My bittersweet feelings about selling our first home

It was the sort of flat the writer could have grown old in. But life had other plans.

- Zhaki Abdullah

About 10 months ago, strangers made their way into my flat while I was not at home.

Then, in November, I signed over my home to them.

And so it was that my wife and I ended up selling the first home we could call our own, a five-room Build-To-Order (BTO) unit in north-east Singapore that we had lived in for almost a decade.

Despite the skyrocketing prices of some resale HDB flats—a five-room unit just a 15-minute walk away from ours sold for $1.2 million in July 2024—selling our flat was not something that had crossed our minds when we first moved in.

This is despite an increasing number of people selling their BTO flats within a year of fulfilling their minimum occupation period (MOP)—a number that had doubled between 2016 and 2020, the HDB said in 2021.

I had thought that we would spend many more years in our flat, perhaps even growing old and spending our retirement years in the same apartment we'd purchased as a newly married couple.

So, what changed? We didn't sell to upgrade or cash in. As you will see, circumstances made us sell a place we called home. But the experience has made us think of many things—above all, what is home in Singapore, where people often move from one dwelling to another. This is the story of how I arrived at an answer.

A PLACE OF OUR OWN

My wife and I got the keys to our flat about a decade ago, moving in over the Chinese New Year long weekend in 2015.

We were excited to finally have a place to call our own and to raise a family, comprising just us and our first child then.

Between the four walls of the unassuming flat, we saw our son grow from a precocious toddler to a confident primary-schooler, as his interests in British cultural exports shifted from Peppa Pig and Thomas the Tank Engine to Harry Potter and Liverpool football club, much to the bemusement of his parents, who didn't follow football.