A FIVE-ROOM flat in Boon Tiong Road in Bukit Merah has changed hands at S$1,588,000, making it the priciest Housing and Development Board (HDB) unit resold in Singapore to date.

This is according to PropNex Realty, who on Tuesday (Apr 30) announced that one of its property agents oversaw the unit’s transaction on Apr 28.

The real estate agency added that the price “smashed” the previous record of about S$1,569,000 achieved for the resale of a five-room Design, Build and Sell Scheme flat in Lorong 1A Toa Payoh in January 2024.

Located above the 35th floor of the 40-storey 9B Boon Tiong Road, the 112-square-metre resale flat has a 99-year lease commencing from January 2016. The unit is part of the HDB project known as Tiong Bahru View, which comprises blocks 9A, 9B, 10A and 10B.

Lim Yong Hock, PropNex’s key executive officer, said that the unit “essentially checks all the boxes” given its “top attributes” of proximity to the city, being on a high floor, and having a relatively lengthy lease balance.

“Furthermore, we also observe steady demand for five-room resale flats in city-fringe locations, as five-room flats are typically not offered in HDB’s Build-To-Order projects in choice locations closer to the city.”

A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU

Tuesday, 12 pm

Property Insights

Get an exclusive analysis of real estate and property news in Singapore and beyond.

Sign Up

Tiong Bahru View is the replacement housing site under Singapore’s selective en bloc redevelopment scheme for blocks at 110, 111, 113 and 114 Bukit Merah View, which have since been demolished.

PropNex said that the transaction of the S$1.59 million resale flat is yet to be reflected in HDB data as at Apr 30, which indicates there are 43 HDB flats in Tiong Bahru View sold for at least S$1 million since July 2018.

At 9B Boon Tiong Road alone, 13 million-dollar resale flats were sold, specifically three four-roomers and 10 five-roomers excluding the latest record-breaking deal.

PropNex noted that the 10 units of five-room resale flats at Block 9B had fetched prices ranging between S$1.05 million and S$1.4 million.

Prior to the latest transaction at 9B Boon Tiong Road, three other HDB flats had been resold for S$1.5 million, two of which are located in Toa Payoh and were resold in January 2024. Another is an adjoined flat in Moh Guan Terrace in Bukit Merah transacted in June 2023. 

Continued increase

PropNex has observed a continued increase in million-dollar resale flats in recent years, and said that it anticipates such transactions to remain elevated in 2024 to potentially surpass 2023 when 469 million-dollar HDB units were resold.

Lim remarked that recent million-dollar flat resale deals “still accounted for a small fraction” of overall HDB resale flat transactions.

The general demand for HDB resale flats also remains “healthy”, in his view. “For the whole of 2024, we are projecting HDB resale volume to trend at around 26,000 to 27,000 units,” added the key executive.