With effect from 22/1/2024, HDB rental has eased their ruling from 6 pax to 8 pax per household for 4 room and above till 31/12/2026. With these changes, I have received many such tenants who wants to stay together with 8 pax. However, their budget has not increased in tandem with the number of occupants.
The Tenants Perspective
From tenants view, they want the cheapest as possible while the Landlords want to get the highest as possible which is a normal scenario in this rental market driven by demand and supply.
However tenants must understand that not many Landlords are OK to house individual bachelors in their home due to past experience these workers may not be able to return the house in good condition. I have personally witnessed this myself ! Thus it is not wrong for Landlords to charge a little higher even though they can offset the security deposit from such tenants as the damages may be more than the deposit amount secured.
Take a scenario for a 3 bedders HDB flat with 8 pax at a rent of $4000 per month which works out to $500 per pax. Of course even if you add the Water/Electricity usages which can cost anything between $300 to $500 (depends if there is an aircon usage), that works out to only $560 per pax (average).
Nowadays for room rental twin sharing per room for aircon usage is $1200 (minimum), which works out to $600 per pax but cooking is not allowed for room rental usually.
Take a look at the salary for the S-Pass workers in the table below (source: MOM website). You can definitely afford the above scenario that I mentioned.
Tell me if $500 – $560 rental per pax is still not affordable for them to collectively stay together and freedom of usage of the house for cooking and privacy?
Foreigners who chose to work in Singapore must also know that cost of living in Singapore is rising so fast like the rockets going to the moon. Even the locals are loathing about it. At least the foreigners has a choice to stay here and work while the locals do not.
You want to earn the Singapore Dollars, you have to spend the Singapore Dollar equivalent on cost of living.
For more details about the Rental Policy check this Article on Insider
To know more about my real estate ventures visit my Real Estate Page
