You will be able to explain the main conditions HDB uses to decide who can buy which flat.
Over dinner at her aunt's place, Farah's cousin said he and his girlfriend would apply for a BTO flat together soon, to save time, and get engaged later. Her aunt was sure that wasn't allowed, while her uncle thought it was fine as long as they were engaged first. Then another cousin, single and 33, wanted to know if she could buy a flat on her own yet, and nobody at the table could answer any of it with confidence.
HDB eligibility is a set of rules about who you are buying with, who you are, and what you earn. They are published, and once you know the questions HDB asks, you can answer most of them for yourself in a few minutes.
The first is citizenship. Most HDB schemes need at least one buyer to be a Singapore citizen, and the rest of the household's citizenship decides which flats are open and on what terms. A citizen married to a permanent resident has options a couple of two permanent residents does not, and buying a new flat from HDB is generally more restricted than buying resale.
The second is your family nucleus: the group of people HDB treats as your household for the purchase. A married couple is a family nucleus. So is a parent with children, or an engaged couple who apply under the fiance and fiancee route and then marry within the time HDB sets. Your cousin's plan to apply as a couple works only if it fits one of those routes.
The third is age. Some schemes have a minimum age, the routes for singles in particular. Age comes back later too, when the bank works out your loan and when CPF checks whether the lease will outlast you.
The fourth is household income. Income ceilings apply to new BTO flats, to executive condos, to HDB loans and to many grants. They are reviewed from time to time, so check the current ceilings on the HDB website. Buying a resale flat on its own has no income ceiling, but if you want an HDB loan or a grant for it, the ceilings for those still apply.
HDB groups these rules into schemes, each written for a type of household. There are schemes for families, for engaged couples, for singles buying alone or together, for people buying with their parents, for orphaned siblings, and one for citizens whose spouse is a foreigner.
Each scheme sets out which flat types you can buy, new or resale, and in which locations, along with the grants it opens. Singles, for example, have had fewer flat types to choose from, and the rules for them have been changed more than once in recent years. If you are single, read the current page for your scheme rather than relying on what a friend was told three years ago.
Farah and Hakim fit the plainest case. They are married, both citizens, buying together, with no children yet. That puts them under the scheme for families, where both new and resale flats are open to them.
HDB also asks about property you hold now and property you sold recently. If you own private property, in Singapore or overseas, you generally cannot buy a subsidised flat, and you may have to sell it first. Selling it is not always enough on its own. For some flats, people who sold private property have to wait a set period after the sale before they can buy.
The same applies to a past HDB flat. You can often buy a second subsidised flat after selling your first. Expect a resale levy and fewer grants when you do. Lesson 2.3, Rules that follow you after you buy, covers that levy.
Hakim once co-owned a small overseas apartment with his brother, which they sold years ago. He hadn't thought of it as property at all. HDB does, so it went on their list of things to check against the current rules and declare in the application.
Most eligibility mistakes come from mixing up the schemes. People hear a rule that applies to one household type and assume it applies to theirs. A couple where one partner is a permanent resident might think they can buy any BTO flat, or a single buyer might assume they can buy a new flat of any size. Both are worth checking before you plan a single number.
The other common mistake is the income figure. HDB averages the gross monthly income of everyone in the application over a recent period, and that average can include bonuses, commissions and allowances. Hakim's commissions swing from month to month, so their average could sit under a ceiling one quarter and over it the next.
You will confirm all of this with HDB's own process in lesson 2.4, Get your HDB Flat Eligibility letter and read it. Before that, it helps to have your own answers written down, because the application asks the same questions and you'll want your documents ready.
Farah and Hakim kept theirs to four lines. Married couple, both Singapore citizens. About S$11,500 a month gross for the household over the past year, an example figure with Hakim's commission in it. One overseas flat, sold years ago. Scheme: families.
Your note needs the same four parts. In the activity below, write your family nucleus, the citizenship of everyone in it, your household income, and the scheme you would apply under.
Write down your family nucleus, citizenship mix and household income, and the HDB scheme you would apply under.
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