Singapore one of the few major cities in Asia-Pacific region to offer attainable homes: Report
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The median price of an HDB flat in 2024 was US$439,348 (S$562,402), down from US$461,289 in 2023, the report said.
ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO
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SINGAPORE - Singapore is one of the few major cities in the Asia-Pacific region to offer attainable homes for purchase, a new report from the Urban Land Institute (ULI) has found.
The ULI, a global non-profit research and education organisation, considers home ownership attainable when the ratio of median home prices to median annual household income is below 5.
The price-to-income ratio of Housing Board flats in 2024 was 4.3, down from 4.7 in 2023. In 2022, the price-to-income ratio of HDB flats was 3.7.
Of the 51 market segments studied in the report on home attainability across the Asia-Pacific region, published on July 9, only three major cities had homes with a price-to-income ratio of 5 and below in 2024.
These comprised HDB flats in Singapore, and apartments in Melbourne in Australia and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
The median price of an HDB flat in Singapore was US$439,348 (S$561,900) in 2024, down from US$461,289 in 2023. The report did not specify if the price factored in HDB grants.
Across the cities tracked by the ULI, median annual household income was highest in Singapore at US$101,666.
Despite this, Singapore is not the most affordable location for home buying, as apartments in Perth in Australia have a price-to-income ratio of 4.1, the ULI said.
But it noted that nearly 80 per cent of the Singapore population live in HDB flats, and only 7.6 per cent of homes in Perth are apartments.
No city scored a price-to-income ratio of below 4 in 2024.
The ULI said that while the number of HDB flats built has passed 1.2 million units, the pace of development has been “relatively slow” in recent years, and it remained static during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“This may explain rising prices and falling attainability,” the ULI said.
The disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic slowed the construction of Build-To-Order (BTO) flats and crimped the supply of public housing here, causing prices to rise.
HDB resale prices have been rising
Efforts have been made by the authorities to ramp up housing supply
As for HDB flat rentals, the ULI said the average rent was at an attainable level of 29 per cent of the median monthly household income.
The report considers rent to be attainable when it is below 30 per cent of median monthly income.
The ULI said that HDB rentals were relatively expensive compared with other Asia-Pacific cities, but they were still considerably cheaper than private homes in Singapore, whose median monthly rents were 43 per cent of median monthly income.
Private residential homes in Singapore continued to be the most expensive in the Asia-Pacific for the third year in a row, with an average price of US$1.7 million. The price-to-income ratio for these homes was 16.9.
In terms of price per square metre, however, Hong Kong was the most costly private housing market in the region, with an average price of US$16,915 per sq m.
Apartments in Hong Kong are smaller on average, at 45 sq m, compared with 109 sq m in Singapore, the report noted.
The ULI said that both rents and prices of private homes in Singapore have risen sharply in recent years, but prices have outpaced rents, more than doubling since 2009.
Rent for private apartments in Singapore was the most expensive across the cities studied by the ULI, with a median monthly rent of US$3,676.
This overtook Hong Kong (US$2,766), as well as other high-cost-of-living cities such as Sydney (US$1,997) and Seoul (US$769).
