By Property Soul (Guest Contributor)

Since 10 March 2014, the Housing Development Board only accepts valuation requests from resale flat buyers or their property agents after the granting of the Option to Purchase by the sellers. This Revised HDB Resale Procedure is believed to encourage buyers and sellers to focus their price discussions on the recent sales transactions, rather than the Cash Over Valuation (COV) that sellers expect buyers to pay on top of the flat’s value.

The end of the Singapore dream to profit from HDB?

Back in 1996, 2007 and from 2010 to 2013, the media liked to pick up stories of HDB sales transactions that came with very high COVs, sometimes up to $100,000 to $150,000. There were also reports that mentioned extreme cases with the transaction prices of HDB flats crossing the one million dollar mark.

These might be exceptional incidents but were often considered by ...