With Sers and Vers, HDB homes can trump private leasehold homes
Through these two schemes, land lease decay can be better mitigated for owners of HDB flats than owners of private homes, which sit on initial land leases of 99 years
MANY HDB flats, private homes and commercial buildings in Singapore are built on land parcels with initial lease tenures of 99 years. Having properties sit on leasehold land allows the government to recover land upon lease expiry to reallocate it to meet fast changing socio-economic needs.
However, amid rising demand for homes and new economic needs, some leasehold land parcels are redeveloped for more intensive or new uses ahead of the expiry of their 99-year land lease tenures. As buildings that are several decades old can become obsolete, redeveloping to create more relevant offerings makes sense.
There are various examples in the private home market of successful en bloc sales of leasehold residential developments, which are more than 30 years old. Typically, these en bloc sales resulted in the building of new condominium developments that housed many more units.
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