Property rights : Achieving a fine balance in collective sales of strata developments in Singapore

Abstract

Conventional analysis is of property rights as essentially negative and exclusory in that it comprises the right to exclude all others from the use of some thing. However the concept of "new property" indicates an intellectual shift towards the idea of property as a public right of access to socially valued resources. The former views property as a commodity while the latter, which forms this paper's hypothesis and espouses the "property relativist" theory, considers property as open to "social needs". In the face of Singapore's scarce land resource, the Government has to work doubly hard to optimize land use. To this end, radical legislation was devised in 1999 to stimulate private-sector led redevelopment in Singapore through majority rule (rather than unanimity) in collective sales of strata developments. It also sought to provide a balance between the property rights of majority and minority strata owners so as to avert a "tyranny of the majority". Together with changes to the planning framework, this legislation successfully paved the way for private-sector redevelopment in Singapore. However, this came at a price. At the heart of collective sales is the issue of how the respective property rights of owners could be balanced without impeding the government's objective of land-use optimization. This paper reviews the impact of the legislation on property rights and uses case-study analysis of recurring issues brought before the Strata Titles Boards. It charts the considered response of the Government through amendments to legislation in 2004, and more significantly in 2007. While these sought to clarify and better balance up some of the rights that had been sacrificed at the altar of redevelopment and urban rejuvenation in Singapore, there still remain numerous pockets of resistance to collective sales. These still need to be addressed to reassure the minority albeit within the framework of the property relativist theory. © RICS.