Advisory Center for Affordable Settlements & Housing

Document Download Download
Document Type Select
Publish Date
Author
Published By
Edited By Saba Bilquis
Uncategorized

Singapore- Measuring Housing Affordability

This report is on nationwide debate on housing price and Singaporean Housing Minister’s statement on the issue. The main result of our study is that rising loans and withdrawals from the CPF to finance house and car purchases have played a crucial role in the evolution of Singapore’s APC. It is observable that a fall in house prices is accompanied by a rise in APC with a lag of 4–5 years. This leads us to another important policy implication: to prevent further declines in the APC, the government should ensure that residential property and other household assets remain affordable to Singaporeans. At the least, it should do its best to prevent a recurrence of the bubble-like increases in residential property prices experienced in the early 1980s and 1990s. As our analysis demonstrates, these were the periods during which the APC lost much ground. More specifically, we recommend that any increase in property prices that exceeds the trend growth rate of disposable income should be mitigated by policy interventions.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *