alt Hacker News> the forced savings has a wildly inflationary effect on housing prices
Housing prices are inflationary independent of CPF, because flats in Singapore are powerful investment vehicles. For HDB flats, however, there is means-testing and rebates to the amount of ~50%, sufficient for anyone on the 30th percentile and above to afford.
Since the government controls the supplies of HDBs, it controls the price inflation.
So it would be more accurate to say “housing prices are inflationary because the government wants them to be”.
Yet this introduces a ton of new problems as well. In order to keep them “good investments” it becomes ever increasing prices with ever increasing rebates to help lower income afford them.
But eventually prices will stop going up.