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101homeventures
A designer and her husband's Wabi Sabi 4rm SBF
Guide to choosing your SBF neighbourhood/area
79
Hey Communa fam! SBFs have been more frequent and abundant recently so I thought of sharing my thought process behind my application, in case you want to apply in the future too! For info, we are a first timer married couple applying for a 4 room flat. Our priority is to get a flat ASAP so we can have our own home soon! First and foremost we left out neighbourhoods that had an application rate of >5. There is no science to it but I just felt like <20% chance is too low. 
Did you know that HDB gives out queue numbers up to 200% of the flats available? This is to account for drop outs or cancelled applications. E.g. if Sembawang has 34 flats available, they may give out queue numbers up to 68! On a side note why do some neighbourhoods have ridiculous application rates like ahem Hougang. 
We also striked out Tengah just because 🤪 
The second step was to shortlist neighbourhoods <4km from our parents place so we can apply for the proximity scheme! Anything to increase our chances! 
Our last criteria was to eliminate neighbourhoods that have too few flats available. It's a bit stressful to have super limited options in case we got a queue number. We also eliminated Ang Mo Kio because most of their flats were only available in 2027/28 😵💫 That leaves us with Toa Payoh or Woodlands! Guess what we went for ;)
8 October 2025
