SINGAPORE, May 19 — Measures to improve transparency in the private residential property market that will protect buyers will take effect progressively from next week, more than two years after the legislative changes were passed in Parliament.
The first set of changes, to the Housing Developers (Control and Licensing) Act, that will be implemented next Monday are: Developers will be required to submit more detailed transaction information, such as sales volumes and transacted prices of individual units, as well as the value of any benefits extended to buyers.
This information will be made public on the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) website from June 5. Developers will be given five days after the end of each week to submit the information.
From July 20, the Option to Purchase as well as the Sale and Purchase agreement forms will be enhanced to include details such as the value of benefits offered to buyers. At the same time, the Housing Developers (Show Unit) Rules will also be introduced to ensure developers depict accurately homes that they are selling.
Under these rules, developers must, for example, build all external and structural walls in the show unit.
If these walls need to be omitted to provide access to and from the show unit, the position, thickness and width must be clearly marked on the floor and labelled. Show units that have been erected, set up and made available for viewing before the implementation date will be exempted from the new requirements.
The longer implementation timeline for the rules governing show units was “to provide developers sufficient time to comply with the new requirements”, the Ministry of National Development (MND) said.
URA first said in 2011 that it would be reviewing some laws to ensure housing developers provide buyers accurate information. A public consultation was conducted the same year. During the parliamentary debate on the bill in 2013, Members of Parliament voiced strong support for the changes, with many recounting accounts of residents with unhappy experiences.
While property analysts welcomed the new rules, some felt the rules should have been implemented earlier, given that the issue was first raised more than four years ago.
Responding to TODAY’s queries, a URA spokesperson said more time was needed to iron out the details. She pointed out that some of the requirements had been implemented in 2012, following a public consultation exercise in the previous year. These include requiring developers to provide more information such as scaled floor plans to home buyers before the acceptance of booking fee, and extending the controls on advertisements to those on websites.
The spokesperson said: “We needed more time to implement the other proposals as these required amendments to the Act and we had to decide on operational details relating to the new rules.”
Analysts said providing more detailed and timely data will help home buyers make better-informed decisions. Several singled out information on benefits that developers extend to buyers as the most useful.
Chia Siew Chuin, director of research and advisory at Colliers International, said: “At this stage, the most meaningful data for buyers would be the level of discounts in the form of vouchers, cash rebates, absorption of legal fees or stamp fees, rental guarantees and furniture vouchers … With more detailed information, buyers can decide for themselves which type of discounts are the most beneficial to them, in real value terms.”
Desmond Sim, head of CBRE research in Singapore and Southeast Asia, said disclosing the value of benefits also allow market watchers to compare units more meaningfully.
“In this challenging market, it is best to dispel any grey areas with regards to transactional prices and perceptions.”
But with more data being made available, consumer education has to be stepped up to help buyers make sense of the flood of information.
Ku Swee Yong, chief executive of Century 21, said: “We may see more cases of agents hyping up the market if a particular week is doing well while ignoring others that point to a weaker market. This may then confuse the market so I think what’s lacking now is consumer education on how these data is collected and presented.”
He added: “It’s the same for show flat rules as well, after tightening on the developers’ side, why not educate people on where the potential pitfalls are?” — TODAY
