Deciding on prime location BTO flats: What one year of such launches shows

Ten BTO projects have been launched under the prime location public housing model in its first year. Insight looks at what can be gleaned from these launches, and what’s next.

- Michelle Ng

About 30 per cent of new BuildTo-Order (BTO) flats launched in the last five sales exercises came under the prime location public housing (PLH) model, which the Government rolled out in November 2021 to curb the "lottery effect" of owning flats in these areas.

In the one year since, the Housing Board has launched 10 such projects in the Central, Queenstown, Bukit Merah and Kallang/ Whampoa areas - all of which are sought-after mature estates with their fair share of million-dollar HDB flats.

While the first two PLH projects in Rochor River Peaks I and II drew three times more applicants than each of the available fourroom flats just one day into a weeklong sales exercise, application rates for most subsequent projects have tapered off.

The model's stricter buying and selling conditions, along with the larger-than-expected supply of such flats, may have sieved out speculative buyers hoping to flip their property, some property analysts told Insight.

Of the 27,685 new flats launched since November 2021, a total of 8,343 units came under the PLH model. Every BTO sales exercise has had at least one PLH project.

In the recently concluded November BTO sales exercise alone, about 29 per cent of the flats - or 2,798 out of the total 9,655 units came under the PLH model.

MORE PLH FLATS THAN EXPECTED

Most of the analysts interviewed said they were surprised at the overall high proportion of PLH flats, with some expecting the model to be more niche and applied more stringently.

Professor Sing Tien Foo, director of the Institute of Real Estate and Urban Studies at the National University of Singapore NUS), said the number of PLH flats launched was more than what he had expected, which was a surprise to him given that the model is still relatively new.

“The market may need time to absorb these new conditions attached to the PLH model,” he said.