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To help ease the anxiety among Housing and Development Board (HDB) flat applicants, Minister for National Development Desmond Lee revealed on Nov. 20 that more flats with relatively shorter waiting times will be launched soon at Tengah among other measures to help improve accessibility to flats.

In his opening remarks at a Forward Singapore engagement session with young Singaporean adults, Lee said he was aware of the anxiety among young couples about the availability of affordable public housing, amid strong competition and high application rates.

Besides young couples, Lee also acknowledged other groups who are aspiring to get a comfortable home of their own.

They include couples with children who wish to move into bigger flats to accommodate their families' needs, older couples who are looking for a smaller home, seniors who want to live near their children, and singles who wish to have their own space.

Lee then outlined measures that HDB has implemented to alleviate the situation and provided an update on their progress.

Flats with shorter waiting time among measures to ease anxiety among applicants

The Minister for National Development cited the declining number of delayed Built-To-Order (BTO) projects — from 80 per cent of all projects in 2021, to less than 50 per cent currently — as evidence of the hard work that HDB was putting in to manage the backlog of construction.

Lee added that the agency had increased the supply of BTO flats with 23,000 flats launched this year. They also plan to launch 23,000 flats next year.

He assured that the government was prepared to launch up to 100,000 flats from 2021 to 2025, if the demand for flats continued to be high.

Lee also highlighted a "bumper crop" of almost 10,000 HDB flats in 10 different projects launching at the end of this month.

The flats to be launched are catered to different housing needs and budgets.

Lastly, Lee mentioned that November BTO sales will include more than 2,000 flats at Garden Waterfront I & II at Tengah, with waiting times of about three years and four months.

More details of the launch will be shared soon.

Garden Waterfront I & II

Earlier in October 2022, HDB announced that the latest advanced construction technologies will be used to design and build the upcoming Garden Waterfront I & II at Tengah.

The adoption of new construction technologies and innovation would enable HDB to construct quality homes with less manpower, faster and safer.

For example, flats in Tengah will have a consistently higher headroom, using a beamless flat plate system, as compared to typical BTO projects which have beams. This provides greater flexibility for homeowners to configure the layout of their flats to meet their needs.

Besides the Garden Waterfront I & II projects at Tengah, interested applicants can look forward to housing projects at Queenstown, Kallang, Dover, Bukit Batok, and Yishun.

Find out more here.

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Top image via HDB