PropertyGuru raised a furore when it released the report “HDB flats are more unaffordable than private homes”. My first comment when I saw the news on Yahoo Singapore was: “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

One might wonder how that can be true. The truth of the matter is, when you compare a person who is able to purchase a condominium with a person who purchased a HDB, it is very unlikely that the person who purchase the condominium would be taking a 30 years loan and at the end of the day end up with almost nothing as savings. On top of which, the person who purchase a condominium can be single and under 35 – while a HDB flat is out of each of singles and singles can only purchase a resale market from 35-year old onwards. Otherwise, the couples who purchase a condominium will have a combined monthly income of at least $10,000 and above.

A 4-room BTO [Build To Order] flat would be entry level for most, since it comes with a hall and 3 bedrooms and more of them are being built. At about 90sq meters, it is comfortable enough for a family of 4 (2 parents and 2 kids). After all, a 5-room or larger is basically nothing more than a 4-room with a little more space. When a 4-room costs at least $300,000 (and that is only when you are extremely lucky and the unit is at some out of the way HDB Estate) and the median income according to the HDB for 4-room flat applicants is $4,200, that simply means the price to income ratio is 71.43. Even with a $10,000 grant, the price to income ration is 69.05.

Now consider a 3-bedroom condominium. The cheapest one listed on Property Guru (at Twin Waterfalls EC, Punggol Way) is $630,000. Now consider that the minimum income of any couple able to purchase a unit will have an income of at least $10,000, the price to income ration is 63.0. Granted, it may actually cost more than listed, but I am also taking a very conservative estimate here because the median income of a condominium buyer may be even higher which will take the ratio even lower. How the HDB wants us to believe that Property Guru’s analysis is based on incomplete information is beyond me!

Here is the chart on a subsequent news report whereby the HDB refuted the analysis of PropertyGuru and argued that the report was based on “incomplete information”.

Since we are on the topic of incomplete information, lazy me did a little analysis of the figures in the chart. Again taking the 4-room flat as basis, the HDB’s chart showed that the applying couple will have a median household income of $4,200. Assuming that this is nett income, that means the couple (35-year old and below) contributes $1512 a month collectively. 10% of that downpayment would be $30,700, deducting the $10,000 grant, the couple will have to save up $20,700 which will take them about 21.4 months to save since only $966.18 goes into their ‘Ordinary Account’ [OA] in their CPF and only 100% of OA can be used to pay for the 10% down payment.

So, after emptying all of their hard earned CPF of almost two years and left with nothing, the couple still has to pay $1,049 month in installments which means they even need to come up with a cash component of $82.82 a month for the next 30 years. If they want to shorten their loan period, they will have to pay a even larger cash component. Remember, the longer the loan period simply means you are paying more to service the interest before you even start to pay off the principal sum. Really, what affordable housing? It’s nothing more than economic slavery. The better part of your useful working life is wasted paying off for a pigeon hole. If you start work at 25, you are still in debt at 50. Now who is talking about “incomplete information”?!

It really annoys me that the HDB continues to resort to such in their lame attempt to distort reality. And that’s not forgetting that part about being able to own a flat with less than $1000 of income! That’s not forgetting that they did some statistic massaging when they used “average selling price” for the flats, while they used “median household income” of applicants. A friend was sure average income is higher than median income in Singapore, and another explain that medians in general gives more balanced figures compared to averages. In other words, their objective maybe to show that it remains affordable even in a ‘worst case scenario’. But it doesn’t change the fact that if it takes almost your entire lifetime to pay for it, it is clearly not affordable!!

Now on the matter of statistics massaging, here’s another example: “180 bus trips added, services improved”. This article was posted on Today Online on Saturday morning. In the article it wrote: “Public transport operators SBS Transit and SMRT have improved 22 bus services and added 180 bus trips weekly between January and March, even as wider service improvements under the Government’s S$1.1-billion Bus Services Enhancement Programme will be rolled out from the third quarter of this year.”

Whether there were 180 bus trips added per service, or 180 bus trips spread across 22 services, it really makes not much of a difference for us. The math is simple, if it was 180 trips per service then it’s about 1.4 extra trips every hour each day. If it was 180 trips over 22 services then it is just about 1 extra bus per service each day (probably during peak hours). It doesn’t need a rocket scientist to figure that out. If I am asked which one I would believe, I tend to believe it’s the latter since that cost less in terms of manpower and fuel consumptions and produce the same stunning statistic wizardry.

Anyway, this isn’t the first time they have done something like this. Previously, we used to be told how many train trips were added each week to ease congestion. Did anyone ever wonder why none of us were able to perceive or even feel the service improvements at all? Then again I understand that if they tell us that it’s just one trip a day we would wonder why is it even news worthy, not to mention no one will even believe there is any improvements at all!!

Here’s the best part, the article even tried to make it look greater than usual by adding this: “even as wider service improvements under the government’s S$1.1-billion Bus Services Enhancement Programme will be rolled out from the third quarter of this year.”

It is trying to have you believe that this is not the end of these so-called “improvements”. The better stuff is yet to come! However, remove that last bit and it won’t take long for anyone to discover just how uninspiring this piece of news is. Talking about which, the local main stream media [MSM] have always resorted to such word play to shift (if not manipulate) opinion. For e.g. “But only 68.1% polled agreed that it is necessary to reduce the inflow of foreign workers to spur productivity and create better jobs.”

Only 68.1%? Well, if you take away that word you will realise that more than half of the people polled wants less foreign workers in our country. But with the word ‘only’, the number now sounds a lot less significant. Read the following statements:

  – 200 soldiers committed rape after occupying the city.
  – Only 200 soldiers committed rape after occupying the city.

Notice the difference it made with just one word? In the first example, it tells us that there were 200 violations and everyone will feel some outrage. But the next statement will make the unsuspecting believe that just a small number of soldiers within an “assumed” large occupation force committed such atrocities.

The next time you see any statement with words like “even”, “only” etc, pause a little and re-read them and you will get a whole new perspective of the information you are getting.