Rethinking Public Flat Pricing to Enhance Retirement Security for Singapore’s Seniors

This paper proposes a redesigned pricing structure for Singapore’s Lease Buyback Scheme to strengthen retirement financing. The modified scheme enhances flexibility in housing-equity release by combining a guaranteed stay period, lifetime occupancy, and preservation of the tail-end lease value for bequest purposes. Through numerical examples, the paper illustrates the contractual mechanics and actuarial trade-offs associated with the proposed design, providing a tractable benchmark for assessing how front-end lease choices and demographic characteristics affect benefit structures and pricing. The proposed approach may also be applied to the different lease tenures available under Singapore’s Short-Term 2-Room Flexi Flat Scheme. Rather than developing an implementation-ready pricing model, the paper presents a framework of the modified schemes providing additional contractual options that could expand homeowners’ choices, support ageing in place, and reduce reliance on government housing and social subsidies. It also discusses the costs and benefits of the proposed designs from the perspectives of both the government and homeowners.