HDB begins work on new BTO flats in Berlayar & Tampines

SINGAPORE – Hundreds of new HDB Build-To-Order (BTO) flats that have yet to be announced for sale are being built in Tampines and the upcoming Berlayar estate – a residential area being developed at the site formerly occupied by Keppel Club.

The flats are not among the 10 developments that are slated for launch later in October – the third and final BTO sales exercise of 2025 – meaning that they will be launched in 2026 at the earliest.

In the upcoming Berlayar estate, the Housing Board has begun piling for a 1,039-unit project that will have four residential blocks ranging from 24 storeys to 40 storeys tall.

In total, Berlayar will have 7,000 HDB flats and 3,000 private homes when the area is fully developed.

The 7,000 flats include 870 sold units and 200 rental flats that will be part of Berlayar Residences, which

will be launched in October

as the first BTO project to go on sale in the estate.

The 1,039-unit project where piling work has begun will include a childcare centre and a single-storey commercial building. Information on when the project will be completed is not publicly available.

Based on HDB’s masterplan for Berlayar, some units in this project’s blocks are likely to have unblocked views of the Keppel Harbour area.

The project will be located about 500m from Telok Blangah MRT station.

The first two BTO launches in 2025 took place in February and July, and preliminary details of a BTO sales exercise’s projects – such as location, and the number and type of flats – are typically released one launch ahead of time.

This means that the locations of 2026’s first launch will be released during October’s BTO exercise, when Berlayar Residences goes on sale.

Mr Nicholas Mak, chief research officer at property search portal Mogul.sg, said that should this second Berlayar project be confirmed for launch in 2026 at the October exercise, it is unlikely to bring down demand for Berlayar Residences.

“The site is located near two MRT stations and near VivoCity, the biggest mall in Singapore,” he said, adding that Berlayar is on the city fringe and within a 20- to 30-minute commute of the Central Business District.

“Any type of housing in Berlayar, private or public, will be in high demand, provided it is priced reasonably,” Mr Mak said.

Piling works for an upcoming 1,039-unit public housing project at the former Keppel Club site, pictured on Sept 23.

ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO

In Tampines Street 22, HDB is building a 284-unit BTO project on the former site of Angsana Primary School, where works began in August and are set to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2028.

Flats will be distributed across three 10-storey blocks, and the project will also include commercial facilities.

Angsana Primary School moved from the Tampines Street 22 site to 51 Tampines Street 61 in June 2022. The school was formed in 2015 from the merger of Griffiths Primary, which had occupied the site since May 1988, and Qiaonan Primary.

Given that the Tampines flats are slated for completion by end-2028, and that they will be launched for sale in 2026 at the earliest, the flats will likely have a shorter waiting time of under three years.

HDB has committed to launching

4,000 flats with shorter waits each year in 2026 and 2027

, close to the 4,690 flats with shorter waits being launched in 2025.

In August, National Development Minister Chee Hong Tat said that shorter waiting time for flats is made possible by bringing forward the construction process by about one to two years.

Ahead of flat booking, he said, works such as infrastructure preparation works, technical studies and contracting could already have been completed.

For instance, construction of a project named Ping Yi Court in Bedok – which will be launched in October and has a shorter wait time of two years and nine months – began on May 21, about four months ahead of going on sale.

Mr Mak said the upcoming flats in Tampines Street 22 are likely to fall under the Standard classification, as they are not close to an MRT station.

He noted that the Simei Symphony project in Tampines, which was launched in July and is located closer to an MRT station than the Tampines Street 22 site, is similarly classified as Standard.

Mr Mak added that another reason for such a classification would be the relatively affordable resale prices of flats in the surrounding area, with four-room units changing hands for a median price of about $600,000 and five-room ones for around $700,000 thus far in 2025.

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