Yes we finally got the NOTICE TO COLLECT KEYS TO NEW FLAT email from HDB, in mid-Jul 2021. The delay of 7 months due to COVID-19 is unforeseen, fortunately my family was not in the rush to move, and the delay might have helped to jack up the resale price for my old flat. 🤑
Wait… before you can even receive that email from HDB, you should have settled the legal and administrative matters. Since the last correspondence with my solicitor was more than 4 years ago, it would be necessary to check back with them on the status of your purchase. It took my hubby a while to come into contact with a human, based on the office number in our documents. After all, 4 years is a long period, the solicitor moved to a new address and changed their hotline. We would also need to factor in some delay in response as the new executive assigned to your case, could only be in office on certain days (Work-From-Home on other days).
Key collection is straight-forward. Other than following the instructions of not arriving more than 15 minutes before your appointment (as part of COVID-19 measures), you will need to be prepared to pay the 1st month Service and Conservancy Charges (SC/CC) via NETS, and bring along the identification cards/ Birth Certificates of the flat owners and authorised occupiers. One important note – you will need to show this email to the HDB staff situated at the entrance to facilitate your entry into Toa Payoh HDB Hub. They are very stringent about this, and we appreciate these efforts as part of COVID-19 measures.
The key collection process was swift. Once you have passed the “gate checks”, you just need to obtain a queue number from the machine (check with the friendly HDB staff if you cannot find it, or you can follow the person in front of you), and wait. When your queue number is flashed, the display will also indicate which desk you should go to.
At the desk, the HDB staff would check though the documents submitted, and collect the SC/CC payment from you, via NETS. After running through the standard instructions and such, you will receive a HDB tote bag, a red leader key pouch, and 3 nicely-labelled sets of keys for letter box, main gate and main door.
What’s next? Naturally for new flat owners, we should be excited to enter the place asap. However that wasn’t really an auspicious date to begin with, hence we gave it a miss. Check out my next post on what did we do next…
Planning for my Bidadari 3Gen BTO 