Why Some Prime District Condo Owners Make Millions While Others Lose Millions

Among Singaporeans less familiar with the property market, news like “1-in-5 prime region properties make a loss” often comes as a shock.

Even though it’s not a very significant time frame - a single quarter says very little about the wider property market, in any region - it challenges lay assumptions. A good number of Singaporeans associate prime region properties with being the very best residential assets, recession resistant and somehow infallible.

What’s interesting though, is the divergence of opinion when you speak to industry players. Among veteran investors, property agents, or analysts, the idea of prime region properties being more volatile is unsurprising. This is something we’ve seen for decades, especially if you include areas like Sentosa.

Case in point:

In the same week in May this year, a 2,885 sq ft four-bedder at Ardmore Park sold for $12.25 million, giving its seller a $3.55 million gain. In contrast however, was a 4,478 sq ft penthouse at Marina Bay Residences. It sold for $12 million, versus $15.6 million in 2007, resulting in a $3.6 million loss; a loss that’s much worse if you consider the very long holding period of around 19 years.

In 2025, Marina One Residences recorded 30 loss-making transactions against just one profitable deal. OUE Twin Peaks recorded 19 loss-making transactions and one gain. I could go on with the examples, but you get the idea: to those who follow the market, larger losses - commensurate with larger gains - are unsurprising for prime or luxury properties.

It’s quite a jarring contrast with the common misconception out there, that the areas with “rich people’s houses” are a bastion of profitability; or at least capital retention. This is perhaps enhanced by the “freehold” label, which in some prime areas is a norm rather than an exception.

That said, the same Business Times found that three of the five biggest gains, in absolute dollars, were also in the CCR.

The largest was a 4,704 sq ft unit at Leedon Residence, for example, which sold for $14.3 million in July. The seller had bought it for $10.55 million in 2017, resulting in a $3.75 million gain.

So the CCR is not simply weaker or stronger than the rest of Singapore. It just tends to produce some of the market’s biggest losses and also its biggest gains; sometimes within the same period. As such, many industry veterans have to regard it as volatile; especially if you want to look only at its regional averages.

There’s also a more recent change, which could make prime districts even less uniform

A somewhat recent change is the introduction (reintroduction?) of regular owner-occupiers to certain prime areas.

Consider River Green. At launch, its 527 sq ft two-bedders started from around $1.5 million, while the 603 sq ft premium two-bedders started from about $1.72 million. This was in River Valley, beside Great World MRT. The smaller unit sizes made for a more affordable quantum; and it was angled not so much at landlords, but at families.

This is radically different from, say, a 4,000 sq ft freehold unit in Ardmore Park; a sort of trophy home that caters to a very different demographic.

This is all accompanied by wider attempts to decentralise; efforts are being made to transform certain stretches, like the Orchard belt, into a true neighbourhood. Certain areas within the Core Central Region (CCR), like Great World, are naturally further along in this process.

This fragmentation makes planning an exit strategy much harder.

In the past, buyers had a clearer sense of who buyers in the CCR would be: affluent foreigners and landlords for the most part. Buyers who would be less concerned with a high quantum, and who would more universally value certain features such as very high ceilings.

(In my experience, that’s a feature liked by anyone who doesn’t have to get up there to clean the ceiling or change a lightbulb by themselves).

If we go back to the ‘00s or earlier, I can recall a time when - in the opinion of many agents - the prestige of the location alone was enough to support demand.

These assumptions have now become less reliable, as the buyer demographic will be less uniform. An own-stay buyer of a lower-quantum two-bedder may eventually be selling to another owner-occupier; not a landlord. This means the future buyer has more grounded concerns like school access, green spaces, etc. which don’t usually matter as much to tenants.

The scale of certain projects may also matter. Someone seeking exclusivity may like a project with 50 or fewer units; but this may run contrary to family buyers, who want a larger condo footprint with more in the way of family facilities.

Older trophy homes can face a different form of risk too, should their traditional buyer pool narrows. Their absolute quantum is usually too high for ordinary owner-occupiers now moving into prime areas; and as these older units age, they may lack the contemporary prestige needed to draw true luxury buyers. I don’t want to point fingers here, but if you take a look at the older freehold luxury condos in areas like Holland V, or even some parts of Orchard…well they were luxury in their day, but there are fringe-region condos that now challenge them in terms of facility quality.

At that point, simple size - which leads to an excessive quantum - may be less of a selling point and more of a drawback. These units can see thinner transaction volumes, and weaker percentage gains than newer, lower-quantum counterparts.

So perhaps it’s time to stop generalising prime region performance so much

Rather than look at a single regional average, we may have to start divvying up the results based on different segments.

As we often do in Stacked Pro articles, for instance, we may need to focus on comparisons within the same overall sizes or configurations. It’s likely more important to know, for instance, the performance of two-bedders or three-bedders specifically in prime regions.

I understand, of course, that there may be limited scope to do this in a quick news report - especially a short quarterly update. But it’s also important that casual readers, outside the industry, understand how limited the usefulness of the regional average has become - especially in an increasingly complex area like the Core Central Region.

Meanwhile in other property news…

• How do you decide your next upgrade after selling a 4-room flat? Should it be a 5-room flat next, or perhaps a private condo? And if so, how large or how new? Check out some practical guidelines we provided in this week’s Q&A.
• Lentor Modern's early buyers have made a whopping $312K on average - and check out our insights on how well the Lentor area’s new condos have been doing of late (hint: really well)
• Why are foreign entities swooping in on our commercial properties? Here’s the inside look.
• What are some of the top affordable options for living within one kilometre of Maris Stella High School? Check out the details with Stacked Pro.

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