FACTORS INFLUENCING SINGAPOREAN �S DECISION IN PUBLIC HOUSING SELECTION

Abstract

The Housing and Development Board (HDB) success in providing public housing for 84% of her people has been a role model for many developing countries. After solving the housing crisis in the 1960s, the HDB had shifted its focus to provide affordable and quality housing for Singaporean. However, in recent years, HDB faced a high number of drop-off rate despite the shortage of flat. This shows that the current Built-to-Order (BTO) scheme has overlooked the expectations of the applicants in terms of selecting a flat that meets their criteria. This study seeks to examine the factors influencing applicant’s decision during flat selection and list them in order of priority. It also aims to understand extend of significant of each factor that would cause applicants to forfeit a flat unit. The primary research consist of interviews with twenty professional property agents, thirty BTO applicants and a site survey to tabulate the factors for the survey questionnaires. The factors are categorised into three main group, characteristics of BTO, accessibility of BTO and unit characteristic. A pilot study was conducted before the survey questionnaires were finalised. Next, the survey questionnaires were conducted with 200 sets of data collected. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software was adopted to generate the data. The top 3 factors ranked under each category that will cause applicants to forfeit the chance to select a flat unit were identified. For each factors, a detailed elaboration is explained to further illustrate the desired factors by applicants. On the other hand, the undesired aspects of a unit considered by applicants during flat selection are explained. This study reveals the importance of public housing to be built in line with the prioritised factors as shown in the findings. This allows the HDB to enhance the building design to meet the expectation of applicants without incurring more building cost and yet creating more value to its occupiers. In additional, this study serve as a reference on which future flat designs or even other type of residential housings can be based upon. The limitation of this study is the changing behavior and perceptions of applicants over times and data presented in this study might vary in the future. Thus, the survey result collected now may differ from the survey in future