WPQs 17 September 2007: Applications for Collective Sale and Figures on Residential Units

I know I have been remiss in updating this blog over the past couple of months. That's because I have been incredibly busy, with the day job, my work with MARUAH (website under construction and soon to be updated), co-authoring a legal text, and moving house (my life is now owned by UOB...). Plus, I was travelling when Parliament sat in November, so I missed those sittings and have nothing to post from that. So I had left the NMP hat off for some time, just taking a break from it.

But with the new year comes a new round of Parliamentary sittings. The next sitting is on 21 January 2008. And after that will be the Budget debates. So I'm putting my NMP hat back on, which means this blog will be active again.

I've got a backlog of PQs from September and October 2007 to post here -- while I had posted my speeches in Parliament on the CPF reforms, the changes in the en bloc legislation, the Section 377A repeal petition and the Penal Code amendments, I've not posted the PQs from those sittings.

I'm going to try to clear the backlog before 21 January, starting with these. These two WPQs were filed to elicit information for use in my speech on the proposed changes to the Land Titles (Strata) Act.

WPQs

STRATA TITLES BOARD

(Applications for Collective Sale)

1. Mr Siew Kum Hong: To ask the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Law in respect of estates for which applications for collective sale were made to the Strata Titles Board on or after 1 January 2005 (a) what was the average age of each estate at the time of application, broken down by district; (b) what was the average percentage of owners that had signed the collective sales agreement as at the time of application; and (c) what were the common reasons for objections cited or raised by minority owners to the Board.

Prof S Jayakumar: For collective sale applications made between 1 Jan 05 and 31 Aug 07 and which were approved, the average age of all the developments at the time of application was 25.9 years.

The average age of the developments in the Core Central Region (CCR), Rest of Central Region (RCR) and Outside Central Region (OCR) was 25.3, 28.4 and 23.9 years respectively.

The average percentage of owners of units in these developments who had signed the collective sales agreement as at the time of application was 89.2%. About half of these developments attained a consent level of 90% and above.

The common reasons for objections raised by minority owners to the Strata Titles Boards were that owners would suffer financial loss; and that the transaction was not done in good faith in view of factors such as sale price of the lots and common property, the method of distributing the sale proceeds and the relationship of the purchaser to any of the subsidiary proprietors.

STRATA TITLES BOARD

(Figures on Residential Units)

3. Mr Siew Kum Hong: To ask the Minister for National Development in respect of estates for which the Strata Titles Board had made orders for collective sale on or after 1 January 2005 and for which the purchasers had obtained planning permission for redevelopment (a) what was the total number of residential units in the estates originally, broken down by district; and (b) what was the total number of residential units in the approved redevelopments, broken down by district.

Mr Mah Bow Tan: Since 1 January 2005, a total of 3,700 private residential units have been issued Strata Titles Board orders for collective sale and for which the purchasers have been granted planning permission. They comprise 1,156 units in the Core Central Region (CCR)[1], 1,551 units in the Rest of Central Region (RCR)[2] and 993 units Outside Central Region (OCR). When redeveloped, there will be 8,303 new units, comprising 2,126 units in the CCR, 3,213 units in the RCR and 2,964 units in the OCR.

[1] Postal Districts, 9, 10, 11, Downtown Core and Sentosa.
[2] Central Region outside Postal Districts 9, 10, 11, Downtown Core and Sentosa.