Why homeownership in Singapore is available to all but not favourable to some still

Case Study: 1

It was the 1960s. Reeling from World War II, Singapore was saddled with a housing shortage due to low construction rate and population boom. Slums and squatter settlements mushroomed; sanitation left much to be desired; personal space became a pipe dream.

After the People’s Action Party won the election in 1959, the colonial-era Singapore Improvement Trust was replaced with the Housing and Development Board (HDB) to resettle residents into low-cost state-built housings—housing crisis averted.

All land is finite and to cope with an increasing population, flats are constructed—built upwards instead of spread out.

Today, Singaporeans or permanent residents (PR) married to Singaporeans are eligible to buy new public housing flats (related PRs are also eligible for purchase of HDB resale flats).

With HDB housing schemes, grants and financial aid as well as the use of Central
Provident Fund (CPF)—a compulsory savings and pension plan for Singaporeans and PRs primarily to fund their retirement, healthcare and housing needs—Singaporeans can purchase their own flats. To date, Singapore has one of the world’s highest homeownership rates at 91 percent with up to 80 percent of Singaporeans living in HDB flats.

One of the most popular acquisition avenues of new flats is the Build-To-Order (BTO) programme. It’s a flat allocation system whereby eligible buyers can apply for flats at specific sites launched. If there is at least 70 percent of interested applicants, the tender for construction will be called. Waiting period for the flats to be built is between three and four years. Each flat comes with a 99-year lease; this ensures that after 99 years, the flat returns to the state, whereby the land is redeveloped and new flats are planted over it for the future generation to buy their own BTO flats. The circle of public property in Singapore.

The BTO system favours families and couples. While property cost in Singapore is high, the cost is buffered by grants, subsidies and CPF. The popularity of BTO flats among young couples has led to this joke that the Singaporean marriage proposal isn’t “will you marry me?” but rather, “shall we apply for a BTO flat?”

There will be people who will not get the joke.

These are either people with a sense of humour or people like William Tan.

With one of the world’s highest life expectancies, Singapore also had the lowest fertility rate according to a 2017 survey. One of the ways to bolster population growth is enticing people to marry and have kids. For couples, there is the BTO priority allocation scheme and housing grants that offset property cost; for first-timer married couples expecting their first child, there is the Parenthood Priority Scheme.

But these advantages are only beneficial for heterosexual couples. Under Singapore law, marriage is valid when it is between two people of different sexes. This excludes William Tan, who is gay and in a long-term relationship.

Tan eventually bought his first HDB flat from the resale market at 35 (the age that single Singaporeans can purchase a flat from the HDB).

“I realised that there are things that I could have done better,” Tan says. Like many of his peers, he had no prior knowledge when it comes to property buying. “HDB has this minimum occupation period that you can’t sell your flat for the first five years of purchase. So, when I do sell my place and purchase a resale flat at 41, bank loans become tougher to secure. Housing loans become more limited.”

Years later, when Tan attained his realty licence, he wondered if there was a forum where the LGBTQ+ community could trade housing information and real estate advice. “I’d always felt that there were certain LGBTQ+ issues that aren’t normally addressed.” While local realtors are proficient in getting the property that you want, if they are not well versed in LGBTQ+ issues, the services they offer is often bespoke towards a straight person’s lifestyle.

“Because I’m gay, I’m able to meet an LGBTQ+ person’s needs: are you buying the property alone or with your partner? If you’re buying this alone, is there an intention for you and your partner to move in together in the future? These and other questions will further tailor something to your lifestyle.”

In his free time, Tan wrote a few blog posts and published them on his website and social media channels. He even formed a closed Facebook group for LGBTQ+ people who are interested in buying property. And when that swell of interest started to spill over, Tan felt that there needed to be a proper platform where his community can find information so he decided to form Prident.

The name is a portmanteau of ‘prudence”, being the careful planning of things and ‘pride’, which references LGBTQ+ culture. “It’s to outline the LGBTQ+ community to ‘think prudently, so [that] you can live proudly’,” Tan beams.

Before Prident, there were attempts to aid the LGBTQ+ community in matters of property purchase.

Last year, there was a co-hosted session between 99.co, a property search portal, and Prout, a LGBTQ+ meet-up and support platform, called Meet Your Next: Housemate. Aimed at educating the LGBTQ+ community on basic housing and rental processes, the event also provided a space for the community to network.

Around that same time, 99.co also replaced the ‘All races welcome’ tag with a ‘Diversity friendly’ tag. The expansion calls for owners and agents to welcome buyers and renters regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, age, gender identity, sexual orientation or physical ability.

While this addition as a search option is seen as a progressive first step, Tan is doubtful about the accuracy of the listings. “Diversity friendly is such a broad term that it’s not clear if the landlord is okay with all the categories of diversity or just some of it,” he says.

“There is no proper QC for the Diversity friendly listings. Sometimes the listings are uploaded by the agents who misuse the option to get more eyeballs and clicks.”

