Questions for you, with my thoughts appended
1) do you intend to live in the PC over the long term (>5 years, or perhaps post retirement)?
- if you don’t, and intend to scale down your lifestyle, good to maintain the current HDB if you and your spouse are open to moving back to the current HDB. Rationale being the HDB was purchased under the previous ruling, hence you can continue to flexibly hang on to your existing PC, or even buy more PCs, while keeping costs manageable with your HDB (self-stay)
2) do you intend to leave a legacy for your kids by passing on property(ies) to them?
- if not, sell the HDB and reinvest the funds in lower risk instruments, that are fairly liquid and can be used to repay your PC should interest rates rise. Will not suggest buying another PC at this point, given your age and retirement timeline. ABSD will also soak up a hefty portion of your retirement savings.
- if yes, keep the HDB. This creates the additional property for source of investment income, and allow you to eventually downsize your lifestyle while keeping the PC.
Having said all that, if it were me, I will still sell the HDB. I know this is a very contrarian view compared to what the rest of the forumers have expressed. My thoughts as follow :
1) the HDB is poorly located, and rental will only be more difficult with lower yields as the flat ages. PropertyGuru is flooded with tonnes of flats >40 years, looking for buyers, and some of these have been stealthily dropping their asking prices over the past six months with no avail (case in point, my JC classmate’s 120sqm 5-room flat at Bt Merah has been advertising for $5XXk for the past 6 months, with no takers). Rental is competitive. There will come a point, where you cannot sell nor rent your flat, and have no choice but to live in it yourself.
2) You are relying on the HDB rental to cover the PC’s instalment. That in itself is a dangerous assumption, given you are looking at retirement in a few years. I am not sure how much savings/investments you have, but it is now timely to revisit some of these core assumptions, and see if they still hold water.
Good luck!