DEMAND was strong on day one of the Housing Board's latest sale of new flats - with more than five applicants for every flat on offer.
The HDB yesterday launched 438 new flats for its April half-yearly sale. By 5pm, a total of 2,652 applications had been received.
These flats are located in 23 HDB towns and estates islandwide, such as Sengkang, Yishun and Jurong West.
Most of the flats offered - 313 units - are four-room units.
There are 80 five-room units, 35 executive flats and just 10 units of three-room premium flats.
The greatest concentration of the new flats on offer is in Sengkang, Yishun and Jurong West, with 85, 61, and 46 units respectively.
The other towns, such as Punggol, Tampines and Woodlands, have about 30 units or fewer each to offer.
Some popular HDB towns such as Ang Mo Kio, Jurong East and Queenstown have just three units for sale.
Prices start from $143,000 for a 93sqm, four-room unit in Marsiling Rise, Woodlands.
In Sengkang, the 77 four-room flats on offer are going for $183,000 to $288,000 each.
But in the estate of Bukit Merah, four-room flats being offered at Telok Blangah Street 31 are in a much higher price bracket of $400,000 to $468,000 each.
As these are new flats, only households with gross monthly incomes of not more than $8,000 can apply.
Interested buyers can apply online from today until next Monday, said the HDB.
Balloting results will be released from May 13 at 2pm.
PropNex chief executive Mohd Ismail said: 'I would expect demand to be extremely strong because, at the moment, new flat buyers have no choice but to go for the build-to-order or DBSS (design, build and sell scheme) flats.'
Most of the flats offered in the half-yearly sale have been completed, which means buyers can move in quickly.
Also, some of the flats are in mature estates, which are hard to find, he added.
Mr Ismail said some of the new flats on offer are priced about 20 per cent below resale prices.
HDB resale prices have started to fall, albeit slightly.
The previous half-yearly sale was launched in October last year, when HDB offered 683 new flats.
That particular sale saw more than 7,000 applications in the first couple of days.
Source: Straits times, 14 April 2009
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