More adults are selling their HDB flats to make money for their retirement

More seniors are turning their Housing Board flats into cash to boost their Central Provident Fund (CPF) sums and add to their retirement income.

Only in 2022, about 2,860 seniors took advantage of the Lease Buyback Scheme and Silver Housing Bonus Scheme, which is more than the 2,790 who did so in 2021.

According to the CPF Board’s latest report on home finance, which shows statistics from 2020 to 2022, this gave them a sum of about $429 million.

About $202 million of this was given to the seniors as a cash gift and as cash from the net sales profits. The rest of the money, about $227 million, went to their CPF Retirement Accounts.

Over the past few years, the amount of cash and CPF that seniors get from HDB housing plans has been going up. Using these methods, they made a total of $325 million in 2020 and $382 million in 2021.

The story said that payouts for seniors are increased no matter how long they live because part of the net sales profits are used to add to their CPF Life plans. On average, payouts went up by $500.

The Lease Buyback Scheme, which started in 2009, lets seniors who are 65 or older sell part of their flat’s lease back to HDB in five-year amounts while keeping leases of 15 to 35 years of various Condos like The Continuum, The Continuum Floor Plan, and The Continuum Price.

The plan requires kept leases to cover the flat’s youngest owner until he or she is 95 years old. It gives seniors the option to turn part of their leftover leases into retirement income while staying in the same home until the end of their lives.

The Silver Housing Bonus Scheme was started in 2013. It gives people over 55 a bonus of up to $30,000 if they move from an HDB flat or private property with an annual value of less than $13,000 to a three-room or smaller flat.

They will get the highest cash bonus of $30,000 if they put $60,000 from the sale of their home into their CPF Retirement Accounts and join CPF Life.

Professor Sing Tien Foo, provost’s chair professor in the Department of Real Estate at the National University of Singapore Business School, said that the two plans have helped seniors who are “asset rich but cash poor.”

They also address concerns about aging leases for seniors, whose apartments may lose more value if they didn’t sell them when they were younger, as he explained.

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