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HDB to Offer Over 25,000 New Flats in 2025
The Housing and Development Board (HDB) is set to launch more than 25,000 new flats in 2025, according to a joint press release by HDB and the Ministry of National Development (MND) on January 16. Minister for National Development Desmond Lee made the announcement, revealing that the new flats will be available through various sales exercises, including Build-to-Order (BTO) and Sale of Balance Flats (SBF).
Around 19,600 BTO flats will be offered across three sales exercises, while more than 5,500 SBF units will be available in one SBF sale exercise. The new units will be classified under the Standard, Plus, and Prime categories of the new flats classification framework.
The February BTO launch will offer approximately 5,000 flats in four different locations – Kallang/Whampoa, Queenstown, Woodlands, and Yishun.
HDB’s largest-ever SBF exercise will also be conducted next month, with over 5,500 flats available in various estates. Approximately 40% of the units are completed, while the rest are at different stages of construction and are expected to be completed between 2025 and 2028.
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Overall, more than 10,000 new flats will be offered in the February BTO and SBF exercises.
In the last four years from 2021 to 2024, HDB has launched around 82,700 BTO flats. With an estimated 19,600 BTO flats to be launched in 2025, HDB is on track to exceed its commitment of 100,000 units over five years by launching around 102,300 BTO flats.
The ramp-up in BTO supply has resulted in a decrease in application rates, with the average first-timer application rate for BTO across all flat types dropping to 2.1 in 2024 from the pre-pandemic rate of 3.7 in 2019. Similarly, the average first-timer application rate for three-room and larger flats decreased to 2.2 in 2024, down from 4.0 in 2019.
Minister Lee assured that HDB will continue to release a steady pipeline of flats to meet housing demand in the next few years. Over 50,000 flats will be launched between 2025 and 2027, bringing the total to around 130,000 flats from 2021 to 2027.
Around 3,800 of the 19,600 new flats, or approximately one-fifth of the BTO flats slated for launch in 2025, will be Shorter Waiting Time (SWT) flats with a residency period of less than three years. This is an increase from the 2,876 SWT flats offered in 2024 and exceeds the committed annual supply of 2,000 to 3,000 SWT flats.
According to Lee Sze Teck, senior director of data analytics at Huttons Asia, the SWT flats will provide buyers with more options and may even draw some demand away from the resale market. He also added that the larger flat supply and SWT flats will address the shortfall of Minimum Occupation Period (MOP) flats.
Minister Lee estimated that around 7,000 HDB flats will reach their five-year MOP in 2025, making it the lowest supply of such resale flats since 2015. He believes that with HDB assuring buyers of more BTO and SBF flats to meet demand, this will offer more choices for buyers and stabilize the resale market.
Lee from Huttons estimates that the number of resale flat transactions in 2025 will range between 26,000 and 28,000, lower than the 28,876 units recorded last year. He also predicts that resale flat prices will grow at a slower pace this year, with a projected increase of 5% to 8% compared to the 9.6% annual increase in HDB’s flash estimate for 2024.