Over 80% of the population live in HDB-provided apartment housing. However, the vast majority of those residents own their own apartments, having purchased them from the government (and yes, certain subsidies can apply - up to perhaps 30% the fair value of the property). It's public housing only insofar as it was developed by the government - certainly not free or nearly-free as the phrase might imply in other countries, so it's quite a misleading term to use.
The rule of thumb is 20-30% discount on fair market value. Not 80%! Yes, it's a pretty sweet scheme if you're eligible, but it's not a total giveaway.
If you really could buy a $400k HDB that was comparable to the $2m condo next door then the $2m condo would never even be built, as there would be no market for it.
HDB vs Condo is a lot more.
There are serious restrictions on resale hdb flats which cause them to be priced a lot lower than condos.
These restrictions are deliberate policy to ensure affordable housing and subsidise Citizens and PR.
The major ones:
- You have to be a citizen or PR of at least a few years. This cuts out 1.5 million people.
- You have to meet racial and PR quotas. This limits demand.
- You can't have other properties. This excludes people with overseas property and excludes wealthier Singaporeans from buying HDBs as investment property.
I don't know where people thing the SG government would get these "incredible" subsidies from anyway. It's not the UAE!
That was nothing but a guess, but I think it's reasonable. Labor is the largest component of infrastructure costs by a wide margin, and migrant labor would be at least 5x less than local. Even if it's "only" 2x cheaper my point would stand, though, and that seems very conservative indeed. I'd also like to see some figures.
I don't know what "massive subsidies" you could be referring to. The HDB system is the only one I can think of? Calling it "incredibly" subsidized is kind of overstating it - maybe 20%-30%, and you can only play that game twice, with 6 years in between. I think of it as more like a stock option.
The HDB program costs about a billion a year. There's about 3.3 million citizens, so that's $300 a year each. I don't call that "massive", and I don't see why the country would collapse if it was withdrawn (not that there's any reason it would be).