HIP voting process to be studied, but flat owners' say must be respected: Chee Hong Tat

The Ministry of National Development (MND) and HDB will be studying the voting process for the Home Improvement Programme (HIP), said Minister for National Development Chee Hong Tat.

Speaking to the media on Thursday (Jan 8) after a visit to ParkEdge @ Bidadari, Chee said that the voting threshold for HIP is an issue that the ministry is "studying heavily", after recent voting exercises for upgrading estates failed to proceed when they did not meet the threshold. 

"We want to help the estates that are older to go through HIP," the minister said, emphasising that the ministry has observed that reaching the threshold may be significantly more challenging for blocks with fewer units. 

Launched in 2007, HIP helps upgrade older HDB flats and address common maintenance issues. For HIP to proceed, at least 75 per cent of a block's eligible Singaporean households will have to vote for it. 

In November last year, two blocks of post-war flats in Tiong Bahru failed to qualify for HIP after failing to garner sufficient votes.

Each block in the estate had between 15 and 24 units, resulting in each unit holding a "very high weightage" of the vote, said MP Foo Cexiang at the time.

In reviewing the HIP threshold, Chee said that the ministry will be consulting stakeholders to gather feedback on how the process can be better managed.

"But we also need to respect the decisions of the flat owners who are living there, and I think we need to strike the balance," he said.

At the same time, Chee said that details for the next tranche of HIP for "older flats", tentatively those that are at least 60 years old and above, will be shared in the future. 

19,600 BTO flats to be launched in 2026

About 19,600 Build-To-Order (BTO) flats will be launched this year across three sales exercises, with around one-fifth of them to be Shorter Waiting Time (SWT) flats with waiting times of less than three years. 

The three sales exercises will be in February, June and October, and will feature a mix of Standard, Plus and Prime BTO flats in various locations such as Ang Mo Kio, Bukit Merah, Sembawang, Toa Payoh, Tampines, Woodlands and Yishun. 

With the upcoming launches and the 19,600 BTO units completed last year, HDB remains on track to meet its target of offering about 55,000 flats from 2025 to 2027 to meet sustained demand, Chee said.

"If the demand for new flats remains strong, I've asked HDB to go beyond 55,000 so that we are able to meet the strong demand with a robust supply," he added, emphasising that providing accessible and affordable public housing remains a key priority for the Government.

He also said that the demand for BTO flats has declined since the pandemic in 2020, when the application rate for three-room and larger flats then stood at seven — or seven applicants for each flat. 

Last year, the rate had come down to 1.1 or 1.9.

BTO flats remain affordable, with HDB "making sure that the housing price to income ratio and the mortgage servicing ratio can remain affordable for flat buyers", he said.

The greater supply of BTO flats will help moderate prices of resale flats, which have shown a positive downward trend over the last year.

"So with these developments, we hope to make further inroads into improving accessibility and also affordability of BTO flats and resale flats," Chee said. 

There are currently 127 HDB projects under construction, up from 110 last year.

Looking ahead, Chee said that the ministry will "press on with what we have started, which is to build more and build faster", adding that doing so will help make way for changes to current policy such as the eligibility age for singles and the income ceiling for couples.

Final HDB projects at Bidadari completed

The last four public housing projects in Bidadari were completed in 2025, a decade since the first BTO projects in the area were launched.

The projects include ParkEdge @ Bidadari, ParkView @ Bidadari, Bartley Beacon and Bartley GreenRise.

In total, 8,872 flats were constructed across the 93ha estate, with 98 per cent of flat buyers having moved in or collected the keys to their new homes.

Editor's note: The headline for this story has been edited for clarity.

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dana.leong@asiaone.com