Bishan HDB Broke Million Dollar Record @$1.29m

A Five-room Bishan HDB broke million dollar record within a month. Today, I’m covering three key learnings in this video/article.

Top 3 HDB record transactions in recent years

📌 Pinnacle at Duxton (3rd Position)

In the third place is a Pinnacle at Duxton resale HDB flat. We have actually broken the 1 million dollar record quite some time back. Now we are beyond $1.2m and inching towards $1.3 million.

📌 HDB Terrace House (2nd Position)

In second place is actually an HDB terrace house. This is very rare & unique because it is not exactly an HDB flat but under the purview of HDB. If you take a look at the inside of this HDB, it is actually quite well renovated. The price is very attractive as well. The only catch is that it is 49 years old.

Likely, the buyer of this house is not aiming for any capital appreciation.

At the end of the tenure, all HDB flats are supposed to be returned to the government at the end of the lease. There is only a 4% chance of being en-bloc or selected for the Selective En-bloc Relocation Scheme (SERS).

📌 5-Room Bishan HDB Broke Million Dollar Record @$1.29m (1st Position)

This is a newly crowned champion, a five-room Bishan HDB, Natura Loft in Bishan. According to the Straits Times, the three key factors for this million-dollar HDB are:

• Central location,
• Unblocked views, and
• A well-maintained interior

For your information, this five-room Bishan HDB is above the thirty-fifth floor. It is just about 10 years old too.

Bishan HDB Broke Million Dollar Record – What can we learn from this article?

There are three personal learnings that I can share with the audience and viewers.

📌 Lesson #1 – HDB winning formula

It seems that age and location are very important price factors for HDB resale flats. I did a video recently, and it was on an article that shows that Age is more important than location. Take a look at this video when you are free.

It seems that the winning factors for the million-dollar HDB flat include age, location and unblocked views.

📌 Lesson #2 – Is Interior Design Investment a Plus or Minus?

This is a quote from the article, “Bishan HDB Broke Million Dollar Record”

The Seller has spent almost $100k on renovation, with frequent touch up over the years.

Mr Wang, 34, Property Agent for the 5-Room Bishan DBSS HDB

This is my question for you.

If the owner did not spend so much on the renovation or ID, will he be able to profit more?

This question is very subjective when we look at these three pictures:

The first two things that capture my attention is the unblocked views plus the Scanteak furniture. I personally don’t think that is worth $100K.

But again, it’s very subjective. Renovations can be a plus or minus. It depends on whether your future buyer likes their renovation. My personal sharing: It is not so wise to invest too much money in ID, for those new buyers or new owners of HDB flats. This is especially applicable if you know you are not going to stay beyond 5 years. i.e. you’re going to sell after the minimum occupation period (MOP).

📌 Lesson #3: The Private Property Dream

This is a direct quote from the article “Bishan HDB Broke Million Dollar Record”. The sellers are a Singaporean Chinese couple in their late 50s moving on to a private property. This is a very personal sharing that is close to my heart. I always feel that for young people, you should aim to buy a private property when you’re younger, and you have to work harder because you got to service that loan.

Why do I say that?

For private properties in SG, the maximum loan tenure is 30 years if you are aged 35 years and below. As you age, your loan period gets shorter, which means you get a smaller loan amount.

My advice for young people in Singapore when you’re young, you can take a bigger loan and you should work harder so that when you’re older, you can afford to retire with a lot of spare cash.

This is the plan! When you reach age 65, you can assume that the loan is fully paid for, or at that time, you can consider to rightsize or downsize to an HDB flat with spare cash

From what we know from this article, “Bishan HDB Broke Million Dollar Record”, the sellers are selling the HDB and moving on to private property.

There’s no mention about the buyers, but from the previous records of those buyers for the million-dollar HDB flats, quite a number of them are retirees or older folks who want to sell away their private property, such as a landed property. For these retirees, most of their kids have grown up and moved out. So they do not need such a big landed property or big condo.

Their preferred choice is to downgrade or right size to an HDB with spare cash. Assuming that they sold their landed property for $3 to 4 million, they still have a lot of ample cash on hand for retirement, after paying for this million-dollar HDB flat. This is the best ideal situation that one can imagine

My Sharing: Work harder when you are young so that when you’re old, you can retire with spare cash. I sincerely hope that my 3 lessons are useful for you. I believe we are going to break the $1.3 million record for HDB flats very soon.

And in the near future, maybe breaking the $1.5 million psychological barriers for HDB might not be a distant dream.

Like this Article or Video ?

See more articles (videos) here