Singapore HDB sale exercise (III)

Coming soon...
INTRODUCTION
Continuation from my earlier articles, "Singapore HDB sale exercise" and "Singapore HDB sale exercise (II)"

PROBLEMS
A queue of people with heterogeneous needs and desires make people angry. E.g. in the bank, they have a special counter for opening of account, which takes long time, because imagine how angry people behind who just need to do a 2 minutes simple transaction will be. Here, imagine some whose situation is special and find a typically much undesired unit very suitable for them, but now have to queue together with 10240 people while probably 99% of them will not consider the unity they wanted. Yet, unlike in the bank queue, some of these 99% might change their mind halfway and choose this initially unconsidered unit.

SOLUTIONS
Actually, HDB has already split the locations into 3 sectors. Currently, those who do not desire a unit in the matured estate do not need to queue together with so many others. However, it seems even smaller sectors are necessary. ... What's my idea?

MY VIEWS
May be we should suggest to HDB to allow people to indicate more specifically what they wanted. People who are not aiming for Toa Payoh might lose out due to the many applicants who are attracted by the Toa Payoh units. But then again, you might not lose out since your desired unit might still be there as these applicants probably won't consider other locations.

However, in the current situation, it is very likely that someone who has been given an early queue number to choose to change their mind and choose a unit in a previously not being considered estate. This might not end here, when people change mind last minute, they are likely to regret it, and might end up giving up even though sacrificing 2K option fee, or soon they'll be selling and buying again. Both of these I doubt the HDB welcomes.

I am thinking of using a survey to gather information from applicants if they have specific choices in mind already, and where are these units. Since it is not a first come first serve system, HDB can put up the available unit in advance, allow people to make up their mind on what and where they are aiming for. Then, using the survey results, HDB can appropriately categorize people into different but shorter queues. E.g. if someone stated that he is only eyeing for Ang Mo Kio, he doesn't need to queue together with people who are not eyeing for Ang Mo Kio. Also, encourage people to limit their choice by a priority system. E.g. for estate A, those who only interested in this estate will be the first batch, those who have two interested estates will be the 2nd batch, and so on, while those who aim for any estate will be the last batch in all the queues for all these estates.

This reminds me of MOE. HDB should study the Joint Admission Exercise where students apply for their U/JC/Poly and see how they might incorporate this system in selling/distributing their limited available flats.