing is right. What is the problem...everyone else is doing it anyway....besides job loss, falling prices, illness, etc, there is something sinister I find most young people don't take into account when they take up, say, a $500K loan - its seems so routine these days given the high cost of housing....let me tell you a story... Late 1998 during the Asian crisis, prices for property fell and I was persuaded to buy one. After I selected my property and booked it, I went around to shop for a loan. I found a bank advertising an 'unbelievably low rate of interest'. The offer was so good, the bank kept its doors opened on Saturday to deal with surge in loan applications. I went to the bank very early but found a long queue of people ahead of me. I waited for 5 hours before my turn. When the officer saw me, she said, " Mister, this type of good deal for housing loan you will probably never see again in your lifetime" . So what was this good deal? The bank was offering an interest rate of 5.25% for housing loans - the lowest in recent years. Many people today taking up housing loans forget that the 3-4% housing loan interest we see now is artificially low and not the norm if you look at interest rates in the past 3 decades. During the Asian crisis, housing loan interest rates went up to 8% i.e. if you have a housing loan of $500K you will be paying $40K a year or $3.3K a month on interest along without reduction in principal. One of my friend paid close to $200K in total instalments to service a $700K housing loan in 1996-1998 only to see the principal fall by $50K as interest ranged from 5.5-8% during that period. Talking a 30 year loan is not a trivial thing - during the 30 years, many things can happen include the high likelihood of interest rates going up, job loss, illness, etc and Minister Mah is incorrect to say it is affordable and okay for people to take up these loans when we were already seeing a default rate of 8% in 2008 when the interest rate and job environment was relatively benign. Debt = risk and a public housing program that requires buyers to take up 30 yr mortgages to stretch their loan so they can afford the month instalments puts the ordinary people at risk while it maximises the govt revenue by putting heavy burdens on Singaporean households. |
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pharoah88
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07-May-2011 14:50
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http://findsingapore.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2& t=9699 Affordability key: HDB http://www.todayonline.com/articles/305914.asp It is not true that flatbuyers have been forced to buy bigger flats because HDB stopped building 2- and 3-room flats. On the contrary, HDB stopped building 2- and 3-room flats in the ’80s due to poor demand. In response to public demand, HDB has resumed the building of 2- and 3-room flats in recent years. . We thank the two writers for their comments. Letter from Ignatius Lourdesamy Deputy Director (Marketing & Projects), HDB |
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pharoah88
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07-May-2011 14:42
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Singapore's Growth and Prosperity reached its PEAK ? ? ? ? when HDB stOpped bUIldIng 3-rOOm HDB flats ? ? ? ? |
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pharoah88
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07-May-2011 14:39
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Debate over minimum wage policy Meanwhile, former civil service high-flier Tan Jee Say, 57, defended his suggestion of a minimum wage policy which was one of the issues discussed in his 46-page working paper that proposed new ideas for the economy. This comes after Labour chief Lim Swee Say reiterated his stand of not implementing a minimum wage. Speaking to media on Friday, Minister Lim said the minimum wage approach may be popular among Singaporeans, but could have serious implications on the country's economy. When asked if the policy is more of a theory than realistically applicable, Tan argued that it has been practiced in other countries. He cited Hong Kong as an example, where they are known to be economically competitive and have introduced a minimum wage system. " Nothing in my paper is only theory, it is a good theory but it's the basis of implementation and I don't think a minimum wage law is theoretical stuff. It has been in practiced in other countries.
Mr Tan Jee Say says that the objective of his working paper is to produce an alternative economic plan. (Yahoo! … The former principal private secretary to Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong also suggested that Singapore should move towards a service-based economy, instead of emphasising on its manufacturing sector. Both Minister Lim and Trade Minister Lim Hng Khiang have since criticised the paper. Tan had earlier said that the extensive focus on the manufacturing industry has resulted in over-dependence on foreign workers, which has in return created other problems such as depressed wages for local workers. In his argument, Minister Lim stressed on the need to maintain its manufacturing economy. He said, " Once you let go of the manufacturing sector for three to five years, there is zero chance that we can redevelop the industry again, because it is an industry that is globally highly-competitive." Trade Minister Lim Hng Khiang also slammed Tan's suggestion, calling it unrealistic as the services sector will not drive the same level of growth as the manufacturing industry. He also underscored the need to have a diversified economy and not be too overly reliant on a single sector. Responding to the criticisms, Tan said the objective of his working paper is to produce an alternative plan to propel the economy forward. " The whole objective of my paper is to produce a plan, an economic plan, an alternative plan which will produce, create fulfilling jobs, creative enterprises of the future, not of the past. " The ministers are harking back to the past. We are more interested in the future," he said. Addressing the ruling party's concerns of a freak election, Dr Wijeyasingha said that the PAP's understanding of a freak result is when the returning candidates will serve the people of Singapore, instead of serving the interests of the PAP. " When you have one particular group of people who are in power and they don't want the people to have their say in regular general elections, then a decision against the status quo is seen as a freak result," he added. Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. This article is published by Yahoo! Southeast Asia Pte. Ltd., 60 Anson Road #13-01 Mapletree Anson, Singapore, 079914. |
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pharoah88
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07-May-2011 14:32
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Dr Wijeyasingha, 40, who is the son of former Raffles Institution principal, Eugene, added that Dr Balakrishnan is " very, very rattled" by the challenge from his party. On Saturday, Dr Balakrishnan had described SDP's candidates as " a team of strange bedfellows" and that the party was trying furiously but unsuccessfully to change its public image. " If you look at the statements principally of Dr Vivian in the last few days, you would recognise that he is very, very rattled," said Dr Wijeysingha. " The fact that a highly trained opthalmologist hides behind the newspaper and issues these comments shows a man running scared," said the civil society activist, who joined the SDP last July. " Once our team was announced, he's gone into overdrive, but there's been nothing of a substantive policy nature about his criticisms," he added. Dr Wijeyasingha said, " It's one of these little things he's dropping in the arena. He hasn't said how we've changed, he hasn't said what he sees as a change." |
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pharoah88
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07-May-2011 14:30
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GROW AND SHARE [GAS] Dr Wijeysingha and his fellow SDP colleagues all pledged to donate half of their MP's allowance, if they're elected, to set up a fund for the needy. Based on the current monthly MP allowance of $13,000, that works out to about $6,500 per candidate. 
Dr Wijeysingha (left) and his fellow SDP candidate, Michelle Lee. (Yahoo! photo) |
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