Great news for HDB home sellers who are looking to Do-It-Yourself, there is a new portal available for you to utilise. Gone are the Carousell days! Or are they?
On 30 May 2024, HDB launched the resale flat listing service which will allow HDB homeowners to directly list and advertise their homes for sale on the HDB website. In recent years, with readily available information on the process of selling and buying properties, some homeowners are choosing to embark on the process themselves instead of engaging a professional. This trend is not limited to just HDB flats, we’re also seeing more of these practices for private homes such as condominiums and landed properties.
What does this mean for the general market consumer, whether you are a buyer or a seller, in the real estate market? In this article, we explore some considerations we can expect on the DIY process as well as whether engaging a professional is still necessary.
HDB Resale Flat Online Listing Portal
Before HDB launched the resale listing portal, the usual platforms for most DIY HDB home sellers in the market were Carousell and OhMyHome. For those that have embarked on the arduous journey of putting your property up for sale on Carousell, you would know that the experience is highly unlikely to be all positive. Defending against “trolls” trying to “low-ball” your home’s listed price point is an unavoidable situation. We have had clients who, prior to engaging our team, tried it for themselves. Some had positive experiences while some had to deal with unqualified buyers who simply enjoy viewing houses as a weekend activity.
The new HDB resale listing portal serves to eradicate such experiences for HDB home sellers, ensuring that every buyer that walks through your door is a sincere potential buyer. Sellers would be required to register online in order to list their homes. At the same time, buyers are required to have a valid HDB Flat Eligibility (HFE) Letter in order to schedule a viewing with the sellers. The portal will also automatically populate information such as the original floor plan, size of the unit, the ethnic quota applicable and any unbilled HDB upgrading works.
The portal will also require sellers to input information that may affect the transaction such as requiring HDB’s Contra Facility and if they require an Extension of Stay. This will serve to improve both party’s experiences and ensure transparency.
However, there are some limitations to the portal, such as the most important sale factor – price. Currently, the portal draws the estimated price range of the listed HDB flat from the last 6 months within a 200m radius to provide a gauge. Any home that is listed above 10% of the recent highest transacted price will receive a flagged notification. And at the time of writing, after exploring the portal, there seems to be a limitation on how much more HDB will allow you to list your property for. What happens if there has been significant price growth in the area but no transaction within the last 6 months to reflect this growth? For example, a newly MOP-ed BTO cluster that is surrounded by older clusters. Potential sellers in this situation may miss out on achieving a higher price as the most recent transactions may not reflect the actual market environment due to the lack of accurate recent transactions.
The portal also does not limit buyers who may not have a sufficient approved budget from their HFE Letter to arrange a viewing. It currently only requires buyers to have a valid letter to arrange the viewing. This means that some buyers who schedule viewings, even with a valid HFE letter, may still be unqualified to make an offer that falls within the seller’s expectations.
Should you DIY your HDB Sale & Purchase?
Doing it yourself is the most economical way of maximising returns from the sale of your flat. Any part of the cost you save is extra money in the pocket. But, just because you can do it, does it mean you should?
Take this reference for consideration, you can represent yourself in court (hopefully you’d never have to be in such a situation), save on costly lawyer fees – but would you do it? Or as every old folk’s expertise in a cough with phlegm means you are “heaty” and you just need to drink more water – does it mean you should skip on a trip to the doctor’s for medication?
In most cases, engaging a professional is a more assuring route. If you prefer to do it yourself, here is our comprehensive guide on the HDB Resale process. But if you are on the fence, then let us share with you some potential considerations on why you should engage a professional.
Putting Yourself Out There
The HDB’s new resale listing portal serves as another passive method of marketing your property, which might not be that different from a buyer looking through other portals such as PropertyGuru or 99.co. Yes, it may be more ‘legit’ given that HDB is vetting and monitoring these listings. But if a potential buyer never comes across your listing on any portals, then it is a missed opportunity.
That is why at PropertyLimBrothers, we adopt an aggressive marketing approach using targeted ads and Home Tour Videos to market a property to its fullest potential. But hey, you can film one for yourself too and adjust the targeted ads accordingly. You just need to have the time to manage the marketing process. And that brings us to our next point.
Time
After marketing and getting enquiries, you may still need to spend some time to filter out potential buyers amongst the shoppers. You want to make sure that the people you open your house to are sincere buyers and not just here to shop around as a weekend activity. After all, this is your home we are talking about. Having to do all that while juggling your day job may not be worth the stress. Trust us, we know how stressful it can be selling houses.
Another factor to consider is the timeline of your potential buyer. This is usually part of the filtering process where we ensure that the buyer’s timeline for the transaction matches the requirements of our sellers or vice versa. Managing the Option period to ensure that the buyer exercises within the timeframe, syncing up on the resale submission date, managing any extension of stay – all these need to be taken into consideration when you are issuing or receiving an Option To Purchase. It is a delicate process but a satisfying one when all your checkpoints are met.
Dollars and Cents
Then comes the finances, ensuring that the sale of your property is a positive sale and not a negative one is crucial. Especially if your CPF funds are in deficit. You must reimburse the funds back into your Ordinary Account using the sale proceeds. You will also want to be sure that the costs involved for the process are all accounted for. The last thing you want is to get caught in a situation where you find out that you may not be receiving as much as you expected during the sale transaction. But not to worry, there is plenty of information online to aid you through this process if you decide to embark on the DIY journey.
Referencing our earlier consideration, how do you ensure that you are fetching the right price for your property? HDB has set out some prompts through their portal to ensure that sellers get the fair value out of their property based on the most recent transactions. But what if the most recent transactions are not that recent, or if you want to challenge a new record breaking price like this unit at Tiong Bahru? While we are unsure of the limitations of the system at the point of writing, there have already been reports of listings being taken down for justified reasons. But one thing is clear, HDB is keeping a close eye on the system to ensure that the resale portal is a fair market place and prices are kept realistic.
Final Thoughts
Don’t get us wrong, we are excited for this new system. After all, it is a free-to-use tool even for property agents as long as they have been appointed by the HDB owners, or potential buyers with valid HFE letters. There is also sufficient, highly accurate information for buyers who are considering one of the listings on the portal.
We do expect some sellers to utilise the portal for the sale of their property especially if it is a rather simple sale and purchase transaction. However, for more complicated cases, our advice is still to consult with a professional before signing off on the Option To Purchase.
If you find yourself uncertain about navigating the resale market and want guidance to make the most informed choice, do not hesitate to contact one of our consultants here. At PropertyLimBrothers, we are dedicated to providing assistance and ensuring your experience is as seamless as possible.
Disclaimer: Information provided on this website is general in nature and does not constitute financial advice.
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