By guest contributor 2ycapital

My first foray into the property market was via the most common route – the HDB flat. There weren’t any HDB grants during my time and we couldn’t afford one near our parents as we had only started working. We couldn’t afford an Executive Condominium either, as my starting pay was only $1,850 per month. At the time, we had only three choices: Woodlands, Jurong or Sengkang. We selected Woodlands, the “cheapest” location in the north zone as Sengkang was much more expensive.

The problem with picking Woodlands was that it was very far from our parents’ place and once the baby came, we had to move closer to them. In the end, we hardly stayed in the flat. The problem was that under HDB rules, we could buy any property within five years and could not lease out our flat either. The rules were extremely ...