Speech by MOS Faishal Ibrahim at Singapore Real Estate Agents Excellence Awards 2024
Aug 16, 2024
Mr Adam Wang, President, SEAA
Mr Anthony Gan, CEO, SEAA
Ladies and Gentlemen
Introduction
Good afternoon! I’m happy to join all of you for this year’s awards ceremony and thank you for inviting me.
This is my second time attending this event, and it’s heartening to see both familiar and new faces today. Today’s event is a recognition of your efforts and dedication towards service excellence and professionalism. Congratulations to all award recipients!
Updates on Market
We are now in the second half of 2024. Close to 5 years have passed since we saw how the COVID pandemic disrupted all our lives. Our housing market and construction sector were not spared.
We experienced major supply and manpower disruptions which led to delays in our construction schedules. At the same time, demand remained strong, in part as more Singaporeans move out to live on their own earlier, with many choosing to buy their own homes.
This resulted in an imbalance in demand and supply, driving up housing prices and rents for both the public and private housing markets.
The Government has been working hard to address this imbalance. We have tried to catch up in terms of supply and undertaken many other initiatives. Let me take this opportunity to provide a quick update on our housing market.
On the public housing front, in 2021, we committed to launching 100,000 new flats by 2025. As of June this year, we have launched more than 74,000 flats, with another 8,500 more flats expected by the end of this year. This means that we would have achieved more than 83% of our commitment, and we are well on track to meet our 2025 target.
To help young couples secure their own homes and start their families earlier, we also introduced more shorter waiting time flats, or SWT flats. These flats have a waiting time of less than 3 years. HDB will launch a total of 2,800 such flats this year, 4 times the number as compared to last year. Going forward, HDB has committed to launch 2,000 to 3,000 such flats per year.
For married couples who have booked their BTO flats but need a place to stay temporarily while waiting for their flats to be completed, we have the Parenthood Provisional Housing Scheme, or PPHS. Earlier this year, we also introduced the PPHS (Open Market) Voucher to help couples who prefer to rent from the open market while awaiting their BTO flats. I am glad to share that this voucher is already open for application last month. If you know of such couples, please encourage them to find out more.
On the private property market, we also ramped up supply.
In 2023, we launched 9,250 units under the Government Land Sales Programme, which was at that point in time, the highest in the past 10 years. This year, we increased it to 11,110 units across a variety of sites island-wide, providing a mix of housing options catering to different needs and budgets.
We will continue to calibrate supply based on economic and market conditions.
In total, around 43,000 public and private homes were completed last year, the highest in a single year since 2018. We remain on track to complete another 28,000 this year, and 24,000 homes next year making a total of close to 100,000 private and public homes completed between 2023 and 2025.
Besides boosting supply, we also implemented measures to moderate demand and encourage greater financial prudence amongst homebuyers. Since December 2021, we have implemented three rounds of cooling measures.
Collectively, through these efforts, we are seeing signs of stabilisation in the private housing market.
Price growth moderated from 8.6% in 2022 to 6.8% in 2023. The pace of increase slowed further in the first 2 quarters of this year, increasing by 1.4% in the first quarter, and by just 0.9% in the second quarter. This is significantly lower than the quarterly average increase of 2.0% in 2022 to 2023.
Rents for private properties have also continued to decrease for the third consecutive quarter. For the first half of this year, overall rents dropped by 2.7%, a clear reversal of the growth observed for the same periods in the preceding 2 years.
The public housing market remains more buoyant at the moment, but I am confident that the impact of our earlier measures will work their way through the market and calm it down eventually.
In the interim, we have increased the CPF Housing Grant to provide targeted and direct support to first-timers buying HDB resale flats.
Overall, the majority of HDB resale flats remain within reach. About 8 in 10 first-timer families who collected the keys to their resale flats in 2023 could service their monthly loan instalments with their CPF savings, with little to no cash outlay.
While there have been some high-priced resale transactions reported in the news recently, do help your clients put these in perspective as these transactions remain a small minority, mostly comprising larger units like jumbo flats, or five-room flats in prime locations with favourable attributes. High-priced units that are four-room and smaller, represent just 0.5 per cent of all such flats sold in the last two years, often due to their attractive attributes like being on very high floors with a wonderful view or located in central locations.
I would like to take this opportunity to encourage all of you here today as real estate professionals to work closely together with your clients and to advise them duly and ethically to continue to exercise prudence in their property purchases.
I know many of you already do that. As history has taught all of us, the property market moves in cycles. Those of you who have been in the market long enough will be familiar with this – some years you will tell the Government to stop building, and some years you will say “why don’t you build more?”
In a time of market exuberance, we must advise our buyers to be extra careful, because those who buy high will also be harder hit when the market eventually comes down.
