Two three-bedders launched in the East in 2019, eleven square feet apart in size. The cheaper one is now $320,000 behind, and the reason has almost nothing to do with the units.
In 2019 you could buy a 904 sqft three-bedder at The Jovell for about $1.11 million. Or a 915 sqft three-bedder at Treasure at Tampines for about $1.22 million. Jovell was cheaper and eleven square feet smaller. Today the Jovell unit resells at about $1.34 million. The Treasure unit resells at about $1.66 million.
That's a $320,000 gap between two homes of almost exactly the same size, bought in the same year, in the same part of Singapore. The Treasure buyer paid $110,000 more at the start. They're $210,000 further ahead today.
Source: matched purchase-and-sale records, Square Foot Research and URA, as at 30 July 2026.
Sim Lian at Treasure and Hong Leong Holdings at Jovell both took roughly three years to sell out, which was normal back then, and both raised prices as they went. The last Jovell units sold at $1,516 psf. The last Treasure units sold at $1,584 psf.
So Jovell started cheaper and finished cheaper. You'd think a lower purchase price gives the buyer more room to make money over the years. That's the whole reason people chase a cheaper entry in the first place.
| Jovell, 904 sqft | Treasure, 915 sqft | |
|---|---|---|
| Units of this size in the project | 101 | 263 |
| How many have been resold | 14 | 91 |
| Share of them that have been resold | 14% | 35% |
| Sold at a loss | 0 | 0 |
| Typical profit | 4.8% a year | 6.0% a year |
| Weakest profit | 1.8% a year | 3.0% a year |
| Best profit | 7.3% a year | 8.1% a year |
| Median psf paid at launch | $1,232 | $1,338 |
| Resale transacted psf, 2026 | $1,482 | $1,818 |
Source: matched purchase-and-sale records, Square Foot Research and URA, as at 30 July 2026. Profit figures are before stamp duty, agent fees and financing costs. Unit counts from each developer's published unit mix.
Treasure is ahead on everything.
The profits are closer than the headline gap suggests. 4.8% a year against 6%. Over five years on those two purchase prices, that works out to roughly $294,000 against $414,000. A real difference, but not the one that should worry you.
The one that should worry you is how many owners have actually been able to sell. One in seven at Jovell. One in three at Treasure.
When an owner can't get their price, they don't slash it by $150,000. They take the listing down, tell themselves the market's quiet, and try again next year.
So the Jovell owner is still sitting there, and as far as the data is concerned, nothing happened at all.
There are three in the whole project, and they're not scattered around.
| Sold | Size | Bought | Paid | Sold at | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 2025 | 646 sqft | Mar 2022 | $1,522 psf | $1,409 psf | -$73,200 |
| Dec 2025 | 678 sqft | Jan 2022 | $1,455 psf | $1,401 psf | -$36,400 |
| Feb 2026 | 678 sqft | Dec 2021 | $1,443 psf | $1,342 psf | -$68,800 |
Source: matched purchase-and-sale records, Square Foot Research and URA, as at 30 July 2026. Results are before stamp duty, agent fees and financing costs.
All three are two-bedroom types. All three were bought within four months of each other, at $1,443 to $1,522 psf. All three sold about four years later for less than the owner paid.
Nobody in a three-bedder or four-bedder at Jovell has lost money.
Own a unit in Flora Drive, Tampines or Pasir Ris? Send me your project, size and stack and I'll map it against what has actually sold.
WhatsApp me your unit ↗I was there through the launch period with clients, while the site was still under construction. Their objections were consistent and nobody was shy about them.
It looked like a mega BTO with balconies. Who wants to get stuck with 2,200 other neighbours, especially in the morning rush to get out. And that one small access road going into the Treasure entrance just screamed traffic jams, day in and day out. Back then we weren't sure how the new slip road would work out.
None of it was unfair. Treasure packs 365 units into every 10,000 sqm of land. Jovell puts 190 into the same space.
Put that on something you can stand on. The football pitch at Our Tampines Hub is about 7,000 sqm. At Treasure's density, that pitch holds about 255 homes. At Jovell's, about 130. It really is almost twice as dense.
But the complaint about density was aimed at the wrong number. The average unit at Treasure is 894 sqft. At Jovell it's 748 sqft. Somehow the denser project gave you a bigger home, because Jovell spent most of its land on one and two-bedders.
Then Treasure got its keys, and the tone on the ground changed. Buyers, sellers and agents walked the grounds and were blown away. The facilities, the size of the rooms and the units, the balconies, the finish at that entry price. It did the job.
The privacy objection turned out to be right. Neighbours can hold a conversation across balconies. It's that close.
It just mattered less than the other thing. Every one of those objections was real, you could see it with your own eyes, and not one of them predicted what the resale prices did next.
And notice what nobody ever said. Nobody accused Jovell of being overcrowded. But look at the road it sits on. Sixteen projects, about 6,315 units between them, sixteen separate entrances. Nobody counts that, because it never arrives as one number.
