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.
The challenge for many buyers today isn't access to information.
It's interpreting that information in a way that makes sense for their finances, goals, and stage of life.
Over time, that's also why we decided to work with agents who shared the same data-driven and advisory-led approach behind our editorial, consultants who could help readers think through decisions more objectively, rather than simply push transactions.
Today, the team has worked with more than 2,000 clients across over $5B in property transactions.
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:
| Number of units | Number of condos | In D12 Only | % Boutique In D12 |
| 50 or less | 1086 | 49 | 5% |
| 51 to 150 | 621 | 48 | 8% |
| 151 or more | 656 | 16 | 2% |
Within D12 alone, there were 49 developments with 50 units or fewer (around five per cent of our total boutique set), and another 48 projects that still fall within our boutique range. In fact, in the whole of D12, only 16 projects had more than 150 units – so we can see that boutique projects are the mainstay of the district, and larger projects here are quite rare.
Before diving into D12, let’s examine the overall performance of boutique condos in Singapore
| Year/Units | 0 to 50 | 51 – 150 | More than 150 |
| 2014 | $1,327 | $1,507 | $1,327 |
| 2015 | $1,252 | $1,473 | $1,257 |
| 2016 | $1,286 | $1,528 | $1,341 |
| 2017 | $1,286 | $1,547 | $1,390 |
| 2018 | $1,445 | $1,711 | $1,452 |
| 2019 | $1,416 | $1,804 | $1,594 |
| 2020 | $1,423 | $1,648 | $1,581 |
| 2021 | $1,466 | $1,786 | $1,682 |
| 2022 | $1,577 | $1,904 | $1,806 |
| 2023 | $1,782 | $2,016 | $1,964 |
| 2024 | $1,717 | $1,955 | $1,985 |
| Annualised | 2.61% | 2.64% | 4.11% |
Over the past decade, boutique projects of 50 units across Singapore saw gains of 2.61 per cent. The bigger boutique condos (51 to 150 unit range) saw almost exactly the same performance at 2.64 per cent. By contrast, full-scale projects of more than 150 units pulled ahead, averaging 4.11 per cent annualised growth.
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