HDB scraps ROF exercises for unsold flats

Unselected flats from SBF exercises will be offered straight for open booking.

The Housing and Development Board will do away with the re-offer of balance flats (ROF) exercises before making them available for open booking, Minister for National Development Lawrence Wong said in the Committee of Supply debate.

This aims to help buyers get their homes earlier, so that most of the unselected flats from the sale of balance flats (SBF) exercises can be offered directly for open booking.

Currently, unsold flats from build-to-order (BTO) exercises are first offered at SBF exercises. Flats not taken up at this point are offered through the ROF exercises, before finally being made available for open booking, if they remain unselected.

Further, the Silver Housing Bonus (SHB) will increase to $30,000, from $20,000. In line with this, the Lease Buyback Scheme (LBS) bonus for owners of 3-room or smaller, 4-room, and 5-room or larger flats will be hiked by 50% to $30,000, $15,000 and $7,500 respectively.

Seniors will also only be required to top up $60,000 of their proceeds to their CPF Retirement Account (RA) to qualify for SHB. No second top up will be required, and the requirement that they must be selling a larger flat will be removed.

In addition, HDB will launch the new flat typology in Bukit Batok in May. This typology will come with a service package.