Speech by Minister Desmond Lee at the OrangeTee Annual Convention
Apr 12, 2024
Mr Justin Quek, Chief Executive Officer, OrangeTee & Tie
Ladies and Gentlemen
Introduction
Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to your annual convention. It is an opportunity for my colleagues and I to get a feel of the pulse of the sector, not just of the real estate sector but of the property market as a whole; an opportunity for us to interact with you and your leadership to get valuable feedback about how we can do better; but also an opportunity for us to share with you a little bit about what we are thinking about in Government as a sector, and certainly as the Ministry of National Development.
First and foremost let me congratulate all award winners today, as we celebrate your achievements. Well done! I would also like to wish our Muslim friends Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri.
The theme for this year’s convention is “Elevate” – encouraging us to do better, and to reach the next level in whatever we do. We can apply this not just on a personal and professional level, but certainly as an organisation and as a nation.
I was just thinking a couple of days ago about what I wanted to speak about today. Your CEO, Justin Quek, spoke not just about the role of real estate agencies or the industry, but about all the important things that need to be done in order for our sector to upskill, upgrade, value-add, and reach the next level, even as competitive forces in the form of Generative AI come to bear, not just in our sector but all sectors.
He mentioned the Real Estate Industry Transformation Map (REITM), which we’ve been talking about, but it is no longer just the Government talking about it. All our real estate agency leadership embrace it because it is a strategy we developed together a couple of years ago. We see all of you already innovating, putting out new technology, new training road maps, strengthening your competencies and developing pathways. So certainly, there’s no need for me to talk anymore about this, as all of you are already doing it all together, even as we speak.
But I said, if I don’t talk about that, what do I talk about to a roomful of professionals? Then I said, maybe talk about the property market and trends. Certainly I will say a little bit about that, but not at the get-go. In fact as professionals, you’re not just there to help people to transact their properties, or just to find a home for themselves or an office or industrial space. You’re also there to value-add, to be able to give your clients, both current and prospective, a broader sense of the Singapore market and the trends that are happening.
Therefore, I thought I’d spend a couple of moments at the beginning of my presentation to talk a little bit about how Singapore plans, and in the course of today, also share with you some new locations we’re going to open up, that will add vitality and energy to our residential market and in fact to real estate, and more importantly make Singapore even more liveable.
Singapore’s broader urban planning approach
At MND, shaping and improving our built environment, improving our city, is an important aspect of our work, to ensure that we provide a quality living environment for Singaporeans.
We’re a small island city-state, the only one city-state that’s an island. So we have to optimise our land use, our very scarce land, to meet the needs of the current generation. Even then, we have to balance competing needs of the same generation, while ensuring that we have both land and resources to meet the needs of future generations of Singaporeans so they can thrive, in a global environment that is becoming increasingly dangerous and uncertain.
Careful stewardship is a term you’ll hear us repeat over and over again: we’re not consumers, we’re not users, but stewards. So careful stewardship of our limited land, and our commitment to planning for the long-term future has been our longstanding approach. As land pressures grow increasingly acute and trade-offs become harder for us to navigate, these values become even more critical.
So, you will know that every 10 years, we pause, take stock, and do a Long Term Plan Review to plan for the next 50 years. Not many countries do that, and even if they do, not many countries have the wherewithal to be able to achieve those goals for five decades and beyond. We concluded the last Long-Term Plan Review in 2022, in the midst of COVID. Now, those will yield raw strategies for our land use, but every 5 years, we buckle down and do a Master Planning exercise, to try to plan for the next 10 to 15 years ahead of us. We recently embarked on a public engagement exercise for the Draft Master Plan 2025, or DMP2025.
In reviewing the Draft Master Plan, the Government will translate long-term strategies from the Long-Term Plan Review into detailed plans on the ground that will be implemented on the ground over the next 10 to 15 years. So you will see the plans translate into reality in our different neighbourhoods all across Singapore.
As real estate professionals, many of you are keenly aware of the importance of the Draft Master Plan to your work and to the clients whom you serve.
A key focus of DMP2025 is the future of homes and housing. We do not have many large tracts of totally undeveloped land to build new towns and estates. In fact, Tengah is our latest new town; we’ve not had a new town for 20 over years. Instead, we will be redeveloping and rejuvenating existing developed areas to provide new housing opportunities for Singaporeans – both young Singaporeans setting up their first home, as well as older Singaporeans, as Mr Justin Quek mentioned, our senior population also looking for an appropriate kind of housing.
For instance, at an exhibition that we held last year titled “My City, My Home”, we shared our plans for new residential neighbourhoods in more central parts of Singapore, such as Bukit Timah Turf City and Pearl’s Hill, where we are studying a mix of both public and private housing options, and ensuring sensitive development amid the rich history and greenery already there.
Starting with Bukit Timah Turf City, this is a place that holds memories for some Singaporeans, when it was first a racecourse and later, a lifestyle and recreational hub. Currently served by the existing Sixth Avenue MRT station, accessibility to Bukit Timah Turf City will be further improved with the upcoming Turf City MRT station on the Cross-Island Line. There will also be more transport options and road improvements, as we aim to develop a car-lite and pedestrian-friendly area.
For Pearl’s Hill, the conserved former police barracks offer opportunities for what we call adaptive reuse – old existing buildings that we have conserved, what can we make use of them for? For example, a more open, accessible community space at the forecourt of the Lower Barracks. Residents and visitors can also look forward to an improved Pearl’s Hill City Park, with new facilities and contemplative landscapes that will support physical and mental well-being.
