Five-room HDB flat in Tiong Bahru View sold for record $1.588 mil

This Tiong Bahru View estate was developed as a replacement housing under the Selective Enbloc Redevelopment Scheme for the now-demolished public housing flats at 110, 111, 113, and 114 Bukit Merah View. (Map: EdgeProp Singapore)

A five-room HDB flat at 9B Boon Tiong Road in Bukit Merah has been sold for a record $1.588 million ($ 1,317 psf).

This makes it the priciest HDB resale flat sold in Singapore to date. It surpasses the previous record of $1.569 million, which was achieved in January when a five-room Design, Build and Sell (DBSS) flat at 139A Lorong 1A Toa Payoh changed hands.

The 1,206 sq ft, five-room flat at Boon Tiong Road is above the 35th floor and is eight years into its 99-year lease, which commenced in January 2016. The estate is called Tiong Bahru View and comprises four blocks – 9A, 9B, 10A, and 10B Boon Tiong Road.

According to a press release from PropNex Realty on April 30, one of its property agents represented the seller and the option to purchase was exercised on April 28. As of April 30, the transaction has not yet been reflected in the official HDB transaction data.

Recent resale transactions can be seen on EdgeProp's property analytics tool Landlens. (Map: EdgeProp Singapore)

According to Lim Yong Hock, key executive officer at PropNex, home buyers are willing to pay more than $1 million for resale flats with top attributes. These qualities include high floor with spectacular views, a relatively lengthy lease balance, and location in a conveniently located estate within walking distance to an MRT station.

“The Boon Tiong Road flat essentially checks all the boxes. 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,” says Lim.

The Tiong Bahru View estate has recorded 43 flats that have been sold for at least $1 million since July 2018.

Specifically, block 9B Boon Tiong Road has seen 13 million-dollar flats sell on the secondary market – comprising 3 four-room flats and 10 five-room flats (excluding the latest record-breaking deal). Of the 10 five-room flats, their resale prices ranged from $1.05 million to $1.4 million.

248 million-dollar flats sold in 1Q2024

The resale public housing market has seen the record price broken three times, so far this year.

In January, a 1,259 sq ft five-room DBSS flat in 138C Lorong 1A Toa Payoh fetched $1.54 million ($1,223 psf). It exceeded the reigning record price at the time, which was the sale of a jumbo 1,894 sq ft HDB in Moh Guan Terrace that transacted for $1.5 million last June.

But the record resale price was broken within the month when a different 1,259 sq ft, five-room flat at the neighbouring block, 139A Lorong 1A Toa Payoh, was sold for $1.568 million ($1,246 psf). Three months later, the record was smashed again with the sale of the Boon Tiong Road flat on April 28.

Data from PropNex indicates that there has been a continued increase in the number of HDB flats resold for at least $1 million, with 369 such flats resold in 2022, and 469 units sold in 2023. In 1Q2024, 185 units of million-dollar resale flats changed hands - marking the highest such sales in a quarter.

This month, 63 such flats were resold, taking the total to 248 units in roughly the first four months of 2024. PropNex anticipates that the number of million-dollar resale flats in 2024 will remain elevated, potentially surpassing 2023’s figure.

“Despite the higher number of million-dollar flats sold, they still accounted for a small fraction of the overall HDB resale flat transactions, at around 2.8% in the first four months of 2024,” says Lim.

He adds: “Million-dollar resale flats aside, we observe that the general demand for HDB resale flats remains healthy, with the transaction volume rising by 8% q-o-q to 7,068 flats in 1Q2024. For the whole of 2024, we are projecting HDB resale volume to trend at around 26,000 to 27,000 units.”