Finally! After delays of at least a year, Stage 2 of the Thomson-East Coast MRT Line will open on 28 August.
The stations:
TE4 🚇 Springleaf
TE5 🚇 Lentor
TE6 🚇 Mayflower
TE7 🚇 Bright Hill
TE8 🚇 Upper Thomson
TE9-CC17 🚇 Caldecott Interchange
I can’t wait!
An oddity in Singapore’s public housing landscape.
Two-storey terraced houses with spacious living areas and mini front porches complete with gates - these sound like private landed properties, but the Housing Board block sign gives them away.
HDB terraced houses - a rarity in Singapore’s public housing - have come under the spotlight after a record sale of a 210 sq m unit in Whampoa for $1.268 million this month, the most expensive HDB resale property to change hands so far.
There are only 285 HDB terraced units, and they are located in Jalan Ma’mor, Jalan Bahagia and Jalan Tenteram in Whampoa and Stirling Road in Queenstown - both sought-after mature estates.
Like all HDB properties, these terraced units have 99-year leases. Those in Whampoa have 50 years left, while those in Queenstown have 46 years left.
However, compared with HDB flats, the lease depreciation effect on HDB terraced units may be cushioned by the limited supply in the market, said Dr Sing Tien Foo, director of the Institute of Real Estate and Urban Studies at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
“Compared with private landed housing, an HDB terraced house at $1.268 million is still an attractive deal for some buyers who can enjoy the exclusiveness of landed housing for the next 50 years, although the upside may be limited as time passes,” he said.
The median price for a private leasehold terraced house in the Whampoa area is about $2.1 million, while a freehold property is about $3 million, based on caveats lodged in the past 18 months.
One difference, though, is that HDB terrace owners do not own the land the house sits on.
Associate Professor Yu Shi Ming at NUS’ department of real estate said that in theory, “if the house collapses, the HDB lessee will have nothing left while the private 99-year lessee will still have the land for the remaining lease period”.
Nine HDB terraced units - seven in Whampoa and two in Queenstown - have changed hands this year, compared with 15 such transactions in the whole of last year...
However, not all HDB terraced houses are built equal.
The smallest units are 78 sq m, slightly bigger than a three-room Build-To-Order (BTO) flat. The largest is a 307 sq m three-room unit, close to three times the size of a five-room BTO flat.
HDB terraced houses were built in the 1950s by the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), the predecessor of the HDB. Owners were issued a fresh 99-year lease when the HDB took over from SIT in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The dwindling leases on these terraced units have inevitably sparked talk about the possibility of them being picked for the Selective En Bloc Redevelopment Scheme (Sers), in which the HDB buys back old units and owners are offered a replacement unit in the vicinity.
Most of the analysts interviewed said the chances of that are not high at the moment, although some do not rule out a small possibility of it in the future...
ERA Realty head of research and consultancy Nicholas Mak said: “While the future of these HDB terraced units is uncertain, one thing is for sure: The current Government will definitely not extend the lease.”
He cited the example of the HDB terraced houses in Lorong 3 Geylang that were returned to the state last December when their 60-year leases expired.
He said: “HDB may treat these two terraced clusters as land banks for now. If they need the land, they may take it back through Sers but for now, there is enough land for new housing in Tengah and Woodlands.”
***
Whampoa’s HDB terraced houses.
At first glance, these terraced houses look like any other, but then one realises each unit has no private driveway for cars - all must park outside, just like in other HDB estates!
Along Jalan Ma’mor, there is a small cluster of parking lots in the middle, under some trees, in the midst of terraced houses - a cross between private and public neighbourhoods.
Queenstown’s HDB terraced houses.
Likewise, public parking lots amidst terraced houses.
One challenge I faced when I was working on my book Jalan Singapura was covering Singapore’s recent transport history - the period from 2011 to the time of writing, which was 2019 (final edits to the manuscript were made in April). The local transport scene was evolving at lightning speed. Facts and statistics had to be updated every few weeks.
Good examples were electric scooters (e-scooters) and electric bicycles (e-bikes). As I was finalising my manuscript, the former had taken over the island’s pavements and walkways. Its low prices, ease of riding, and lack of regulatory framework to oversee its use, saw population numbers surging to at least 40,000. I made sure to draw parallels between its careless introduction and that of other modes of transport throughout Singapore’s modern history.
Within a few months after publication, the e-scooter population had further grown to 100,000. Then, on 5 November that year, after a spate of accidents, mostly between e-scooters and pedestrians, the Transport Ministry abruptly banned e-scooters and other personal mobility devices (PMDs) from footpaths.
In a flash, the Era of E-scooters had ended as soon as it had begun.
Fast forward 19 months, and the Republic’s registered e-scooter population had plunged to just 6,671 as of end-May 2021 - a precipitous decline of 93 per cent.
PMDs are still allowed on cycling paths and park connector networks, but the infrastructure is still too inadequate to encourage widespread use.
Instead, many have switched to bicycles - or e-bikes. Boosting their numbers is increased demand from food delivery riders, as food delivery services have grown in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
E-bikes had to be registered from 2018. At the time, there were around 13,000 of them; last May, there were 15,800; this had doubled to 31,660 by the end of this May.
Just as growth in the e-scooter fleet in previous years had led to a rise in e-scooter accidents, the same is happening to the e-bike fleet.
In 2019, there were 24 accidents and no fatalities involving the two-wheelers; the following year, there were 75 accidents and three deaths. Still nothing compared to motor vehicular casualties, but worth keeping an eye on.
From 30 June, it became mandatory for e-scooter and e-bike riders to pass an online theory test on rules and safe riding practices.
This requirement is too lax though. At least a practical test is needed. Even then, just as many motorists throw out what they’ve learned in driving school the moment they get their licence, the same will happen to e-scooter and e-bike riders too.
Ultimately, like motorists, e-scooters and e-bikes need more infrastructure in the form of Channels of Movement - preferably dedicated paths - coupled with a stricter regulatory framework with strong enforcement to ensure law-breakers suffer deterrent punishments. This was an argument I had put forth in Jalan Singapura, and two years on, it hasn’t changed.
When a new mode of transport is introduced, the infrastructure to give it the space it needs, and the regulatory framework to keep its users on the straight and narrow, must be in place first. Otherwise - to use a transport analogy - it’s putting the cart before the horse.
In the transport scene, fortunes can rise and fall in a flash, but some principles are timeless.