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During the debate in parliament, several Members of Parliament (MPs) asked if changes to en bloc rules will have implications for the Voluntary Early Redevelopment Scheme (VERS), which will allow owners of HDB flats aged 70 years or older to vote on whether the government can buy back their homes before the 99-year lease expires.<\/p>\n
Speaking in parliament in September last year, National Development Minister Chee Hong Tat said his ministry is still working out how the VERS vote will run.<\/p>\n
The latest changes should not be seen as a trial run for VERS, because the amendment Bill tabled expressly excludes any development on HDB land from the new class of collective sale it creates.<\/p>\n
There are other differences. An HDB flat carries no share value, so consent would be counted differently. The Ministry of National Development (MND) has also said VERS should not create a \u201clottery effect\u201d and payouts will be lower than under the Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme because flats offered VERS will have shorter remaining leases.<\/p>\n
The government also holds one advantage no sale committee has. It can prepare replacement housing in advance and has said it will. That matters more than it sounds because a sale committee asks an owner for more than a price. It asks owners to trade a known home for a sum of money and a hope. The ones who say no most often cannot picture the other side of the move.<\/p>\n
For all those differences, the similarity lies in what happens between neighbours. In his reply to MPs, Mr Tong said the issue of VERS goes beyond the scope of the Bill, but accepted there are learning points between the public and private markets and said his ministry would share its experience of the collective sale regime with MND.<\/p>\n
As the rules are developed, the experience of private residential en bloc sales can offer a useful lesson. There is a need to support renewal efforts of ageing estates, but the process of seeking consensus and reaching a collective decision without dividing a community also matters.<\/p>\n
Gabriel Kor is Associate Professor and Deputy Head (Academic) at the Department of the Built Environment, College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore (NUS). The opinions expressed are those of the writer and do not represent the views and opinions of NUS.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n NOT A TRIAL RUN FOR VERS During the debate in parliament, several Members of Parliament (MPs) asked if changes to en bloc rules will have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":83410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--nfqfzPgb--\/c_crop,h_900,w_1600,x_0,y_109\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/fl_relative,g_south_east,l_mediacorp:cna:watermark:2021-08:cna,w_0.1\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2023\/10\/24\/jem_0185.jpg?itok=intM0f2d","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1126,7622],"class_list":["post-83409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-commentary","tag-condo","wpcat-2-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/83410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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