In mature estates of the Housing Board Board BTO exercise of the year, units in Hougang and Jurong East had a greater level of demand than those in the non-mature estates in the same neighbourhood.
Due to a beeline of home searchers, there was a high number of applications for the four-room apartments in Hougang, one of the larger numbers of people to apply for a non-mature estate in recent years.
There were 459 of these flats available across two separate developments, both located in the Hougang area: Citrine and Kovan Wellspring. As of 5pm on Tuesday, 10,602 people had shown interest in these apartments (Aug 17).
First-time applicants only have a 1% chance of receiving a unit.
For a second time around, those with little or no experience have fewer and fewer possibilities, since they are outnumbered by almost 55 applications for each vacant space.
Only around one in over six will receive a unit, which is much lower than the number of applications for the 102 five-room apartments in Hougang Citrine.
Due to the large number of first-time applicants in Jurong East, there would be 11 candidates competing for each of the 240 four-room apartments.
Competition is not as fierce in mature Kallang/Whampoa, Queenstown, and Tampines estates.
More than five first-time applicants will vie for each of the 226 four-room apartments at Towner Residences in Kallang/Whampoa, which is the biggest kind of flat offered in the project.
Despite the project having the longest wait period of more than five years, five first-time applicants will compete for each of the 534 four-room apartments at Queen’s Arc.
In comparison to other neighborhoods, the Tampines GreenQuartz and Tampines GreenJade had much less applications, as many as two candidates competed for each of the 881 five-room apartments that were available.
Demand in the non-mature neighborhoods is bucking the trend of house purchasers preferring older neighborhoods. Because there are fewer units on offer in non-mature estates, it is probable the increase in the selling volume here is attributable to that.
In this current batch of buildings, about half of the units are situated in established neighborhoods.
Hougang BTO location is also a strong consideration, said Ms Christine Sun, OrangeTee & Tie’s senior vice-president of research and analytics.
For about the same price as a private condominium, the Kovan Wellspring condo, which is next to the Kovan MRT station on the North-East Line, is very appealing.
Some condominium apartments at Stars of Kovan, located across the street, typically cost $1,650 per square foot (psf), which is equivalent to between $1.5 million and $1.7 million for a 1,000 square foot unit.
Although pricing starts at $289,000 for a three-room apartment and $413,000 for a four-room flat at Kovan Wellspring, costs go up to $413,000 for a four-room flat.
Maris Stella High School and the Paya Lebar Methodist Girls’ School are situated near the Hougang Citrine project, making it a popular location for parents with small children.
Projected completion in the first quarter of 2025 further enhances buyer appeal.
They are the most inexpensive in this sales exercise, starting at $199,000 for a three-room apartment, $324,000 for a four-room flat, and $392,000 for a five-room unit.
By 5 p.m., all seven BTO initiatives in five estates had received more funding than they had available. This concludes the sales demonstration at 11:59 PM on Tuesday.
