A bowl of mee pok

We did some study and collated the following data.

We can see that in 1980, the price of a 3-room HDB flat in Queenstown is $20,000. The salary of a factory operator was $500 a month or $6,000 a year then. Going by the Price-to-Income ratio, the price of 3-room flat in Queenstown then was 3.33 times of annual salary of a factory operator. At ratio less than 5, it is considered quite affordable to buy the flat.

By 2013, 33 years later, the price of a 3-room HDB flat in Queenstown has risen to $335,000 while the salary of a factory operator is only $1,100 a month or $13,200 a year. The Price-to-Income ratio in this case is calculated to be 25.4, grossly unaffordable to a factory operator.

Indeed, in the last 33 years since 1980, the salary of an operator goes up roughly 2 times ($500 to $1,100) while a 3 room flat in Queenstown goes up 17 times ($20,000 to $335,000)!

Even the price of a bowl of noodle goes up 3 times from $1 in 1980 to the current $3, much more than the 2 times increase in an operator’s salary.

We thought that it would be a good idea to share the data with all here.

Thank you.

Han Hui Hui & Leong Sze Hian