Those sixteen projects run from the late 1990s to brand new, with Kassia still going up. Some are freehold, some 999-year, some 99-year, and a few of the older ones cost more than the newer ones.
Now ask a buyer which project is Jovell's closest comparison. The Inflora, because of the age? That one's 99-year, from 2012. Parc Komo, five minutes away, launched the same year? Freehold.
There's no right answer, and that is the problem. Every project on that road wins on something different, and no two buyers rank the list the same way.
| What the buyer weighs | What it actually settles |
|---|---|
| Tenure | Nothing on its own. Freehold, 999-year and 99-year all sit on this one road, and a few of the older leaseholds cost more than the newer ones. |
| Age | Nothing on its own. The road runs from the late 1990s to Kassia, still under construction. |
| Layout | Less every year. From 2015 onwards the layouts start looking like each other. |
| Unit size | Depends entirely on the mix the developer chose. Jovell's average unit is 748 sqft because 63% of the project is one and two-bedders. |
| Facilities and finish | Whatever the buyer felt walking through. There's no number for it and no way to argue with it. |
| Getting in and out | More than anyone admits. A snaking queue of visitor cars at the entrance on a Saturday is a real cost, and it never shows up in a valuation. |
Tenure, age, unit mix and completion years from each project's published details. The last two rows are my own observation from viewings on that road, not a measurement.
To price a Jovell three-bedder, a buyer has to weigh all six of those across sixteen projects and arrive at one number. Almost nobody can do that.
So buyers decide on what they can judge standing there.
In June 2026 I took a buyer between Hedges Park and Parc Olympia for viewings. Hedges Park has a flying fox, which nobody else in the estate thought to build, and his son loved it. But from inside the unit he could also see what was showing on the opposite neighbour's television.
He put it more plainly than I would have.
"I can't walk out of the shower in my underwear, they'll see everything."
At Parc Olympia we ended up at the edge of the open field near the playground while his son ran off across it on his own, shouting, nobody needing to watch him. He eventually bought a unit there with nothing facing it, relatively unblocked views.
He chose on privacy and open space, because those were the two things he could actually judge for himself. Not tenure. Not psf. Not entry price against the resale around it.
That's no criticism of him. It's what happens when the price stops telling a buyer anything useful.
None of this makes Flora a bad place to own. There's a working market across the whole estate, and I'm writing this as the agent who's put clients into Jovell, Hedges Park, Parc Olympia, Palm Isles, The Inflora and Ferraria Park, plus a resale purchase in Parc Komo. I've watched the resale activity there from inside it.
Treasure is the opposite situation. One project, one tenure, one age, one price story, sitting on its own in that pocket of Tampines. It's big enough that I still can't walk a client around it without the site plan in my hand, and that size is exactly what gives a buyer something to measure against.
263 units of one size will always produce more listings and more recorded sales than 101 will. Some of the difference is simply that Treasure is bigger.
I can't separate the two cleanly with this data. My own view is that being big is how a price becomes readable in the first place, so the two aren't really competing explanations. But that's my argument, not a measurement, and you should treat it as one.
There's also the MRT. Treasure has a walk to Simei across the butterfly garden bridge. Jovell has no station you can walk to at all, only buses to Upper Changi or Tampines East. That's a permanent difference in who can buy from you, and it belongs on the list.
It can't tell you whether Jovell, today at an 18% discount, is a trap or an opportunity. That depends entirely on whether anything ever makes the Flora Drive stretch sensible to buyers, and nothing here answers it.
Beyond a surface level comparison of Project A against Project B, there's another layer again once you pull in stack, floor and facing. None of that is in these numbers either.
So take the part that is. Two families paid almost the same money for almost the same home in the same year. Both made money.
Only one of them could sell when they wanted to. Only one of them got the price they had in mind. The other sold because they decided to accept a buyer's offer.
This is the E. Exit Strategy asks who the realistic buyer is in five to eight years, and whether that buyer can read your price when they get there. Ownership Quality and Market Price both looked fine at Jovell. The unit is good, and the entry price was genuinely lower. Exit is the pillar that moved.
If one pillar is weak, we slow down. If two are weak, we walk away.
If you own a unit in Flora Drive, Tampines or Pasir Ris and you're thinking about a move, the useful exercise isn't checking your valuation.
It's working out what else a buyer can see for your money. How many of those units there are, and whether yours stands apart from them in ninety seconds.
I'll map it against what's actually selling around you and what has already sold. Then I'll tell you whether the number in your head is reachable this year.
If it isn't, you'll get that answer instead of a listing pitch.
Transaction figures come from matched purchase-and-sale records compiled by Square Foot Research from URA data as at 30 July 2026, and cover only sales where an earlier purchase price could be matched. Profit figures are before stamp duty, agent fees and financing costs. Resale share figures rest on small numbers on the Jovell side. Unit counts, site areas and unit mixes are from each developer's published factsheet. Client details withheld. Comments on how easily units sell describe transaction mechanics and are not a forecast of prices.
Heikal Shafrudin, Associate Group District Director, PropNex Realty · CEA Reg No. R016820G
