October 2024 BTO sales exercise will comprise 1 Prime project, 7 Plus projects, and 7 Standard projects

The Housing and Development Board HDB) will launch 15 Build-To-Order BTO) projects when the October 2024 BTO sales exercise is launched next week. It will be the first BTO sales exercise to feature flats that are categorised under the new location-based classification framework.

Of the 15 projects that will be available, the 312-unit Crawford Heights in Kallang/Whampoa will be the only Prime project on offer. Meanwhile, there will be seven Plus projects spread across four towns and seven more Standard projects located in five towns.

Standard projects will form the largest category of BTO flats each year, while Plus projects will be in “choicer” locations with good transport connectivity as well as proximity to amenities and the city centre. Meanwhile, Prime flats are in “exceptionally good” locations, often centrally located and near major town centres that support a wide range of amenities and transport options.

In total, the October BTO sales exercise will offer 8,573 flats and it is the most number of BTO projects that the government has released in a single BTO sales exercise to date. The flats offered in this sales exercise make up more than 40% of the new HDB supply this year.

Wong Siew Ying, head of research and content at PropNex, reckons that the October BTO sales exercise may be a “litmus test of sorts” that will allow the government to gauge flat buyers’ receptiveness to Plus flats while subject to the tighter conditions and a longer MOP period, especially for projects that are not in traditional prime central locations but boast other attractive attributes, she says.

The location-based classification is a significant policy shift by the government following decades under the town-based framework, where HDB towns were categorised as either mature or non-mature areas.

But Lee Sze Teck, senior director of data analytics at Huttons Asia, cautions that as HDB moves towards locational attributes to classify BTO flats, it risks creating a more stark “delineation of expensive and affordable flat clusters”.

Future BTO sales exercises will categorise projects as either Standard, Plus, or Prime. According to HDB, each upcoming BTO project will be evaluated based on a “holistic assessment” of their locational attributes – proximity to the city centre, transport connectivity, and availability of amenities such as social and commercial services.

This opens the possibility of BTO projects with different classifications located within the same town.

Source : https://www.edgeprop.sg/property-news/october-bto-sales-exercise-will-comprise-1-prime-project-7-plus-projects-and-7-standard-projects