HDB housing and CPF

Recently there's a news on Housing, whereby condominium become very very hot. You can see alot of people lining up as the recession is finally bottoming up and people are interested to invest. I have 2 friends also going to contemplating of buying houses. They calculate finances and how much loan that they could afford, besides that if eg. 1 of the spouse is not working how many months of cash flow they would need to fork out. They think far ahead which is good as you never know is this kind of economy. It makes sense to plan and have a backup plan. Nobody knows for sure.

It also make good sense to take advantage of the govenment subsidy rate for first time home owners, can get up to 40k of grant upfront for staying near parents. Check out www.hdb.gov.sg for more information. It also contain information of how much loan that you are eligible to afford, how many years of repayment scheme you want to look at.

Another website of good source of information is www.cpf.gov.sg. As almost everybody knows the money in the ordinary is used for housing / school fees / insurance / stocks. The cpf website give some reference to will be home owners on the affordability. The retirement plans and tips on how to increase your retirement savings. 1 good point they mention is you can transfer your ordinary a/c to your special a/c to enjoy higher percentage on the savings taking int o consideration the you won't be needing the money for housing. On the downside you have to wait till 62 years old to slowly withdraw the money inside the Special A/C. For people that are in no need of the ordinary a/c. it makes perfect sense to transfer it to special to enjoy the 4% rates instead of the 2.5% rate. Of course this depend on each individual and needs.