19,600 BTO flats up for sale in 2025, nearly 20% of them with shorter waiting times

3,800 Build-To-Order (BTO) flats with shorter waiting times of less than three years will be offered in 2025.

They make up nearly 20 per cent of the 19,600 BTO flats that will be launched across three sales exercises this year, said the Ministry of National Development (MND) and the Housing Development Board in a joint press release on Thursday (Jan 16).

This is an increase from the 2,876 flats with shorter waiting times offered in 2024.

This year, home buyers can look forward to "a good mix of Standard, Plus, and Prime BTO flats" under the new flat classification framework, they said.

In February, the Housing Board will offer about 5,000 BTO flats in Kallang/Whampoa, Queenstown, Woodlands and Yishun.

There will also be BTO exercises in locations such as Bukit Merah, Sembawang and the upcoming Mount Pleasant housing estate. 

The largest-ever Sale of Balance Flats (SBF) exercise will also be held in February with around 5,000 units available, said MND and HDB.

About 40 per cent of these flats are completed, while the remaining units are expected to be completed from 2025 to 2028.

With this year's offer of BTO flats, National Development Minister Desmond Lee said: "We are on track to launch about 102,300 BTO flats from 2021 to 2025, exceeding our commitment to launch 100,000 new flats over the five-year period."

This comes after the application rates for first-time home buyers continue to moderate.

In 2024, the average application rate across all flat types was 2.1, below the pre-pandemic rate of 3.7 in 2019.

"The minister assured that HDB will continue to put out a steady pipeline of flats to meet housing demand in the next few years," said the authorities.

On Thursday, MND and HDB also said that they will shortlist BTO flat applicants up to 200 per cent of the total flat supply from the February 2025 sales exercise onwards, instead of up to 300 per cent.

This comes after the rules of non-selection of new HDB flats were tightened in 2023. First-time applicants who do not select a BTO flat when invited to do so will be considered second-timers for a year in the computer ballot.

It led to a fall in the proportion of applicants who did not book a flat, from 40 per cent down to about 19 per cent over three BTO flat booking exercises.

"This change will improve system efficiency, enabling HDB to serve shortlisted applicants faster," said Lee.

Flat applicants without a queue number can also make housing arrangements earlier or proceed to apply for the next BTO or SBF sales exercise without having to wait for a flat booking appointment.

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chingshijie@asiaone.com