New HDB resale record: 5-room flat in Tiong Bahru sold for $1.58m

A five-room HDB flat in Tiong Bahru has broken the record for the highest resale price. 

On Tuesday (April 30), real estate agency PropNex announced that a unit at 9B Boon Tiong Road changed hands for $1.588 million.

This beats the previous record of $1.569 million for a five-room DBSS (Design, Build and Sell Scheme) flat at 139A Lorong 1A Toa Payoh in January this year. 

DBSS units are HDB flats built by private developers that come with unique external features, according to HDB. 

The flat at Boon Tiong Road is a 112-sq m unit located above the 35th floor. It has a 99-year lease, which commenced in January 2016. 

The block has 40 storeys and is part of the Tiong Bahru View project, which comprises three other blocks.

The project is a replacement housing site under the Selective En-bloc Redevelopment Scheme (Sers) for four blocks at Bukit Merah View which have been demolished. 

Commenting on the new resale record, Lim Yong Hock, key executive officer at PropNex said that home owners are willing to pay more than $1 million for a resale flat with "top attributes". 

These include flats that are located near the city, on a high floor, and in an estate that is near an MRT station. 

"The Boon Tiong Road flat essentially checks all the boxes," said Lim. 

"Furthermore, we have also observed a steady demand for five-room resale flats in city fringe locations, as these are not typically offered in HDB's Build-To-Order (BTO) projects in choice locations closer to the city." 

Before the sale of the Boon Tiong Road unit, there were three other resale HDB flats that fetched $1.5 million or more. 

Two are located in Toa Payoh and were sold in January this year. The other is an adjoined flat at Moh Guan Terrace in Bukit Merah, which was sold in June 2023. 

Million-dollar flats are 'a very small proportion': Desmond Lee 

Despite the increase in the number of million-dollar resale flats, Minister for National Development Desmond Lee maintained that this is not a reflection of higher resale prices, reported The Straits Times.

"These are headliners, and the number of flats that are sold for $1 million and more remains a very small proportion of the overall volume of resale transactions that are carried out every year," said Lee, who was responding to reporters' questions at an event in Boon Lay on April 27.

He added that many of these flats have special attributes which contribute to their hefty price tags, such as being rarer or jumbo units, or being near a mall. 

The minister also commented on the release of HDB resale and private housing data for the first quarter of 2024, which revealed that resale prices increased by 1.8 per cent in the first three months of the year. 

"Season by season, quarter by quarter, there will be fluctuations in (HDB) resale prices. But if you look at the trends, year by year, last year’s resale price growth was much lower than the year before, 2022, and 2022’s lower than the year before that," said Lee. 

HDB resale prices rose by 4.9 per cent in 2023, compared to 10.4 per cent in 2022 and 12.7 per cent in 2021. 

Lee explained that this could be due to several reasons, including how HDB has caught up on the construction delays caused by Covid-19 and the continued ramping up of BTO launches. 

ALSO READ: 'It's worth the price': 10 enquiries received for $2m Toa Payoh flat listing, says agent

claudiatan@asiaone.com