✅ RESTRICTION
Apart from price, that’s some other factors affected your investment:

a. Additional Buyer Stamp Duty (ABSD) price, that’s some other factors
HDB owner no longer can  “decouple” after 1st Apr 2016. Which means that once you decided to keep HDB and buy another private property then you will have to pay the ABSD.  By selling away the HDB, husband and wife can individually each own a private property separately and one to stay another for investment without paying ABSD.

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b. Rental
Unlike HDB, once you buy a condo you can rent it out immediately regardless the tenants's Citizenship as long as they have to valid pass to stay in Singapore.
For HDB, that’s a Non-Citizen quota to follow, especially for those prime location you may think it’s easy to get tenants, but you might vacant for months due to the quota is reached and you can only look for SC and Malaysian to rent. 

Even your block didn’t hit quota, but as long as that’s a non-SC or Malaysian tenants, you can lease up to 1.5 years. This makes you can only hold deposit up to 1.5 months deposit (based on current market practice) and also potentially higher vacant rate due to higher turnover.

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This is not the restriction for HDB, as HDB are not allow rent to HDB/EC owner unless they fulfill some conditions.

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Moreover, the restriction enhanced for work permit holders from 1st Jan 2017, work permit holders from the manufacturing sector have no longer eligible to rent HDB. This greatly affected near to industrial area which their majority tenants come from those factories. Work permit holders from construction prohibit to rent whole HDB or room since 7th Nov 2006 and marine & process sectors 1st May 2015.
 
HDB flat owners who wish to rent out their whole flat must be a Singapore Citizen (SC). Singapore Permanent Residents (SPR) are not allowed to rent out their flat.

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HDB flat does not allow to sell with tenancy, so when you rented your unit for 1 or 2 years before the lease end you change your plan and thinking to sell your HDB flat you might have to wait until the lease where private condo can sell with tenancy so don’t have this concern.
 
Apart from the rules & regulation from HDB, another concern is the tenant’s profile.
In general, tenants who renting condo will normally have a higher income and education background as well as their work profile. Meaning that you will have lesser chance to encounter problems like delay rental, been not taking care of the apartment or argument with the terms stated in the agreement when some incident happen compare to HDB's tenants.

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CONCLUSION
That’s a lot of restriction for HDB for renting out the apartment compare to private condo, as this the direction of government, every one or 2 years that’s new rules to restrict HDB rental in past few years and the real risk is you won’t know what and when is the next one coming in.

The uncertainty of HDB rules and liquidity is the risk you have to bare for HDB rental. Other restriction HDB owners such as 5 years MOP, 30% MSR Limit, no decoupling.

 

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