Received our Signing for the Agreement for Lease appointment!
This post might be too long to read, skip to the middle for the actual day of the appointment! If you wanna read what happened before, you can go here for My BTO Journey – Part 1.
It’s the first appointment after our flat selection. Most of our neighbours who even though have selected their flats a week or a month before us still did not receive their appointment dates yet. I figured HDB must be giving out appointment dates to those who are deferring their income assessment (income to be assessed closer to key collection date for the Enhanced Housing Grant) and to those not taking the EHG.
One of my neighbours received their appointment date about 4 days before we did and it falls on a Sunday! The easing of Circuit Breaker measures meant HDB has to rush through 2 months of appointment dates, going through as many applications as possible, even allowing people to do selection of flats, key collections and signing of the agreement for lease on weekends
I was praying for our appointment to fall on a Sunday as I don’t want to take unpaid leave again (still not a confirmed staff and I already took unpaid leave once for my flat selection appointment). My workplace happened to be listed as ‘essential services’, so no Working-from-Home arrangements. I was so happy when I received the text message about our appointment will be on a Sunday and in the afternoon!!!
The website included in their email is broken, so I went to the HDB website to login to MyHDBPage to read the Appointment Letter. Fiancé didn’t receive any SMS or email since I used my own SingPass to login to HDB portal to submit the flat application during the sales launch.
By clicking the reference no. (shown as ‘Ref/Reg No.’) in this page that I cropped out of the image above, led us to another page that is a more detail view of the ‘Application Status’.
Down the page is where I found the PDF of the appointment letter
First page of the letter tells us the appointment details (the address of our selected flat and appointment date and time) and what to do when we’re unable to attend the appointment. There’s also one paragraph in this page that indicates how serious this signing of lease appointment is:
The following page includes a line which translates to applicants who do not sign the Agreement for Lease will be banned from selecting another flat for a year, including BTO sales.
If you’re still studying or in NS or recently graduated, please make sure you can afford to pay for the 5% downpayment. A lot of couples thought ‘Deferred Income Assessment’ means they won’t have to pay anything until key collection, which it NOT TRUE!
Some of my future neighbours who are currently studying or in NS managed to come up with enough cash money to pay for the downpayment! They mentioned that the part time jobs they took didn’t pay them CPF so they’re going to just empty their bank accounts to afford the downpayment. Talk about commitment!
Anyway, continuing on what’s inside the letter, there’s also info on who should attend the appointment and what to bring – SingPass device (I.e. handphone) and NRIC of the main applicants. Also bank account information for HDB to refund the $2,000 option fee taken during flat selection.
The rest of the information in the appointment letter are just general information about flat ownership. I logged out of my MyHDBPage without downloading the PDF. Then something happened. While discussing with my future neighbours on Telegram about the 1st appointment, I logged in to the HDB portal again. Evidence of my signing of lease appointment are GONE!
One other thing I‘ve noticed is that they’ve sneakily changed the Probable Completion Date (PCD) from Q3 to Q4. Seems like it only happened to my block; my neighbours from other block didn’t notice any changes to their PCD.
Actual Signing of Agreement for Lease Appointment.
Fiancé’s bike was sent for repair so we travelled by public transport, ended up reaching Toa Payoh 2 hours early.
After having lunch we head over to HDB Hub. The My Nice Home Gallery is closed due to Covid-19 so we didn’t get to tour the showroom, its usually not opened on Sundays anyway. The model of Punggol Point BTO projects was still there.
After comparing this with Tengah, Canberra and Toa Payoh models that were also on display, my fiancé said Punggol is still the best since its located on the outskirts of the island, which gives the sense of openness, which I kinda agree? We’re literally next to the sea.
In the midst of waiting for the right time to go into the waiting area (only allowed to go in 15 minutes before appointment time, ‘cause COVID-19), I told him some HDB facts I learned from the researches I did before our flat selection. He was shocked to hear that SERS 4-room flats are only 88sqm and smaller.
But it make sense for SERS to have such small flats because most of the residents who selected the flats are elderly people who probably are content about having lesser space to worry about.
Now back to our appointment. We scanned the SafeEntry QR code at the side entrance to the waiting area, got in and scanned his IC at the Q-number kiosk and out comes the familiar waiting slip.
It states that our waiting area is at level 3 instead, I guess it’s the safe-distancing measures for the working HDB officers and visitors. Instead of noticing our waiting area is at level 3, we loitered around the first floor to look at Canberra Vista BTO model, the project that almost made us abandon our Punggol BTO queue number. We make our move to the 3rd floor only after our queue number is called.
We head into the Sales Office and towards the direction of counter 806
What happened: Officer asked for our NRICs for identification, then asked if we’re going for Joint Tenancy (of course), told us what fees will be charged along with the 5% downpayment, asked how much percentage of each of our CPF OA are we going to use, I presented my bank account number for refund of the $2,000 option fee, she told us to use our phones to login to SingPass to go to our MyHDB portal to allow CPF to do it’s thing, and last but not least she printed out a stack of documents for us to sign which basically is a stack of ‘do’s and don’ts’ of owning an HDB flat like what you can’t do at the common corridor, and also informed us the month conservancy fees we are expected to pay when we got the flat. Freakin’ $62.
To summarise:
1) The appointment is really quick. It took 10 minutes max from taking queue number to meeting the HDB officer then leaving the HDB hub
2) They’ll ask you to login through Singpass app, so make sure you have the app installed on your devices
3) They’ll ask if you’re going for joint tenancy and also the percentage of CPF to take out from both applicants (either 50-50, or 40-60 or 100-0, anything) for the downpayment, stamp fees etc.
4) They’ll go through some numbers with you, including the conservancy fees to pay monthly when you’re staying in Punggol. (It’s $62), and the balance in CPF Ordinary Account after deducting the downpayment.
5) Finally, let the HDB officer know your bank and bank account details so they can do the refund of $2k. You can choose to leave it. No need to photocopy your bank book; they just want account number only.
6) You’ll receive the agreement of lease document, so best is to bring that orange file to keep.
And minutes later, we’re done!
That’s all for our 1st appointment after flat selection. The next time we come back here will be in 3Q/4Q of 2023 to collect our keys! SO EXCITING! Really can’t wait.
Cheryl T 
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