I REFER to Mr Lee Wee Chong's letter, 'Govt should relook income qualifying levels' (ST, Oct 7). My husband and I are in a similar situation, except that our monthly household income is slightly more than $3,000.
Though we qualify to apply for a new four-room or bigger unit, we wanted to buy a smaller flat to save some money on the various charges.
Every cent that we can save means a lot to us as we are struggling to support our parents, who are in their 60s.
But we are not eligible for a new three-room flat under the Walk-in-Selection, Build-to-Order and balloting schemes, due to the income ceiling of $3,000.
The only option we have is to buy in the open market, where the flats are much older and expensive.
The current HDB income ceiling - of $2,000 for two-room, $3,000 for three- room and $8,000 for four-room and bigger flats - is not helping us to save enough in our Central Provident Fund for old age as our funds would be used up to pay for the bank loan and hefty interest charges that keep rising.
Moreover, when both of us reach 62 years of age, we would not be able to take a reverse-mortgage loan because our current flat will have a remaining lease of fewer than 50 years at the end of the loan period.
Phang Geak Lean (Ms)
