This Old Executive Condo Was Once Seen As Too Expensive — 20 Years Later, Has It Become A Value Buy?

La Casa is a 444-unit development on Woodlands Drive 16 in District 25, and was launched for sale as an executive condo (EC) in 2004. Back then, sentiment in Singapore’s property market was still shaken by the dot-com crisis in 2000 and the outbreak of SARS in 2003.

While buying sentiment among Singaporean homebuyers was recovering when La Casa first hit the market, the strong price growth that would define the residential market in the late 2000s had not yet materialised.

Against this backdrop, the first few EC projects like La Casa had a tough start when they entered the housing market. Moreover, the price trajectory at La Casa also went against the grain in terms of price expectations for an EC.

Based on transaction data compiled by Stacked, the average launch price at La Casa was higher than average EC prices, as well as the broader District 25 (D25) non-landed residential market at the time. Overall, its launch price was unpalatable to some buyers at the time, since it was expected that ECs would be a type of affordable housing – and most ECs up till then had very competitive prices.

But now that over 20 years have passed since La Casa entered the market, buyers today are often drawn to the development for different reasons, such as the lower price quantum that resale units there typically fetch despite the sizable units available.

So, did La Casa turn out better than its initial cynics expected, and is it still a viable purchase for homeowners today after its privatisation?