A limited supply of new flats and intense competition among home buyers drove prices of Housing Board (HDB) resale flats to a historic high last year. Demand for flats has been buoyed by a recovering economy, low-interest rates and construction delays of new Build-To-Order (BTO) flats. The HDB public housing data shows that prices surged 12.7 per cent for the whole of 2021, which was the highest annual growth recorded since 2010, when prices grew by 14.1 per cent (Charts 1 and 2). In comparison, prices rose 5 per cent in 2020. For the fourth quarter of last year, prices climbed a seven consecutive quarter by 3.4 per cent, a faster pace than the 2.9 per cent growth in Q3.