(A quick jaunt around 99.co’s webpage and the Diversity friendly option isn’t immediately available on the site’s landing page. You’ll have to click on ‘More filters’ that has a pull-down menu and select the Diversity friendly option.)

While other LGBTQ+ platforms are focused on mental and emotional wellbeing, Prident is a collective of professionals offering free advice on “wider financial matters such as financial planning, insurance, real estate and investments”. Along with articles posted on its site, there are workshops and future fundraising events that will benefit the LGBTQ+ community.

At this point of writing, Prident’s roster consists of Tan, who deals with realty; Corin Seah and Kelvyn Choo, both financial service advisers. There are plans to include other professionals to consult on issues such as life insurance, financial planning and medical. “Everything is connected,” Choo says. “We are hoping that the more experts that come in, the stronger the support system.

“Prident is inundated with calls from interested parties who wanted to be involved, but there is a fear that some of them just want to get leads.

“You get a sense from some of them that they are just after the pink dollar. We need people who want to give back to the community. We want to educate the market.”

The vetting process isn’t long or tedious. Those interested in partnering with Prident will fill out an online application form. Questions include whether they can write or they have conducted seminars before. They would need to divulge their social media handles. “We’ll dig into their history to see if they had done community work before,” Choo says. “You can’t fake this sort of thing.”

Case Study: 2

Leonard and Mike are a Singaporean gay couple. They got married in San Francisco and now live in a lovely Bedok flat that Leonard purchased under his name. One day, Leonard suffered a stroke and is now in a coma. If Mike was the opposite sex, the flat would have gone to him, but because their union isn’t recognised in Singapore, it goes to Leonard’s immediate family. What are Mike’s options?

The above scenario is based on a real-life account that Tan was mired in. Thankfully, Leonard has recovered. According to Tan, what they should have done is draw up a lasting power of attorney in the event of a calamity.

Had Leonard remained in a coma and there isn’t a will or lasting power of attorney to be found, the property will go to his parents. If they are not around, the flat will go to his siblings. If they too are not around, ownership goes to the nephews and nieces or uncles and aunts. This Interstate Succession Act will exhaust all branches of your family tree before it ultimately goes to the government.

There is nothing on the HDB website that caters to a gay couple with regards to buying a flat. So, barring one’s sexual orientation, an LGBTQ+ individual is classified as single. As a single, one could procure an HDB flat via three schemes: Public, Single Singapore Citizen Scheme or Joint Singles Scheme (JSS).

Quite simply, other than the HDB rules and stipulations, you’ll need to fulfil certain criteria to the main takeaways. If you want to buy a flat to live with your parents or siblings, Public Scheme is the one for you. For Single Singapore Citizen Scheme, you’ll need to be at least 35, unmarried or divorced. Lastly, JSS allows up to four single persons to buy a flexi-flat together; this is the most popular scheme that LGBTQ+ couples would opt for.

Assuming the LGBTQ+ couple purchased a flat through JSS, what happens when, a year in, one of them passed on? While that means the other party inherits the other portion of the flat, he or she also takes on the remaining debt. “That’s where financial planning enters,” Tan says. “It is this sort of situations that tell me that my community needs to know what they can qualify for.”

“A lot of people will talk about the party lifestyles of the LGBTQ+ community,” Choo says. “It is a big part of our culture, where they need to spend to maintain some sort of image in the scene.”

It could also be that if you’re gay and you’re told that same-sex marriage is not possible in Singapore, the future becomes limited. “When you’re boxed in by these hindrances and constraints, a gay person doesn’t really think about marriage. They would rather focus on the now.”

When they do plan, it would usually start two years into their first job. Choo’s advice is to focus on retirement and illness coverage. “If I’m single, I’ve only myself to look after,” he says.

(To be fair, straight people also do not think about the sensitivities of property buying either. A good majority of people—gay and straight—don’t consider saving for the future only until the inevitability looms over them.)

Choo has a simple desire for Prident. “We just want to make sure that the content is good and that when people approach us, they won’t have that fear that we’re trying to push a product.”

An institution is only as strong as the people behind it. Choo wants to connect with other communities to see how Prident can work with them. It’s a two-prong approach where Prident needs to establish an identity in the community, and yet put on a visible and positive image.

Prident will expand and flourish.

Maybe in the future, there will be no need for Prident.

By The Numbers

82 years ago… Section 377A, which descended from the Labouchere Amendment, was introduced into the Singapore Penal Code that criminalises sex between consenting male adults.

47 years ago… American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

11 years ago… Pink Dot Sg was formed in support of inclusiveness, diversity and the freedom to love.

5 years ago… Supreme Court of the United States first required all 50 states to recognise the marriages of same-sex couples on the same terms and conditions as the marriages of opposite-sex couples.

2 years ago… India’s Supreme Court decriminalised Section 377.

It was only the start of a 99-year lease of a property that you had to jump through hoops for. That period of ownership, a blink in an eternity—how long will it be before everybody gets a fair shake at the promise of a home?