Analysing 10 Years of District 12 Boutique Condo Transactions: Insights Into What Drives Profitability

District 12 isn’t usually the first place you’d expect to find outperformers. Mention Balestier or Novena, and most buyers think of supper spots and old apartments before they think of condos. And to be frank, it is true that D12 is rather heavily built-up, and available land parcels are small; but there are boutique condos here that have punched above their weight, given the tight surroundings. 

So, have boutique condos here managed to hold their own as investments? We analysed 10 years of resale transactions (2014–2024) to find out.

What do we mean by a boutique condo?

In general, these are condos with 150 units or fewer, though many in District 12 fall well below that threshold; some have fewer than 50 units. Because of their small scale, units are few and transactions may be rare. In such cases (e.g., only one transaction over more than a year), we’ve left those developments out of the analysis.

For consistency, we’ve focused on transactions from 2014 to 2024. This 10-year window gives us a clearer picture of how boutique condos have performed over time, as starting it from just five years ago would mainly reflect the COVID disruption. 

The entire dataset for our study spans 2,364 condos in total, with the following breakdown: