Has Singapore’s government finally pulled the right plug on the home price surges bedeviling the city-state?
The government late Tuesday issued another round of cooling measures for its real estate sector, this time targeting the subsidized public housing market – known as Housing Development Board (HDB) apartments – which house 80 percent of the country’s citizens.
The measures include shortening the maximum loan tenure to 25 years from 30 years, and reducing the mortgage ratio limit against the borrower’s salary to 30 percent from 35 percent previously.
Permanent residents (PR), who account for about 20 percent of the HDB secondary market and aren’t allowed to buy flats directly from the government, must also now also wait three years after receiving PR status to purchase a resale subsidized property. There was no wait prior to Tuesday’s new ruling.
See on http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/singapore-home-prices-ease-finally-092900839.html