A few weeks back, I covered Frankel Estate in East Singapore and readers asked to see more of the area: specifically, Siglap, Dunbar as well as Kembangan. I didn’t want to bombard you guys with too much of the East in one go, so I’ve covered some other estates in between but today, we’re back in the area again. This time, to see Jalan Kembangan and part of the landed enclave north of Frankel.
Now, Kembangan has landed homes spanning a huge area, so let me be a bit more specific about exactly which part we’re viewing. The area we’re covering is the parallelogram (4-sided region) west of Jalan Kembangan, namely the area bounded by Jalan Kembangan, Lengkong Empat, Lengkong Satu, and Lengkong Tiga. (There are actually two more roads in this “Lengkong series” – Lengkong Lima and Lengkong Enam that I didn’t manage to cover in this tour as they fall out of the geographical boundary of my walkabout. If you’re not conversant in Malay, Satu is 1, Dua is 2, Tiga is 3, Empat is 4, etc!)
As you can see in the MasterPlan excerpt above, a key landmark of the area is MINDS-Towner Garden School (the light yellow plot with the letter “E” in the middle.”) Southwest of the School is a short row of commercial units but, alas, nothing very exciting. It’s mainly “South Union Park”, an “understated restaurant with a laid-back vibe focusing on burgers, pasta & desserts” (description lifted from Google), and some tuition/enrichment centres.
Most of the units were closed when I was there in the morning (weekday.) That’s MINDS Towner Gardens School ahead (white/yellow/blue building.) To the left of the green railing (beyond the left edge of the photo) is the row of commercial units I mentioned. To the right of the school are Lengkong Lima and Lengkong Enam. Although there is no playground within the area I am showing you today, there are two playgrounds and a large interim park if you head down Lengkong Lima. (The closest is Taman Kembangan Playground, which is 4-5 houses away from Jalan Kembangan.)
Note: if you’re not familiar with MINDS, it is “one of the largest and oldest social service agencies caring for persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families.” (Description as per their website.)
I did a quick search of the sales history and was rather impressed to find out that the last 2 sales in Jalan Kembangan were Semi-Ds, which went for $3.25 million and $3.05 million respectively. Albeit being in 2021, post-Covid, it has been difficult to find freehold TERRACE houses at that price, let alone semi-Ds, so these transacted prices are quite interesting.
Jalan Kembangan is a huge but not very busy road (given its size.) It sort of reminds me of my first Kovan tour, which I had described as bustling and well-connected but too well-used for my liking. The road here is similar, but it’s nowhere as busy, thankfully.
The road in question. Houses line both sides of the road, but only the ones on the left have their gates opening onto Jalan Kembangan. The ones on the right (for this section) have their sides facing Jalan Kembangan and the main doors opening onto the smaller side roads off Jalan Kembangan.As you can see, each house has a small buffer from the main road. The driveway extends a little past the gate- which makes it easier for cars to exit/enter. (You can see a red car entering one of the houses in this photo.) However, pedestrians will sometimes need to walk on the main road as the pathway is sometimes obstructed.Side view of the properties on the other side of Jalan Kembangan. You can see that they’re pretty sizeable units! The poster across the road is advertising “Inno Montessori” but from what I can see, Inno Montessori is located with the commercial units I previously mentioned and not across the road. (Unless they have 2 units?)
In fact, one of the things that stood out to me about this landed enclave is the fact that there were no childcare centres dotted amongst the houses (that I saw at least! (Inno Montessori is housed with other commercial units and not directly in between residential properties, if that makes sense.)) I’m sure it’s very convenient for parents to have their childcare centre a few houses away but, it’s not that… shall we say, convenient for the person living right next to the childcare centre!
Lengkong Lima, which connects you to the interim park, Jalan Senang, and the landed houses over there. (There are also a few industrial buildings – including an umbrella factory and distillery that way, as well as some shophouses, with local coffeeshops.)Before we venture down Lengkong Satu (which is the road on the other side of Towners School), here’s a shot of Lengkong Dua, the road connecting Jalan Kembangan and Lengkong Empat. (Note that there’s a temple down this way.)
Lengkong Empat has condos on one side and houses on the other, so the condo residents will likely have to drive down Jalan Kembangan and its off-shoot roads to get home. (Although they can also enter via Jalan Eunos and Jalan Daud.) Despite that, this area was very quiet when I visited. This is in contrast to Jalan Daud – I had to drive through Jalan Daud to get onto Jalan Eunos to make it to the expressway back to town and the roads were quite well-traversed. I was one in a line-up of 5 waiting to exit onto the main road (which was really busy! Once you turn onto Jalan Eunos, Google Maps asks you to keep right to U-turn so that you can head onto the expressway but it’s not really possible with the non-stop morning traffic, so you need to make a big round.)
Lengkong Empat – behind Lengkong Empat is the PIE, so you can’t enter/exit from the north, only from the south, east, and west (i.e. Jalan Kembangan, Jalan Senyum, Jalan Sayang, etc. There are actually a lot of roads that connect the properties here to the main roads, which could be why I didn’t find any of them particularly crowded. For example, to the east of Jalan Kembangan, there are 3 more small roads that turn in off Sims Avenue East. You can even get to the landed houses by way of Chai Chee Drive, I believe!)
Despite the proximity of the PIE, I would say the neighbourhood doesn’t get too much road noise. I didn’t even know we were anywhere near the expressway till I came back and checked the Masterplan! Possibly due to the tall condos helping to block the noise?
