Housing finance for the ageing Singapore population : The potential of the Home Equity Conversion Scheme

Singapore, like most developed countries, has a rapidly ‘greying’ population. However, unlike the Western countries where the development of a ‘housing continuum’ to meet the wide spectrum of ageing needs has resulted in a plethora of housing-finance schemes to cater for the diversified financial circumstances of the elderly, Singapore has not grappled yet with the problem of housing for the elderly, especially in terms of finance, despite its changing demographic and socio-economic trends. This paper evaluates the applicability of some of the housing-finance schemes that are tailored for the elderly in the West, especially the Home Equity Conversion Scheme (HECS), to Singapore. The paper concludes that of all the variants of HECS, the Sale-Leaseback (SL) has the greatest potential for resolving the housing finance problem of the elderly in Singapore.