Couples seeking homes near parents prefer higher grants to getting priority

SINGAPORE — Giving priority to all young couples wanting to buy a home near their parents would be unfair. Instead, a higher housing grant for such couples would be enough.

This was the general view of 20 unmarried couples at a discussion held by the Ministry of National Development (MND) last Saturday on policy changes that could be taken to help more young families live close to their parents.

Official survey statistics showed that, last year, 50 per cent of couples wanted to live near their parents, but only 37 per cent managed to do so, prompting National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan to throw up possible changes to bridge the gap in a recent blog post.

Couples at the discussion — the first in a three-part series dubbed Housing Conversations — felt it would be unfair, unsustainable and impractical to grant absolute priority, or priority to all couples applying for a home near their parents, especially in non-mature estates, as it ignores the needs of other families.

Civil servant Ng Cheen Kian, 26, said: “People can be given priority, but not absolute priority, because living together with (or close to) your family is something we’re encouraging at a state level — and I can see good reasons for it — but everybody has competing priorities, so everything should be seen in that light.”

Couples whose parents live in mature estates will also have an unfair financial advantage as resale values there are substantially higher than those in non-mature estates, added training executive Geraldine Wong, 25.

Ms Tai Jing Yi, a writer who recently purchased a flat in Telok Blangah with her boyfriend, said moving into her parents’ Buona Vista estate is “nice but not a must-have”, since Singapore is a small country.

Others also cautioned about creating an “alumni effect” — clans of families developing in estates.

Senior Minister of State (National Development) Lee Yi Shyan, who attended the session, acknowledged that fairness was a complex issue. “The sense of fairness runs somewhat in an opposite direction from how much a resource-allocation process should have a social purpose in it. There’s always a tension between pure economic efficiency and social objectives.”

Apart from debating on giving first dibs to all couples who want to buy homes near their parents’, the discussion last Saturday also touched on providing even higher grants to such couples — currently S$40,000, S$10,000 more than other first-time home buyers — as well as building more three-generation (3Gen) flats.

The majority of participants agreed that higher grants would represent substantial aid, but felt they would not sway those who did not intend to live close to their parents.

Factors such as parents’ ailing health in old age and help in caring for their children were bigger motivators for couples to move closer to their parents.

3Gen flats also did not appear to be a popular option. Rather, dual-key flats were a bigger draw, participants said, because they allow each family to retain privacy while staying close together.

At the end of the discussion, Mr Leesaid it would take some time before any changes could be incorporated into Build-to-Order projects.

He added: “We need to bear in mind the different groups that are represented here. We will continue to calibrate this to the extent that it will strike a very good balance between the needs of different groups.”