The Unexpected Challenges of Love and Housing in Singapore
Aristotle famously said that love is “composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” In Singapore, modern love looks more like two millennials inhabiting a single Build-To-Order (BTO) flat.
Still, it’s not for lack of trying. As much as we’d like to get swept off our feet in a Romeo and Juliet-style romance where nothing else matters but our paramour, reality beckons.
By the time most couples hit their twenties and thirties, they are confronted with a choice: To BTO or not to BTO? If you’re both looking to get married eventually and have a place of your own, applying for a BTO early seems like a logical choice over buying a resale flat a few years down the road.
It’s a practical choice. Couples often go for BTOs due to the relatively lower absolute price and the fresh-out-of-the-oven 99-year lease.
The downside, though, is time-based. Currently, you’ll have to wait about four years for a BTO flat—six at the height of the pandemic. But that’s not an issue if you’re in it together for the long haul, right?
Not exactly. Even the best-laid plans have a chance of going awry; the most stable relationships aren’t immune to bumps in the road.
So if you’re planning a BTO proposal this Valentine’s Day, maybe take a moment. And take it from someone with firsthand experience—timing matters when you’re part of a BTO breakup.
When my partner and I broke up eight years into our relationship, we were fortunate that we’d only just embarked on our BTO journey.
At that point, we decided to apply for a flat simply because it seemed to be the next logical step for us. At least, it was what everyone around us had done. In fact, with a majority of our friends getting married and moving into their own homes, we felt like we were way behind the curve.
After a failed application in May last year, we secured a good ballot number in the August exercise for a project in Bukit Merah, an area we both loved.
Ironically, our good fortune accelerated some tough conversations we had been putting off. Did we still see ourselves together in the next few years? If we weren’t 100 percent sure of our relationship, would it be wise to start choosing our home and putting down a $2,000 option fee?
In the end, we decided that we were better off as friends. All we sacrificed—in terms of money, at least—was our $10 application fee.
The more (former) couples I spoke to, the more I began to realise that we were one of the lucky ones. As lucky as we can get, at least, given that we’re now both single after spending the bulk of our twenties together.
It’s a small consolation that we never really had to deal with the Gordian knot that arises in many BTO breakups: Finances.
At every step of the BTO process, the stakes are raised, and the amount you stand to lose escalates.
Once you choose a flat and sign an Agreement for Lease, you stand to lose your application fee, option fee, stamp duty and legal fees, and your down payment amounting to 10 percent of the cost of the flat (5 percent if you’re eligible for a staggered down payment).
If you opted for a four-room flat, one of the most common BTO flat types, your downpayment could be anywhere from $25,000 to about $61,000.
And if you break up after collecting your keys, you have to surrender the flat to the Housing and Development Board (HDB). As for the amount of money you’ll get back, it’s apparently up to HDB’s discretion. I surmise, though, that it’s never a good idea to let things get to this stage.
It gets even more complicated when marriage and kids are added to the mix.
In a recent case, a couple with two kids had applied for a BTO while still married and subsequently divorced before getting the keys to the flat. If that isn’t proof that a lot can happen even after you’ve sealed the deal with a marriage certificate (and children), we don’t know what is.
A Family Justice Court originally ruled that the flat would be returned to HDB, and both parties would receive refunds for the amounts they’d paid.
However, the woman eventually won a court appeal for her ex-husband to transfer his share of the flat to her instead.
The judgement came after the woman agreed to reimburse her ex-husband the money he’d paid for the flat. There was also “no good reason” to force the woman to go through the whole house-buying process again, especially since she has two kids to care for, the appeal judge noted.
Thankfully, in Singapore, modern problems have modern solutions. At the very least, you won’t have to see the inside of a courtroom in most BTO breakups.
If you don’t want a pesky breakup to get in between you and your dream BTO apartment, all you have to do is find someone new to replace your ex and take over ownership of their share. Simple.
Romeo and Juliet? At this point, it’s starting to look more like The Apprentice—combing through a sea of candidates to find the right person for the “role”.
There’s nothing like starting a new relationship with so much on the line (break up again and you’ll most definitely have to give up your BTO flat and lose a whole bunch of money). But it has worked for some.
For Joash*, who successfully found a new partner to take over his ex’s share of their BTO flat, it was all simply opportune timing.
The 33-year-old architect had applied for a flat in Bedok North Horizon with his ex in 2017. But cracks began to appear in the relationship. “Instead of growing in the same direction, which I believe was still largely possible, our trajectories grew further apart—up till a point of glaring misalignments.”
One of the “misalignments” was their position on marriage.
“She no longer had the desire to get married and shifted to believing that long-term companionship without the contractual weight of marriage could be more romantic,” Joash says. “I did not agree with that.”
Their clashes about the meaning of marriage presented an insurmountable hurdle. After all, with a BTO on the way, marriage was non-negotiable. Couples who aren’t married at the point of application have three months to submit their marriage certificate to HDB after they collect their keys.
Fast forward to end-2018, the couple inevitably parted ways, leaving their BTO flat in limbo. It was simply too much to think about at the time, Joash said.
It was only in 2019 that his ex started to push for their housing issue to be resolved. Even then, it was still hard for him to discuss the topic with her. “You’ve broken up and you don’t want to interact much anymore. It seems way too transactional a relationship to keep.”
Fortunately, his new partner—a longtime friend who he’d started dating in mid-2019—was open to the idea of taking over the flat from his ex. To quote Joash, it was as if the “stars aligned”, as the flat was nearby several of her friends’ homes and she got to “cut the queue”, in a way.
Today, the couple is happily married and living in the flat, and Joash wouldn’t have it any other way. Despite the risks of losing out on his down payment, he says he doesn’t regret applying for a BTO due to how smoothly things worked out in the end.
“I think it is important to know the full commitment of applying. It means marriage, and with that comes a commitment to grow together, even if individually, but hopefully in the same direction.”
Conversely, as someone who initiated the breakup, Michelle*, 29, is very much anti-BTO proposals.
Back in 2016, her then-boyfriend suggested applying for a BTO, and she’d agreed—it was her first serious relationship and breaking up was the last thing on her mind then. But she didn’t know what exactly she was getting herself into.
He was more financially savvy, so he ended up taking care of all the logistical details, she says, admitting that she wasn’t even aware of the amount of money that she would have to forfeit if things didn’t work out.
“I just left it in his hands. That’s how kind of stupid I was. I wasn’t a financially independent person.”
They hit the jackpot with a four-room flat in one of the most sought-after estates somewhere in central Singapore. About a year into the BTO process, however, Michelle felt her outlook on life shifting.
She slowly realised that she wasn’t keen on settling down and starting a family. The only problem was that her ex was “a complete family person”.
Michelle readily admits that the roughly $20,000 sum they would each have to forfeit if they walked away was a huge factor in trying to make the waning relationship work.
With their BTO flat hanging like a cloud over their heads, they tried to work things out and even took an overseas trip together. But to no avail.
“It was fucking stressful because I don’t think you should be thinking of these things when you’re considering whether should I be with this person.”
