CPF Withdrawal Limit for Housing Mortgages

Mr Png Eng Huat asked 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.

Mrs Josephine Teo: (a) Number of CPF members who have reached their withdrawal limits

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

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

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.