from sellers facing genuine difficulties caused by the Ethnic Integration Policy is one that may come with some downstream implications, property analysts said.
Lauding the move, Ms Christine Sun, senior vice-president of research and analytics at real estate agency OrangeTee & Tie, said that some flat owners may have trouble finding suitable buyers given the prevailing ethnic proportions in the public housing block or neighbourhood. Agreeing, Mr Ismail Gafoor, chief executive officer of real estate agency PropNex Realty, said:"The HDB buyback policy will give EIP-affected sellers more confidence and certainty in planning the next steps of their real-estate matters."However, the property analysts said that there may be downstream effects of having such a buyback option.
Therefore, HDB may end up buying back flats that could potentially have been sold on the free market.More flat owners may apply for flats in the mature estates and those under the Prime Location Public Housing scheme since the Government will be giving more support to flat owners constrained by EIP.Mr Nicholas Mak, head of research and consultancy at real estate firm ERA Singapore, said:"Only time will tell if some flat owners will try to game the system.
These would include these who have been trying to sell their flats without success for the past year.Ms Sun from Orange Tee & Tie said that with the latest changes, there may also be more EIP-constrained homeowners buying HDB flats in mature estates. "In theory, the greater the number of HDB flat owners affected by the EIP who sell their flats to HDB, the greater the impact on the HDB resale market," he said.If worse comes to worst, there has also been a suggestion that can be turned into rental flats if HDB can’t sell them.The analysts also said that the problem of a lack of minority buyers may still remain, but HDB would be in a better position to absorb the policy constraints than the sellers themselves.