HDB issued a media statement saying that the pricing of pre-purchase HDB projects is not tied to cost, but is based on the buyer's income and loan repayment ratio to determine whether the buyer can afford the housing price.

In addition to the location of the project, the authorities will also assess the resale price of HDB flats in the vicinity of the project and the merits of the project itself before setting an allowance to ensure that buyers can afford the price.

This pricing model is also applied to prime location HDB projects.

NUS Business School professor of finance and real estate Wenlan Qian told MediaCorp News that the difference in the price of pre-purchased HDB flats in mature and non-mature municipalities is also related to the resale market.

"This also involves the issue of fairness, because a big feature of pre-purchased HDB flats is that they can be resold in the open market after five years. If the price does not take this into account when pre-purchasing the HDB flats, when you want to sell them, it is possible that when buyers of pre-purchased HDB flats in mature communities and non-mature communities sell them, they will get different returns. "

The authorities pointed out that in the first half of this year, at least 80% of the buyers who received the keys to their new HDB flats used no more than a quarter of their monthly salary to repay their HDB mortgage.

This means that they only need to use their CPF to pay their mortgage every month and hardly need to use cash.

Data from the authorities also show that the median household income of the country's population has increased by 26% over the past decade, while the average selling price of new HDB flats in mature and non-mature municipalities has only increased by 22% and 16% respectively over the same period.