estimates
Minister for National Development Desmond Lee has announced that the Housing and Development Board (HDB) will be launching more than 25,000 new flats in 2025. The news was revealed in a joint press release by HDB and the Ministry of National Development (MND) on January 16. It was announced that this would include about 19,600 Build-To-Order (BTO) flats across three sales exercises, as well as more than 5,500 Sale of Balance Flats (SBF) in one SBF sale exercise. The units will be a mix of Standard, Plus, and Prime BTO flats under the new classification framework.
The launch in February will offer approximately 5,000 flats in Kallang/Whampoa, Queenstown, Woodlands, and Yishun. Additionally, next month, HDB will also be conducting its largest-ever Sale of Balance Flats exercise, with over 5,500 flats across various estates being offered. Of these, about 40% will be completed units, while the rest are at different stages of construction and are expected to be completed between 2025 and 2028. Overall, more than 10,000 new flats will be available under the February BTO and SBF exercises.
Over the last four years, from 2021 to 2024, HDB has launched about 82,700 BTO flats. With a planned pipeline of 19,600 BTO flats 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 increase in BTO supply has resulted in a drop in application rates. In 2024, the average application rate for first-time homebuyers for BTO across all flat types was 2.1, compared to the pre-pandemic rate of 3.7 in 2019. The average first-timer application rate last year for three-room and larger flats was also lower at 2.2, down from 4.0 in 2019.
Minister Lee stated 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 about 130,000 flats from 2021 to 2027. About 3,800 of the 19,600 new flats, or about one-fifth of the BTO flats slated for launch in 2025, will be Shorter Waiting Time (SWT) flats of less than three years. This is a boost from the 2,876 SWT flats offered in 2024 and more than the committed annual supply of 2,000 to 3,000 SWT flats. According to senior director of data analytics at Huttons Asia, Lee Sze Teck, the availability of SWT flats will provide buyers with more options and may also help to draw some demand away from the resale market.
In 2025, it is estimated that about 7,000 HDB flats will reach their five-year minimum occupation period (MOP), making it the lowest supply of such resale flats since 2015. Lee Sze Teck notes that with HDB assuring buyers that they will be pushing out more BTO and SBF flats to meet demand, there will be more choices for buyers and this will help to stabilise the resale market. Furthermore, the larger flat supply and SWT flats will address the shortfall in MOP flats.
According to Huttons’ Lee, HDB resale flat transactions in 2025 are expected to range between 26,000 and 28,000, which is lower than the 28,876 units recorded in the previous year. Resale flat prices are also projected to grow at a slower pace of 5% to 8% this year, compared to the 9.6% increase shown in HDB’s flash estimate for 2024.