Not so long ago, my brother-in-law applied for the latest HDB launch of flats, and selected a 4-room apartment to ballot for. My brother-in-law had quite a few questions for me, but my memory is failing me as the process happened so long ago. Red Brick has an awesome infographic that answered a lot of his financing questions.

Located right beside Woodleigh MRT, the apartment had a decent location which commanded a really high price. The median price would put it right at the half-a-million mark. A scary thought to me, and a huge difference compared to what my wife and I went through.

Granted, my current place has an inferior location at Punggol and we had 8 years of advantage (we balloted in 2008) against the dreaded inflation. Our apartment was priced at $237k and we were able to stretch our loan to 30-years in the past. Now, its ...