To the right of this T-junction are more landed houses. Some of them have been zoned 1.6 on the Masterplan so there may be potential to “en bloc” and develop them into a small condo, barring further restrictions.We take a left turn at the T-junction and this is what we see. The road isn’t as spacious as Jalan Kembangan but thanks to the single white line, there aren’t cars parked on the street. However, your friends and family will still be able to find parking as, just a stone’s throw down (I’ll show pictures in a bit), is an HDB estate. (They can park at the HDB car park.)Terrace houses along Lengkong Empat. As you can see this part of the landed estate feels a bit more crowded, due to the taller buildings. A recently sold house along Lengkong Empat, in between the condos, and with a functional bus stop right outside! (Only one bus plies this road, if I remember correctly – Bus 42.)To the left is the other end of Lengkong Dua. (Plenty of properties in this area are construction/renovation FYI – the one above is just one example.)As you can see, despite the absence of parking restrictions along Lengkong Dua, the roads are quite clear (although I do spy some parking cones!)Walking further down Lengkong Empat, we see more terrace houses. Some of these have nice long driveways! (Can house several cars.)The end of Lengkong Empat leads on to Lengkong Tiga, on the left. There is no through road to the right. (It is a condo, Grosvenor View.)Walk along Lengkong Tiga and you see Jalan Daud and the HDB estate to your right. (This connects you to Jalan Eunos, more landed houses, and the PIE.)There are landed houses on the left and you can see these have spectacularly long driveways. Great if you are having a party or own a lot of cars but, otherwise, some may not view this as the most efficient use of land…Turning to Jalan Daud on the right. Old architecture.Several of the homes here adorned the plants outside with Chinese New Year decorations.If you squint, you’ll see that some parts of the HDB estate are actually on the lower-lying ground than the landed houses.More terrace houses on the left.Another shot so you can fully appreciate how big the driveways are. However, I feel these are more functional than the previous ones as they’re wider.As mentioned, the HDB car park (to the right) is where your visitors can park if your house doesn’t have such a long driveway! There is also a playground here if your kids don’t want to trek all the way over to the Jalan Senang side.Last row of terrace houses along Lengkong Empat.Before we find ourselves at Kampong Kembangan Community Centre. There are more play facilities here, such as a ball court. There is a little cul-de-sac of houses here (so these houses don’t line the “main” or rather busier Lengkong Empat.Next, we come to a roundabout. One way brings us out of the Jalan Kembangan estate whilst the other brings us back to where we started (Lengkong Dua.) (I’d mentioned that this estate is within walking distance of Kembangan MRT and you can see the MRT line running on the right of the photo.) Roundabouts aren’t very common in Singapore, so this bit actually reminded me of a small-scale Serangoon Gardens.Cross the road and you’ll find Jalan Senang Linear Park, a quiet path that will take you to the commercial units at Jalan Senang. (There, you’ll find Boon Kee Kway Teow which has been around since 1976 and has a 4.4 review on Google. I wanted to try it, but even at 8-9 in the morning, it was quite full, so I decided to give it a miss. There’s also a small Asian grocer, a pet shop, and a tiny gym.)
I head back to where we started as there’s one more road we have not covered: Lengkong Satu.
The entrance to Lengkong Satu is behind South Union Park. (Commercial units to the left and Lengkong Satu to the right, so you can see how close they are to each other.)There is also what appears to be a temple – Fa Shi Lin Temple, according to the Masterplan (although the land is zoned residential) at the entrance.Lengkong Satu has larger houses, mostly semi-Ds.
The road here is so wide, even with a row of cars parked on one side, cars can still turn into the units. (I know as a car returned home as I was parallel parking, and turned into his/her home without any issues, even though I was right opposite his/her gate! (I wasn’t parking there, but was reversing past it.)
However, as you can see, it’s quite close to Towner School, so I’m not sure if the noise would spill over.Photo to demonstrate to you the potential for plot ratio maximisation here!Looking down Lengkong Satu towards the Lengkong Empat condos. As you can see, even though there are high-rise buildings nearby, (most of) the area still feels relatively open.
We’re now back to where we started and thus the end of today’s tour.
Before I end, parents probably want to know about the Primary Schools nearby. There are 3 within the much-discussed 1 km mark of most of the houses (but not all, so please do check for the specific property you are interested in.) These are: Telok Kurau Primary School, Eunos Primary School and East Coast Primary School.
Besides Inno Montessori, there are more than 10 childcare centers, more than 9 kindergartens, and more than 10 pre-schools within 1 km of the area, so definitely no lack of options! (You might actually have TOO much choice! (An interesting thing about choice is that some studies have shown that having too much choice isn’t actually desirable as it doesn’t make you happier!)
But anyway, back to the topic at hand: property!
I thought the area was very interesting as, although just across the road from Frankel, it felt like a completely different area. Although spacious, it doesn’t have the village-y (or kampong-y, in the Singaporean context) feel that Frankel does. However, it’s probably worth noting that the last Frankel semi-D transacted at $6.75 million (3 Jan 2023) so quite a bit higher than the last 2 Jalan Kembangan transactions. (If we widen our view to properties within 1 km, the most recent semi-D transactions were all above $4 million.)
So, given all the above, how do you find today’s estate? Let me know in the comments!
TJ’s interest in property was sparked after returning from the UK- where balconies are not counted in one’s square footage!- and finding that the Singapore property had totally changed in the 7 years she was away. When not reading and watching articles & videos about property, she is busy cooking and baking for friends, family & her blog Greedygirlgourmet
TJ
11 min read
I prefer Frankel but as you pointed out it comes at a price!
How about the area zoned as Kembangan Estate to the west of Jalan Kembangan? Would love to read your views on it.
Thanks for the feedback! Will check out the area!