How Singapore doubled its housing stock and tripled its level of home ownership in just 20 years

The housing policy of Singapore is just astonishing in what it has achieved.



Between 1970 and 1990 home ownership increased from 29% to 87%.

At the moment, in Ireland, home ownership on retirement is 90%. But the ESRI expects that only 50% of people who are currently aged between 25 and 34, will own their own home on retirement.

I attach a good summary of the Singapore system and a full paper on it as well.

Brendan

Point that stands out is the different level of subsidy depending on number of bedrooms.

A 2 bed can be subsidised by 50%, a 4 bed by 20% ands a luxury condo just 10% and high earners don't get any subsidy. So as well as giving assistance, it penalises people who have large families without being too blatant about it.

The other standout point is the mix of backgrounds / race with limits depending on the general mix in a neighbourhood and that stops one group become overly dominant in a development.

By have a huge number of people entitled to and taking up these units they are not seen a "social housing" developments.


But would there be a politician and the people in the civil service that could come up with such a scheme here that could be implemented in a reasonable timeframe - sadly, I don't think so.

@Brendan Burgess it doesn't solve the supply side problem and it's unlikely that we would be able to contain the price increases caused by that increase in available funding.

I do like the idea of allowing first time buyers to use their pension fund to part purchase a house. The added bonus is that it makes starting a pension early more attractive to younger people.

Purple said:

it doesn't solve the supply side problem and it's unlikely that we would be able to contain the price increases caused by that increase in available funding.

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Hi Purple

This is what I said in my pre-Budget submission

Boosting home ownership requires a multi-strand approach:

• increasing the supply of housing
• reducing the price of housing
• helping First-Time Buyers access the finance for the deposit

This submission focuses on helping first-time buyers access the finance for the deposit.

This is not proposed as a quick fix to the current problems. It’s proposed to be a part of the long-term architecture of pensions and home ownership.

This is what the Actuaries Association said on this issue: Interaction Between Pension and Housing.

8. It is sometimes argued that allowing members to use pension balances for housing will not
benefit members; rather, it will increase house prices and hence benefit existing home owners and developers.
Counter-arguments include:

(1) this is a relatively minor impact, as
there have been many housing booms and busts that have occurred independently of any
housing grant schemes;
(2) the class that the proposal will apply to – first-time
owners/occupiers – is less likely to precipitate a material increase in housing prices
compared to other groups such as investors and owners upsizing and downsizing;
(3) in the view of the Productivity Commission (2004) there are not only benefits to members in the
short term, but also in the longer term – the price impact will be reduced as higher demand
will lead to more production that will lead to a stabilization of prices; and
(4) housing will be needed, whether for rent or for purchase.

Given the current housing shortage, I would announce this measure to take effect in three years and the deposit from the pension fund would have to be 20%.

Or say that the pension fund must be in existence for at least 5 years.

Brendan

I had a quick glance at the two documents, and it seems that the State became massively involved in the land market.

It ended up owning much of the land.

We have the LDA, but that is only focussed on sites already in public sector ownership.

I suppose it makes sense for local councils to do more masterplans? To lay out where the new housing will be? But surely this already happens in County Dev Plans?

Do people not get, that anything the government does to help people to buy houses, can only ever make the price of housing increase.

Maybe it is because people only think in terms of themselves and fail to see the wider impact when the proposal is applied to everyone
Take Brendan's proposal to allow FTB's to borrow from their pension. If I just think about myself, I think great, I'll have more money to buy a house.
The problem is that everybody else will be thinking exactly the same thing. If on average everyone ends up with 5K extra, the impact is that the price of houses goes up by 5K. You end up living in exactly the same house, but now you paid 5K more for it and you owe 5K more to your pension fund. Which will likely be the last money you ever pay back. Resulting in a reduction in living standards that you suffer in retirement.

There is only 1 answer to the housing crisis. Build more houses!

Hi AJAM

The key point I am stressing is that this is the right way to fund FTB houses - as part of the long-term architecture of the pensions and housing market.

We are in a situation of too much money chasing too few houses at the moment, but we will have the opposite at some time in the future and this would be a huge boost then.

But I full agree and have stated it often that it is one of three prongs - reduce house prices and increase the supply as well.

Brendan

I think an alternative approach might be to have a legal requirement to sell a certain % of new builds to FTB's.
This reduces competition and in theory should reduce the price.