A 2017 resale EC beat a 2025 new launch on the three things this family was actually buying: usable floor area, monthly outlay, and how soon they could move in.
Azhar and Qamariah could stretch to $2.8M. At the new launch they started with, every unit inside that ceiling was smaller than the Punggol flat they were leaving.
They spent $1.75M and got 1,335 square feet.
For over a decade they hadn't thought about upgrading. Their 5-room BTO in Punggol had served them well. At 1,200 sqft it was spacious, familiar, full of memories.
Then one night a question came up between them. Have we outgrown this place? That was the whole beginning of it.
Qamariah messaged me. Not urgent, just wondering whether it was time to plan ahead.
They weren't trying to max out a loan. The brief was simpler than that. Find something that made sense financially, practically, and as a place to actually live.
We started at Parktown Residences. Not because it was the best fit, but because they needed to see the new launch market with their own eyes before ruling anything in or out.
On paper it was strong. Sleek showflat, three-bedders averaging around $2,327 psf. Azhar stepped into the junior room and stopped.
"Where does the study table go? This feels smaller than our HDB."
He wasn't rounding for effect. Here's the three-bedroom band that transacted there.
| Parktown Residence, 3-bedroom | Price | Price psf | Floor area |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cheapest | $2,066,000 | $2,205 | 937 sqft |
| Average | $2,453,000 | $2,327 | 1,054 sqft |
| Highest | $2,903,000 | $2,558 | 1,135 sqft |
Floor area derived from price and psf on the same row. Source: PropNex Investment Suite, as at July 2025.
Their Punggol flat was 1,200 sqft. The cheapest three-bedder was 937. The most expensive one, at $2.903M, was still 65 square feet short of what they already owned.
That's the problem in one column. They could clear the price. They couldn't clear the floor area.
We looked at Aurelle of Tampines, a new launch EC. Sensible layout, built for families, averaging around $1,766 psf.
Then we ran their income against the $16,000 household ceiling. Over. Not eligible.
That last unit is worth sitting with, because it's the cleanest like-for-like on the page. Fifteen square feet more at Belysa. $731,000 less. Both executive condominiums, eight years apart.
They were never eligible for it. But it says the thing an income ceiling obscures. What they were being kept out of wasn't the product. It was the 2025 price of the product.
It's a specific kind of position to be in. Earning too much for the subsidised route, not reckless enough to overstretch into the unsubsidised one. That's where the search actually began.
We moved to resale condos in the East. The listings looked right. Twelve hundred square feet and up, four bedrooms on the description.
Inside, the fourth bedroom kept turning out to be a bomb shelter with laminate over the floor. One study was small enough that Azhar noted if both of them stood in it, someone would have to reverse out. Bay windows in every room, eating the wall space you'd actually put furniture against.
At one point Azhar said they might as well just buy a bigger HDB. He wasn't wrong to feel that. They'd done everything correctly and nothing was working.
This wasn't a budget problem. Square footage on a listing isn't usable space. A bomb shelter counted as a bedroom, a bay window that removes a wall, a study you can't fit two people in: none of it shows up in the price per square foot, and all of it shows up every day you live there.
Belysa wasn't on their list. A 2017 EC, no MRT at the door, ordinary facilities, no showflat to walk through. We went to view it anyway.
When the door opened they didn't say anything. They just walked. Yard, helper's room, junior master, the living room across the width of the unit, the balcony.
"Okay. This feels different."
Landscape layout, four bedrooms that each take a queen bed, junior master with its own bathroom. A yard and a helper's room off the kitchen. Move-in ready, asking $1.75M to $1.8M.
No marble counters. Space that worked.
| Parktown 3-bedder, average | Belysa 4-bedder | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $2,453,000 | $1,750,000 |
| Floor area | 1,054 sqft | 1,335 sqft |
| Price psf | $2,327 | $1,311 |
| Bedrooms | 3 | 4 |
| Monthly, 25-year tenure | ~$8,350 | ~$5,950 |
| Keys | 3 years | 3 months |
Monthly figures assume a 75% loan over a 25-year tenure at 2.6%. Indicative, and dependent on final loan quantum and rate at approval.
$703,000 less, 281 square feet more, and $1,016 less per square foot. The monthly gap is about $2,390, which over five years is roughly $143,000 that stays with them rather than servicing a larger loan.
Run it against the cheapest three-bedder instead of the average and the gap narrows without closing. About $1,075 a month, and Belysa is still 398 square feet bigger.
Then there's the number nobody had put in front of them.
Same square footage. Same year. $1,115,000 apart.
Their absolute ceiling was $2.8M. That unit sat $65,000 above it. Close enough to be tempting, which is the dangerous distance.
The cheaper property was the bigger one. That's not usually how it goes, and it's worth understanding why it did here.
A friend told them Belysa wasn't near an MRT. Azhar's answer was that they work hybrid, the children's schools are nearby, and his parents don't take the MRT.
So we sized the thing they were being told to pay for. Proximity to a station commonly carries a premium of 15 to 20 percent for units within walking distance, depending on the estate and the line. On a $1.8M quantum that's $270,000 to $360,000.
Whether it's worth paying depends entirely on whether you use the station. For a household that doesn't, it's $300,000 spent on someone else's commute.
The caveat belongs here, because that premium isn't only a convenience cost. A unit near a station usually has a wider pool of future buyers, and that's what you're relying on when you sell. In this case the resale question still held, because the buyer for a large four-bedroom EC unit in the East is an upgrading family who drives, not a commuter. If the unit had been a compact two-bedder, the answer would have gone the other way.
I dropped by the housewarming. Her parents were helping with dinner. The children were arguing about what to watch. Books were going onto a new shelf.
"I didn't realise how stressed we were before this. Now it just feels calm."
Azhar's version was shorter. They didn't settle. They finally saw the thing clearly.
What you can hold if one income stops, and what a usable square foot actually costs in the estates you'd live in. Most people arrive with the second and have never run the first.
Send me your flat, your outstanding loan and your CPF used. I'll run both and tell you which of the two is the constraint. If the answer is that you shouldn't move yet, you'll get that in writing.
Names changed to protect client privacy. Property type, financial figures, and analytical structure are real. Transaction figures for Parktown Residence and Aurelle of Tampines are as at July 2025, sourced from PropNex Investment Suite, and are averages and extremes across the bedroom types shown, not like-for-like unit comparisons. Floor areas are derived from transacted price and psf. Monthly repayment figures are indicative, modelled on a 75% loan over a 25-year tenure at 2.6%, and depend on final loan quantum and rate at approval. The MRT proximity premium is a published market range, not a valuation of this transaction or this development. The $16,000 EC household income ceiling is current as at 29 July 2026; verify your eligibility directly with HDB before committing to any transaction.
Heikal Shafrudin · Associate Group District Director · PropNex Realty, Singapore · CEA Reg No. R016820G
