Does Facing The Highway Really Affect Your Property Value In Singapore?

As most homeowners are quick to point out, highway-facing units are harder to sell or rent out, and should generally be avoided. This is a nugget of property wisdom that’s been around for decades, and is one of those things we accept because it sounds logical. But rather than go with accepted wisdom, we decided to take a look at the actual numbers, and also try to determine the extent of the impact. Here’s a look at how a highway facing has affected some condo units:

A general snapshot of highway-facing units

We picked a few projects which have units that are clearly highway-facing, and units that point elsewhere. Here’s a look at the general buy/sell transactions that occurred:

In short for all four projects, we can see that for three-bedders or larger, highway facings all resulted in poorer gains. Note that there are 11 project bedrooms comparable here, and seven out of the 11 times, the highway stacks fare worse.  

For smaller one and two-bedders there are instances where highway-facing units have actually performed better. Speculatively, this may have something to do with the buyer demographics for smaller units: one and two-bedders are more frequently bought as rental assets, for example, whereas larger units are more often bought as family homes; and families tend to be more concerned with issues like the view, compared to landlords.

This is just a general picture, however, so we broke it down further into new-to-resale transactions, and resale-to-resale transactions:

New-to-resale transactions

It would seem that, if you bought directly from the developer, highway-facing units fare worse upon resale. Eight of the 11 comparisons saw highway facings provide weaker gains. 

For three-bedders, the margin between the highway and non-highway facings is slim in Parc Riviera and Vacanza @ East. In all other cases though, there’s a clear difference of about five percentage points.

A lot of this boils down to developer pricing (e.g., if the developer put a much higher premium on a non-highway facing, we might have seen weaker gains upon resale). However, it could also be that for new construction, there’s no sense of how noisy the highway facing really is. But for resale projects, buyers can actually visit and experience the noise for themselves – so the impact of the facing becomes much more “real” upon resale. 

Resale-to-resale transactions

We thought this shouldn’t deviate too much from new-to-resale, as both seller and buyer have directly experienced the highway noise. But this is what happened:

Note that the transaction volume is much lower here, so this isn’t too fair a comparison. But that being said, we see an odd flip: for resale-to-resale, the highway-facing units actually seemed to perform better on average.

The reasons behind this are hard to discern, as when it comes to resale-to-resale, there are many more factors at play; from the maintenance of the unit, how much the unit has been renovated, to situations unique to the seller (e.g., unusually low selling price due to an urgent transaction). 

It is also possible that over time, the existing owners have developed ways to mute the highway noise, such as by soundproofing walls and windows. These sorts of improvements can improve buyer perceptions. 

The general takeaway from all this would be that:

• In general, buyers who are counting on resale gains should still avoid highway-facing units, depending on pricing. 
• The highway facing might matter less for smaller units, though there are no guarantees. 
• If you’re buying a new launch, be aware that the impact of the highway-facing may be difficult to visualise, and may be much worse than you think; so be careful not to underestimate this drawback. 

Beyond this, it comes down to the specifics of the project, and the unit’s floor. If you’re situated high enough, or if the developer included some kind of barrier to the sound (e.g., planting dense foliage to absorb the noise), the impact of the highway might be muted.

As an aside, there is one situation in which a highway facing can work to your advantage

If you find the noise can be managed with the right steps (e.g., soundproofing the windows), and you’re the sort to keep the windows closed anyway, the disadvantage to you might be negligible; but you may still be able to get a lower price, on the basis of the unit’s less premium facing. It’s certainly something to think about, if you’re a less picky buyer.