Written Answer by Mrs Josephine Teo, Minister for Manpower, to Parliamentary Question on using CPF for housing

NOTICE PAPER NO. 1535 OF 2019 FOR THE SITTING ON 11 FEBRUARY 2019
QUESTION NO. 1138 FOR WRITTEN ANSWER

MP: Mr Png Eng Huat

To ask the Minister for Manpower as of January 2019
(a) what is the number of members who have reached their CPF Withdrawal Limit for their properties and are using other means to service their housing mortgages;
(b) what is the number of CPF members who appealed to use their Special and/or Retirement Accounts to help service their properties and of this number, how many have been given approval to do so. 

Answer

(a) Number of CPF members who have reached their withdrawal limits

1. Currently, about 740,000 property owners use their CPF savings to service their housing instalments. Of these, about 6,000 (0.8%) property owners have reached their withdrawal limits for housing and are using other means to finance their mortgage. They include members who have reached the Valuation Limit (VL) but cannot use more of their CPF savings for housing as they do not have at least the Basic Retirement Sum (BRS), or members who took bank loans and have reached the Withdrawal Limit (WL) cap set at 120% VL.

(b) Number of CPF members who appeal to use Special and/or Retirement Account savings

2. The Special Account (SA) and Retirement Account (RA) savings are safeguarded for members’ retirement needs, and generally cannot be used for housing purposes.

3. That said, CPF Board exercised flexibility in some cases. For example, CPF Board has allowed CPF members to use their RA savings that originated from their Ordinary Account (OA) to pay for their housing on appeal, even if their RA savings are below the BRS. In 2018, CPF Board granted about 8,000 appeals to use their RA savings for housing. The Board took into account the member’s retirement adequacy and outstanding loan amount in deciding whether an exception could be made.