Not much difference in selling land through the confirmed list or reserved list

The Real Estate Developers Association of Singapore (REDAS) recently remarked that the government should stop releasing land to the confirmed list and instead use the reserved list. Seriously, the only reason that I can think of for doing that is for the property developers to maintain the current sky high property prices.

The reserved list now currently seems to only serve the purpose of allowing property developers to cherry pick sites and driving up land sale prices, resulting in overdevelopment and underdevelopment of sites. If you're looking at the sale of land through the free market concept, it does not matter if the land is sold through the confirmed list or the reserved list. Property developers will only bid for the land if they feel that they can profit in the sale of units after developing the land. If the land site is not in an ideal location, it doesn't matter if the site is in the reserved or confirmed list.

This will also allow the smaller property developer players to employ innovative methods to keep the cost of land low and yet make decent profits. This will in a way even the playing field for all developers, and keep the prices in check through competition.

In fact, my personal opinion is to sell the land through fixing the price of the units (maybe psf) and let the market innovate by requesting the developers to submit proposals for the kind of property that they will be building given this constraint. This is then true innovation at work.

I hope the government remembers the real reason why are they building so much HDB flats and releasing so much land. The citizens sure do.