HDB’s Open Booking of Flats on 12 October 2022

At midnight on 12 October 2022, HDB released a fresh supply of flats on their website as part of their program called Open Booking of Flats.

Open Booking allows you to apply for a flat online and to book a unit as soon as the next working day. Some of these flats are those that were not taken up during sale of balance exercises and the re-offer of balance flats. They are then made available for open booking.

As it was on a first come first serve basis, many Singaporeans eagerly waited till midnight to apply and get a queue number for their appointment to choose their flat. With less than 500 units being offered, an uneven split of units due to ethnic quota policies, and a HDB resale market that is increasingly out of reach for many Singaporeans, the open booking of flats was the one rare opportunity for Singaporeans to secure subsidised housing in 2022 at an expedited rate.

HDB’s Portal Could not Cope with the Demand

The Nightmare for many begins at the stroke of midnight when many Singaporeans could not even get through the first step of the process as they were greeted with an error message on the website.

Some comments from people on TikTok who had trouble navigating the portal are set out below.

One person even shared that he had to deal with a COVID-19 infection while dealing with the frustrating system.

A compilation of grievances faced by Applicants may be found in my TikTok video, which you can watch below. In this video, I compiled the experiences of those in our Property Telegram group and others who reached out to me privately to speak up.

@thatproperty.guy

OPEN BOOKING WAS A NIGHTMARE AND DISASTER. It must have been so frustrating for many of you. I would like to hear how bad it was for you, let me know if you had similae struggles in the comments! #hdb #sghdb #hdbopenbooking #openbooking2022 #openbookingflat #openbooking #hdbtok #thatpropertyguy

♬ original sound – Property Guy – HDB Helpline – Shaik Amar – That Property Guy

In addition to the inability of the system to cope with the demand, many applicants also faced further obstacles in the form of inexplicable bugs and session time limits.

Bugs in the System

For those who somehow managed to navigate the portal, some were confronted with the error message below in the wee hours of the morning.

Without any recourse to a HDB helpline at that ungodly hour, many were left frustrated as they were identified by the system as a single seeking to buy a 2-room flexi flat when, in fact, they were applicants with a family nucleus which makes them eligible to book a larger flat with an income ceiling of SGD 14,000.

Although some managed to bypass the bug by stating that their income was below SGD 7,000 for the purposes of navigating the erroneous portal, others hit a dead end.

Session Expiry Messages

You would think that the nightmare would end there, even after bypassing the bug, you would finally get your shot at the elusive “open booking” of flats. The next set of hurdles faced by many was something that, if I had to go through, I may, quite frankly, punch the screen of my MacBook.

After hours of trying to apply and cheating the system to bypass the error message at 3.00am in the morning many were faced with a ‘session expired message” which forced them to repeat the entire process.

Some lucky ones, with herculean patience and lady luck on their side, did manage to submit their application to book a flat.

Ridiculous Queue Numbers

Those with the patience manage to get through the system and finally submit their application to book a flat. However after hours of struggle, they were served with the coup de grâce – an unrealistic and horrible queue number.

Ideally, HDB’s system should stop applicants once the number of applicants is 2 – 3 times more than the number of units offered. Alas, that was not the case. It bears emphasis here that every application costs $10 to make.

HDB’s Apology to an Applicant

One Singaporean, Mr Royston Albert, emailed HDB to voice his frustrations about the open booking of flats experience. Mr Albert also faced some of the errors and bugs set out in this article. A portion of his email to HDB is reproduced below.

On midnight of 12 October, I had been online trying to apply for the open booking of flats. I was practically online from midnight up till 2.30am, clicking on my mouse non-stop because the HDB website kept crashing and showing the ‘Gateway Timeout’ page due to high traffic! My fingers were practically numb just desperately trying to get an opportunity to apply for a flat for my family and I. I find this really ridiculous and as a Singapore Citizen, it feels like we are being treated like a bunch of rats just thrown into a pit and asked to just escape on your own if and when you can! Why are we being treated this way??…

…when i finally tried to apply, it kept prompting me that our income exceeded 7K and thus we were not allowed to apply for the 2 room flexi. THIS WAS CLEARLY A FLAW IN YOUR SYSTEM!!! Because at no point in time had I actually come across any page that told me to choose the type of flats in the system! In the end, I had to reduce my salary scale and then it went through and by that time my queue number was 1568!!! This is totally unacceptable!!! And HDB is collecting $10 from all these applications despite knowing that there are only 60 or 100 over flats available?? WHY IS THAT SO??

In his email, which Wake Up Singapore has had sight of, he asked for the open booking to be voided and re-done in a manner that was fair. He also vowed to take this matter up with his elected member of parliament.

“Unexpectedly high” volume

In HDB’s response dated 25 October 2022 HDB apologised for “the system slowness and the inconvenience caused”.

It explained that the internet traffic on the website was “unexpectedly high” at the start of the application period. HDB shared that the traffic volume encountered was about three times the volume compared to the Build-To-Order/Sale of Balance Flats launches, which have far more flats on sale.

HDB admitted that there was a system glitch which prompted applicants about the income ceiling of SGD 7,000. According to HDB, the glitch has since been resolved. The full text of the first paragraph of HDB’s response is appended below for ease of reference.