On 1 May, in his May Day Rally 2023 speech, Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said something about Build-to-Order (BTO) flats which he kena quite jia lat jia lat from the netizens – at least from what we observed from the online space lah.
Everything you need to know from DPM Lawrence Wong’s May Day Rally 2023 speech
If you were too busy going Hari Raya visiting over the public holiday or too lazy to read the news to know what he said, these are basically what he said:
- BTO flats are affordable because our income also increased even though the flat prices have increased.
- A typical household currently uses less than 25% of their income to service their home loan.
- Last time when police wear short pants (in the 1980 lah), the price of a four-room BTO flat in a new town was about $40,000, and the median household income was about $900.
- Now, although the price of a similar flat in a non-mature estate like Bukit Batok costs about $350,000, which is nearly 10 times more since 1980, the median household income has also risen 10 times more – it is now $9,000 today.
However, what he said triggered a lot of people because a lot of people don’t understand what median household income means.
Wait ah, don’t trigger first, Calm down please leng jing and let lao niang explain to you why you should not monkey see monkey do, read headlines only want to angry and kpkb.
First and foremost hor, median household income is not the same as average household income. In Mathematics, the median is defined as the middle value of a sorted list of numbers. The middle number is found by ordering the numbers.
For example, if a group of 5 students take a test and their marks are 5, 7, 7, 8, and 10, then the median mark is 7.
Here is a simple illustration to explain what median means:
If you STILL don’t understand, what median means hor, you need to go back to primary school to learn your mathematics liao sia. Cannot help you.
DPM Lawrence Wong is not wrong in using Median Household Income because in statistics hor, using a median is usually more descriptive than using an average of a data set.
And hor, according to this Seedly article, the Median Singaporean Household Income is $10,099 in 2022 leh. So hor DPM Lawrence Wong quote $9,000 in his May Day Rally speech as an example is already discounted liao.
Also, don’t forget first-time BTO applicants still got housing grants hor. First-time buyers with a Median Household Income of $9,000 or less a month can receive up to $80,000 in Enhanced Housing Grant ok.
In other words, lower-income households get more housing grants, as high as $80,000!
Say real one lah. If the HDB flats in Singapore are really so unaffordable, then how come 80% of our population is living in HDB flats leh?