In addition, just last month, I announced that we are planning for new homes and amenities in two other locations: one is Chencharu in Yishun, and the other Gillman Barracks.
Chencharu will be an exciting addition to Yishun Town, with the first BTO project of around 1,200 flats being launched this June, in two months’ time.
Gillman Barracks in Telok Blangah is another site under study, where we are commencing environmental and heritage studies in the second quarter of 2024. Besides allowing Singaporeans to live closer to the city centre, we hope to build on the character and charm of former colonial buildings, as well as the easy access to green and recreational spaces like the Southern Ridges and Labrador Nature Park Network.
So these are two new areas we are thinking of developing, sensitively, with nature, recreation and heritage in mind.
Thus far, we have reached out to close to 14,000 people through the recent “My City, My Home” exhibition.
My colleagues at URA will continue to engage Singaporeans from all walks of life, including professionals like yourselves. You have a part to play in shaping the future of Singapore, one that is sustainable, inclusive, and anchored on a strong sense of identity.
In fact, we will be launching the first of a series of Recreation Master Plan roving exhibitions this Sunday at Westgate, showcasing island-wide and regional opportunities for recreation, the arts, sports, heritage, and well-being. The exhibition will be roving to seven more locations in the heartlands in the coming months and I invite all of you to come, take part, analyse the ideas and share your views and suggestions with us.
Design and rejuvenation of HDB towns
This commitment to careful, long-term planning extends to the towns and neighbourhoods that we live in.
My colleagues at HDB seek to adopt a holistic approach to support the needs and aspirations of residents.
Our towns are designed to be self-sufficient, integrated with greenery and offering convenient access to shops, schools, and various common spaces to encourage social interaction and facilitate community building.
To achieve this, HDB adopts some upstream design principles, for example:
- Ensuring that there is a main commercial and activity hub in the heart of every town,
- Distributing a range of amenities within and across neighbourhoods, and
- Planning for comprehensive connectivity.
We continue to enhance the living environment even after a town is built, to ensure that estates and amenities remain fit for purpose over time.
Through our public housing upgrading and rejuvenation programmes, such as the Home Improvement Programme (HIP), Neighbourhood Renewal Programme (NRP), and Remaking Our Heartland (ROH) Programme, we want our flats and estates to remain liveable and vibrant, and continue to meet the needs of residents as their demographics change over time.
For instance, last November, we launched Age Well SG to better support ageing in place. This includes upgrading our precincts to make them safer and easier for our seniors to move around in, and providing more amenities that encourage active ageing and neighbourly bonding. For individual HDB homes, we have introduced more enhancements through the Enhancement for Active Seniors (EASE) 2.0 programme since 1st April, so that seniors feel safe and comfortable at home.
These amenities were selected after careful consultation with residents and experts on the needs of residents as they age. So, practical amenities that can be put into homes, highly subsidised, to ensure that homes bought when Singaporeans were younger continue to be fit for purpose as they age and seek to age in place.
A stable and sustainable property market
When we talk about housing, physical infrastructure is just one aspect of the conversation. Having a stable and sustainable property market is another important factor in creating an environment that supports homeownership.
During our Forward Singapore exercise, we reaffirmed the emphasis that Singaporeans place on the concept of homeownership. This is why we remain committed to providing a range of housing options for different budgets and needs.
To meet the strong demand for national housing, we committed in 2021 to launch 100,000 new HDB flats by 2025.
We have made good progress on this front – as of February 2024, we have launched more than 67,000 new flats.
As a result of this bump-up in supply as well as other measures, BTO application rates have come down, from some 5.8 applications per flat in 2020 to 2.9 applications per flat in 2023.
With around 19,600 flats planned for the year, we remain on track to meet our stated goal.
Many of our flats offered will start to have shorter waiting times too. We’ve not only caught up with the delays as a result of COVID, but we’ve also improved our construction productivity and methods, and also been able to reinstate what we started back in 2018, which are Shorter Waiting Time (SWT) flats with wait times of under 3 years. In February, more than 80% of the BTO flats launched have waiting times of 3.5 years or less.
We have also ramped up the supply of private housing under the Government Land Sales Programme, launching 9,250 units in the whole of 2023, the highest across the past decade and we are prepared to launch more, if necessary.
In tandem, we have implemented three rounds of property cooling measures since December 2021. We are beginning to see some signs of stabilisation:
Private residential property prices grew by 6.8% in 2023, down from 8.6% in 2022, and 10.6% in 2021.
HDB resale prices rose 4.9% in 2023. This is less than half of the 10.4% in 2022, and the 12.7% in 2021.
Also from flash estimates, the 2.8% increase over the last 6 months is the same as that in the preceding period.
Having said that, we will continue to keep a close watch on the situation. The Government will not hesitate to move decisively but carefully, to ensure our property market remains stable and sustainable for Singaporeans, especially in light of the global macroeconomic conditions and the geopolitical situation around us.
Conclusion
We look forward to your continued partnership and support, ideas and suggestions, both as real estate professionals and, fundamentally, as fellow Singaporeans. We welcome you to join us actively in our journey as we head towards DMP2025, to discuss your hopes and dreams for our city and how we may turn them into reality.
Thank you for listening to me, thank you for taking part in this journey, and once again, congratulations to all award winners. Thank you.