FOUR hundred new Housing Board flats are coming up near the foot of Mount Faber, in a rare move which sees a development being built in a mature HDB estate with established facilities.
Both Telok Blangah Towers and the Punggol Lodge (right) will be offered for sale under the built-to-order (BTO) programme. -- PHOTO: HDBThe units, comprising 90 elderly-friendly studio apartments, 100 three-room flats and 210 four-roomers, are expected to draw keen interest given their proximity to the Central Business District and attractions like VivoCity shopping mall and Sentosa resort island.
As at 5pm on Thursday, there were already 687 applications, hours after they were put on sale.
Another 516 flats in Punggol were also launched for sale on Thursday.
Both projects are being offered for sale under the built-to-order (BTO) programme.
The choicier of the two developments, Telok Blangah Towers, is coming up in Telok Blangah Street 31.
It offers flats fitted out with timber strip flooring in the bedrooms, as well as ceramic floor and wall tiles in the bathrooms.
BTO projects are usually located in new towns like Punggol and Sengkang - both far away from the city centre - which means that homebuyers who want to live closer to the central Singapore will have to settle for older resale flats or pay a higher price for private condominiums.
The attractive location in Telok Blangah comes at a price: Four-room flats there will cost $308,000 to $402,000, more than 50 per cent of what it would cost to buy similar units in the Punggol project, which are going for between $190,000 and $234,000.
However, the Punggol development, Punggol Lodge, will offer just standard flats without flooring.
According to ERA Singapore, four-room flats in the Telok Blangah built from 1999 onwards are now going for between $370,000 and $408,000 on the resale market.
Between April and June, resale four-room flats in Bukit Merah Town - where flats in Telok Blangah are located - went for a median price of $371,000.
Commenting on HDB's prices for the new Telok Blangah flats, a senior division director of Global Real Estate Services, Mr Chandran Pillay, told The Straits Times: '$400,000 is a bit high, but anybody who wants to live close to the city knows they have to pay a higher premium.'
Meanwhile, three-room flats in Telok Blangah Towers will cost $187,000 to $238,000 while studio apartments will cost $70,000 to $91,000.
Over in Punggol, three-room flats are priced at $122,000 to $150,000.
The HDB also announced on Thursday that it will soon start an online search service for homebuyers to help them find new flats on sale, as well as inform them about new launches through SMSes.
The HDB said earlier this month it was stepping up its sale programme to meet rising demand for new flats.
Its stock of unsold flats has dwindled from more than 10,000 just three years ago to just 3,500 now, and this is expected to drop further to 2,200 by the end of this year.
It also said it will offer about 4,500 new flats in the next six months under the BTO system.
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