First Prime Location BTO Launched & It Costs Up to a Record Price of $582K Before Grants

By now, you’d have known that the authorities have taken steps to prevent more million-dollar resale HDB flats. After all, public housing should be affordable.

The scheme, known as Prime Location Public Housing (PLH), works by applying different resale rules for specific BTO projects. Last month, it was announced that the first BTO to be included in this scheme would be a BTO at the Rochor Road district.

Today, details of the BTO flats are revealed, and it turned out that other than new resale rules that might cause others to think twice before buying them for profit, the selling price might make them think twice, too.

First Prime Location BTO Launched & It Costs Up to a Record Price of $582K Before Grants

Today, HDB launched 6,299 flats for sale today, under the November 2021 Build-To-Order (BTO) and Sale of Balance Flats (SBF) exercises.

For the non-mature towns, they’re located at Choa Chu Kang, Hougang, Jurong West and Tengah, while there’s only one project in a mature town at Kallang / Whampoa area.

Before grants, they’ll start from $72,000 to $511,000, with the most expensive ones at the mature town.

This time, HDB also included one more category: the Prime Location Public Housing Model, which is located at “Central Area” and is called “River Peak I and II”

The price? A 4-room flat starts from a whopping $582,000.

That is a record selling price; the highest one so far for a 4-room BTO flat is located at Queenstown and it cost $540,000, and get this: the River Peak BTO flats are smaller, too, at 88 sqm compared to the Queenstown BTO that’s at 93 sqm.

Located next to Rochor Canal (which could explain its name), it’s also within walking distance from Jalan Besar MRT Station. Heck, if you want to, you can walk to Bugis Junction, too, or head to Raffles Hospital for a cup of Starbucks.

According to HDB, the transacted prices for a 4-room flat around the area are between $630,000 to $770,000.

The BTO project will be ready by the second quarter of 2028.

Suffice to say, despite its high price tag, it’d definitely be oversubscribed, so let’s recap the new rules for this PLH BTO.

Prime Location Public Housing (PLH)

For a start, unlike the current restriction of five years, PLH flats can only be sold in the resale market after a decade.

This means we would only see listings of the this BTO project on 2038. I hope we’ve already known who our next Prime Minister is.

What’s more, homeowners will not be able to put up their whole flat for rent after 10 years, though they may do so for individual rooms.

These rules will apply to the first and subsequent buyers.

Also, when owners want to sell the flat, they’ll have pay 6% of the resale price or valuation, whichever is higher, to HDB. This is only for the first resale transaction, so HDB thanks you in advance in 2038.

Now, to the golden question: how does it look like?

Here you go:

You can also view images of other BTO projects here:

Here are the selling prices of the BTO flats:

Online application of the flats starts from today (17 November) to 23 November. You can click here to…erm, shop online for your dream home.

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Featured Image: HDB