All Singaporeans are aware that the three most expensive things to purchase in the country are COE premiums, wedding receptions, and of course, housing ownership.
A 30-year-old, 187 square metre jumbo flat in Yishun was just snatched up for $1.038 million on the resale market last month, which is a sky-high price for a non-mature estate.
The aforesaid executive apartment sits on the fourth floor of Block 652 Yishun Ave 4, a 12-storey-block, and it has a remaining lease of 69 years and 4 months, according to official data.
Conveniently enough, it’s located near amenities such as the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Safra Yishun recreational club and Yishun Park.
The Demand for Larger Flats
Firstly, it should be mentioned that jumbo flats are no longer being built by the HDB.
Jumbo HDB flats, which are a combination to two units that expands the average-sized flats of 138sqm to 186sqm, were first introduced by the Housing and Development Board (HDB) in 1989 in an attempt to reduce the oversupply of flats in the Yishun and Woodlands area.
“Oversupply” is a word I never thought I would use in conjunction with property in Singapore, and yet here we are…
There is an estimate of approximately 2,900 jumbo flats in Singapore, which makes them the rare unicorns in the property market.
In terms of size, the 187sqm Yishun flat was the largest among the 29 HDB resale flats that exchanged hands for above $1 million in the last month.
HDB had valued the unit at $930,000, which means that the final buyers had paid a premium price.
Upon analysis, the Head of Research and Content at PropNex Realty concluded that the buyers were willing to pay a higher price for the “generously sized” executive flats because of their limited supply.
It doesn’t matter if Yishun is situated South from the business districts of Singapore; having a spacious living environment is ultimately what the buyers were looking for.
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The Details of the Transaction
According to PropNex property agent Arissa Tan and ERA Realty property agent Frederick Neo, who had been jointly responsible for sealing the deal, they had received an average of five enquiries per day ever since the unit was listed on the resale market.
To ensure that they were only dealing with serious buyers, the pair had bluntly told the potential buyers that they were looking for offers above $1 million.
While the high price shook off many, there were three groups that proffered prices starting from $990,000.
The property agents had rejected the first two offers and accepted the final bid of $1.038 million.
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The sellers were a middle-aged Singaporean couple who were moving to live closer to their adult children.
According to the sellers, they had previously bought the recess area in front of their flat as well to fashion it into a “mini garden”.
Besides that, the jumbo unit has four bedrooms, three toilets, and two separate living rooms.
Owing to the fact that the jumbo flat is two units combined, owners are free to reconfigure the layout because it has plaster walls that can be taken down.
Ms Arissa Tan and Mr Frederick Neo had been confident that the jumbo flat could be sold at a high price, which would ease the middle-aged couples move into a new home, and believed that they “just needed to wait for the right buyers to come along”.
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As reality would prove it, their instincts were correct.
The Yishun Sale is an “Outlier”
For any prospective house buyer out there, however, rest assured in the knowledge the Yishun jumbo flat sale is probably just an “outlier”.
For one, many executive apartments and larger five-room flats in the Yishun area are much older, with remaining leases of 70 years and below.
Therefore, it is unlikely for the flats in that area to continuously fetch for prices above $1 million.
In fact, Ms Christine Sun, the Senior Vice-President of Research and Analytics from OrangeTee and Tie affirmed that the median price of five-room flats in Yishun are around S$573,000, which is half the price of the jumbo flat transaction.
The previous and first million-dollar HDB resale transaction for a non-mature estate was in Block 851 Hougang Central.
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That two-storey executive maisonette had been 177sqm large.
Typically, only popular and mature estates in the Bishan, Toa Payoh, Queenstown and the central area tend to fetch such high prices.
Thus, the probability of seeing flats in Yishun being sold for more than a million isn’t high.
Secondly, the current owners of such jumbo flats need to be willing to sell them first, before another deal like pops up again.
Don’t hold your breaths on that possibility though; most of the current owners are perfectly content with their living spaces.
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Featured Images: YouTube (ThePropertyFriend)
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