As trusted professionals in your industry, you play an important role in helping your buyers realise their homeownership aspirations, but also to safeguard their financial interests. Your clients look to you to help them navigate the increasingly complex landscape; and they trust you to act in their best interests. Their trust in you comes with heavy responsibilities, because for many families, the purchase of their home is the single largest purchase in their life.
Contributions by SEAA
On this note, I am heartened to know that SEAA has consistently risen to these challenges and continues to spearhead initiatives for the benefit of the industry and customers.
As a co-lead for the Alliance for Action on Accurate Property Listings, SEAA has worked with the 5 largest property agencies and major property portals to complete the development of a prototype IT system to tackle the longstanding problem of dummy, unauthorised, inaccurate and duplicate property listings. When the full system is developed, this will significantly enhance consumers’ property search experience through verified listings.
SEAA also serves as the Deputy Chair for the Digitalised Property Transactions Workgroup, which aims to create a comprehensive digital service journey for property transactions by integrating the various government agencies’ property-related portals.
HDB’s recent Resale Flat Listing service is one such example. SEAA and its partners have contributed valuable feedback and suggestions to the development process. This benefits both property agents and customers alike by enhancing the user experience.
This further increases customers’ confidence and satisfaction in their property transaction journey.
SEAA’s commitment to excellence and professionalism contributes significantly to the high standards we see today, cultivating consumers’ trust and confidence. Please keep up the good work, and I look forward to SEAA’s continued partnership and contributions.
Moving Ahead
In this second half of 2024, we have some exciting changes to look forward to.
The upcoming BTO sales exercise in October marks the first time where our BTO flats will be launched under the new classification framework – Standard, Plus and Prime - instead of mature versus non-mature estates.
Flats in more attractive locations will come with higher subsidies and tighter restrictions under the Plus and Prime models, to enhance affordability, inclusivity, and fairness.
I know you are all eager to find out which are the projects that fall under the respective categories and share this information with your customers. We will be sharing these details soon, so stay tuned.
Let me now say something about marketing and advertising matters, and the importance of providing comments responsibly.
You would have heard about the recent listings with unrealistic asking prices and misleading claims. Or commentaries on social media platforms that contain falsehoods. Such inaccurate and misleading advertisements or commentaries will only harm everyone. They disrupt the market, and go against the ethical conduct and professionalism expected of every real estate agent.
Creating, engaging in or promoting such practices severely undermines the reputation and trust that the real estate sector has painstakingly built up over time.
Some of the actions by a small minority unfortunately affect the hard work of not only you as individuals, but also as an association and as a sector. So I think what is key is that it must come from all of us, at the individual level and as a sector, to see how we can prevent such practices that affect trust and professionalism of the industry.
So I think it is important for us to work together and look out for one another, and I want to urge you to speak out against such irresponsible practices, because it does not benefit you and the rest of the industry.
From the Government’s point of view, we will do our best, but it must come from you at the individual level and as a sector. In this way, we can bring out the best in each and every one of us.
We have taken a strong position against such activities to protect the interest of our clients and the wider industry. We will continue to take strong actions against future breaches.
The majority of you have exhibited top notch professionalism and ethics in your marketing and I appreciate your commitment and efforts on it. My colleagues and I have visited the agencies and associations and I felt very encouraged by what I observed.
Please continue to uphold these high standards and professionalism. There are no shortcuts in this industry.
Lastly, I would also like to share with you our anti-money laundering efforts.
Over the past year, the Government, led by the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC), has worked very closely with various sectors and industry players to review our national anti-money laundering strategies from a whole of Government approach. This helps ensure Singapore continues to be a clean and trusted financial centre for businesses and property transactions.
For our real estate sector, CEA has worked closely with SEAA, its partners and all of you. Your feedback and suggestions have been very valuable in our review. The IMC will announce our recommendations later this year.
As property agents, you are often the first point of contact in many transactions. Sometimes, you may receive offers that are too good to be true or have reasons to believe your clients may be involved in illicit activities. As part of our first line of defence, you play a vital role in helping spot suspicious transactions and bringing them to the attention of the authorities
So, I really seek your support and collaboration on this important effort. Please look out for the IMC Report when it is released.
Conclusion
Before I end my speech, I would like to congratulate everyone here again, for your efforts and achievements over the past year. SEAA, together with its partners have contributed much to the development and growth of this industry over the years. Let us continue to work together and bring the industry to greater heights.
Having met many of you in industry, I am confident we can do that. But we must work together, and we must do it not only for your sake, but for the sake of the industry and the people you serve, so we can strengthen the trust in the industry.
Thank you, and please enjoy the rest of today’s event.