SINGAPORE - The Housing Development Board (HDB) is overhauling the procedure for resale HDB transactions in a bid to shift the focus from cash over valuation (COV) to market prices when negotiating resale prices.
It is requiring buyers to first obtain the option to purchase (OTP) before asking for a valuation through HDB - and it will not accept valuation requests from sellers. This pushes buyers and sellers into negotiating resale prices based on the latest transacted prices, instead of haggling over the COV as is done now.
Minister for National Development Khaw Boon Wan said in Parliament on March 10: "The HDB will rationalise the process of price negotiations and restore the original intention of valuation - which is to help buyers obtain a housing loan."
Negotiating resale prices based on COV was "an anomaly unique to the HDB resale market"; doing so based on price instead will take some getting used to, but is a useful move for the sake of long-term market stability, he said.
With the change, buyers who are granted the OTP will have 21 calendar days - up from 14 - to exercise the OTP.
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