SINGAPOREANS can expect the prices of HDB flats to keep on rising as long as the economy continues to grow, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said yesterday.
However, he assured young couples that the Government will help them to own their first flats.
The Housing Board will also keep building affordable homes ’so that each generation of Singaporeans will continue to have a stake in the nation’, he added.
Mr Lee gave the assurance when he visited the newly-completed crown jewel of Singapore’s public housing, which he said is symbolic of the spectacular transformation of the country.
The Pinnacle@Duxton, rising 50 storeys high, stands on a plot that was occupied by the first rental blocks in Tanjong Pagar constituency, of which Mr Lee has been the MP for 54 years.
Yesterday, he recalled how he used the two Duxton Plain blocks then under construction in his 1963 election campaign, when the leftists were determined to win his seat.
‘I said: ‘If you vote for me, these will be completed and will be yours’. If not, the Barisan Sosialis will win and you will have a bleak future.’
Such blocks were built in the 1960s as a quick fix for Singapore’s rapidly-growing population who were ‘living in overcrowded shophouses or squatter huts’.
‘People were poor and life was hard. No running water, no modern toilets, no expectation of a better future,’ said Mr Lee in a speech that traced the ‘breathtaking’ transformation of Singapore’s housing landscape since the 1960s.
Later, he told reporters that the direction of HDB home prices depends on the people.
If they have confidence in the country and support the Government, then prices ‘must go up’ as they have every year since 1965, he said, in response to reporters asking what he would say to young couples lamenting the sharp price increases in recent years.
The alternative, Mr Lee said, is grim.
‘They’ve got to decide if the country is going to go up or go down. If the country is going to go down, then the economy will go down, people’s incomes will be down, unemployment will be up and property values will go down.’
In the last 45 years, HDB home prices have soared. For instance, a three-room flat in Queenstown in 1964 cost $6,200, but would fetch at least $200,000 today.
However, much of the increase in prices has taken place in the past few years.
In his speech, Mr Lee also dwelt on the many benefits of a home-owning society, which had its roots in the policy introduced in 1964.
It gave a community of immigrants a sense of rootedness in Singapore, he said, adding: ‘It is the foundation upon which nationhood was forged.’
Owning their homes also gives people a pride that is critical in preventing housing estates ‘from turning into slums, which is often the fate of public housing estates in other countries’, he said.
But the key advantage is that the policy gives people ‘a tangible stake in worth’ and motivates them to work hard.
‘If Singapore prospers, their flat values will appreciate and they share in the growth,’ he said.
He added: ‘If all the 900,000 HDB flats built over the past 50 years were rental flats… We would not have the stability, progress and prosperity that a stake in home ownership of a growing asset has made possible.’
As assets, HDB homes have become more valuable partly because their prices have moved in tandem with the economy, thus allowing citizens to share in the fruits of growth, said Mr Lee.
This can be seen in the high demand for the flats at the Pinnacle@Duxton, he said.
It has 1,848 flats. At the first launch in 2004, its four-room flats cost an average $335,000 and the five-room flats, 395,000. This year, the HDB priced these same-sized flats at an average of $486,000 and $590,000 respectively.
Mr Lee described the building of the Pinnacle as ‘a strong testament to our tenacity and capabilities as a people’.
‘I see more and more of these old blocks being demolished, and new blocks like the Pinnacle being built,’ he added.
‘We could easily have sold (the Duxton plot) and then a condominium would have stood in its place.
‘But it would not have the same effect because here, we have kept the HDB residents in place, so we are sharing the growth of the city with the people who are of that class who built the city. We could have maximised the value by selling it off, and then a condo would have been built. We didn’t do that.’
MM Lee on the Pinnacle@Duxton’s special location in the city centre.
Source : Straits Times – 14 Dec 2009
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