LANDED HOME APPROVALS FOR PRS TO DECLINE ON TIGHTER RULES
The number of approvals granted to permanent residents (PRs) who want to acquire landed homes in Singapore will likely fall by more than 50 percent after the criteria was further tightened recently, according to Law Minister K Shanmugam.
“After the further tightening, I suspect we are looking at very few people who would qualify. I think probably less than half of those who had previously qualified — under the previous already strict criteria — would qualify now. I’d be surprised if approvals are more than 50 per year.”
“Our belief is that landed property is primarily for Singaporeans and the exceptions have to be very rare,” Mr Shanmugam told reporters, after visiting a bungalow at Goodwood Hill.
Over the last three years, the Ministry of Law has received approximately 230 applications per year from PRs for the acquisition of landed residential property, said a ministry spokeswoman.
She added that around 60 percent of the applications were approved.
The revised criteria, however, will see the approval rate fall by more than 50 percent. This implies that the number of approvals could drop from about 138 per year to not more than 50.
“Since the criteria have been further revised this year, the approval rate is expected to fall further from the already small number of approvals in the past years,” the spokeswoman said.
Foreigners cannot acquire landed properties in Singapore
Currently, PRs own approximately 3.5 percent of the 70,000 landed homes in Singapore
Info courtesy - PropertyGuru.com.sg
