Elderly Couple Bought Clementi HDB for $1.04 Million & Paid in Cash; Deal Sealed in a Day

If you time-travelled back to the 1970s and told someone on the street that you recently purchased a five-room HDB flat for a million dollars, they’d first laugh at your kooky attire before laughing at your absurd statement.

Back in the 70s, which was the HDB’s first year of operation, a five-room flat cost an average of $30,000.

This amounts to around $101,000 in today’s market, taking inflation into account.

One elderly couple, however, purchased a flat for 10 times that amount, and paid for the deal entirely in cash. 

Elderly Couple Bought Clementi HDB for $1.04 Million & Paid in Cash; Deal Sealed in a Day

A five-room HDB flat in Clementi was sold on 5 July for a whopping $1.04 million, setting a new price record for the block.

According to EdgeProp, the 1,248 sq ft unit at Block 441A Clementi Avenue 3 was on the market for about 10 days and garnered two separate viewings during that time.

The flat is located within Clementi Towers, a group of HDB blocks including 441A, 441B, 442 and 443.

Only 441A has four- and five-room flats, while the other three blocks comprise three- and four-room flats.

The pricey flat has 91 years left on its lease and is part of the Clementi integrated transport hub which includes Clementi Mall, Clementi MRT Station, and Clementi Bus Interchange.

It’s also near three primary schools and one secondary school and has a decent view.

This could explain why it fetched such a high price.

The elderly couple who purchased the flat were reportedly downsizing from their landed property in West Coast.

And, believe it or not, they paid for the flat in cold hard cash. 

It’s unclear if they handed the money over in black briefcases.

According to the agent representing the seller, the million-dollar deal was also closed within a day.

This sale tops the previous record of $1.038 million ($810 psf) held by a 1,280 sq ft, five-room flat in the same block in July 2019.

Many Other Million Dollar HDB Flats

These flats in Clementi aren’t the only ones that have crossed the million-dollar mark, though.

According to the Business Times, five HDB resale flats were sold for at least $1 million in March 2020 alone. 

Additionally, a 5-room flat in Bukit Merah was sold for S$1.2 million in 2019, and a resale flat in Boon Keng sold for nearly S$1.2 million, reported Mothership.

So, what makes these flats so special? Well, there are several factors that might make a flat worthy of such a price, according to AsiaOne:

• It’s a “Design, Build & Sell” (DBSS) flat
• It’s a maisonette that is near an MRT station
• It’s on a high floor and has a nice view
• It has more than 90 years on the lease
• Another flat in the estate has sold for a million dollars

BTO Flats May Be Delayed For Up To 9 Months

While this elderly couple sealed the deal within a day, young families who can’t wait to move into their new home might have to wait a little longer.

According to The Straits Times, some BTO projects have been delayed by up to six months, due to the two-month circuit breaker period.

HDB cited several reasons for this delay, including:

• the disruption in the supply of precast components and materials from overseas
• the availability of manpower
• the ability of contractors to meet the safety prerequisites

This delay could extend to nine months for some flats, HDB said, as it has for five blocks in West Plains @ Bukit Batok.

And even after the key to the flats are handed over to the new homeowners, there’s still a bit of waiting to do.

Renovations: A Highly Connected Industry

Back in May 2020, when spoken to by reporters from TODAY, contractors already predicted that there’ll be even more delays.

Several of their workers are stuck in Malaysia as the Movement Control Order (MCO) was extended once again until 9 June 2020.

“Several” sounds pretty mild so I’ll replace it with statistics: About 80% of the workers in the renovation trade are Malaysians, according to the Singapore Renovation Contractors and Material Suppliers Association (RCMA), and most of them are in Malaysia.

Things might get better after 10 Aug 2020 when Singapore and Malaysia partially reopen their borders again to allow green lane arrangements and a Periodic Commuting Arrangement.

And I say might because with the Periodic Commuting Arrangement (PCA), Malaysians working in Singapore have to stay here for three months before they can go back home for a “short-term break”, then come back again for another three months, and so on.

But that’s not all.

New Regulations

Companies who want to resume operations must also have a system in place that allows them to keep track of the health of every worker.

Other “safeguards” include housing all the workers of a project in a single dormitory and increased testing of the workers.

Another contractor pointed out that while their line of work might be approved to start operations, they work a lot with electricians, carpenters and plumbers, who might not be approved to start work from 1 June.

Deploying workers exclusively to one project, only having one subcontractor at the site at one time, doing more work off-site; these are factors that can definitely drive the cost up.

Nonetheless, the renovation industry has started ground-up efforts where some companies banded together to try and get their projects completed on time.

Contacts of plumbers, electricians and other contractors were shared and resources were put together, all in the name of getting the homes ready for their new homeowners.

Now that you know about one of the most expensive HDB transactions in Singapore’s history, you might as well just watch our video on how WiFi routers work and how you can make them fast even at home: