Chencharu Green BTO Review: No 3-Room, One Month Longer and a Little Dearer Than Vines, in the Same Queue

Green is Vines with one flat type fewer, a month more on the clock and a few thousand dollars more on the price; for a family choosing a 4-room or 5-room, none of the three is large enough to decide on.

Start with what HDB printed for the two Chencharu projects in February 2025. Green offered 683 flats in three types; Vines offered 848 in four. HDB estimates 38 months from flat selection for Green and 37 for Vines, and described both as "just over 3 years". Green's cheapest 2-room Flexi, 4-room and 5-room are $110,000, $324,000 and $453,000; HDB's starting prices for Yishun, which are Vines' flats, are $108,000, $316,000 and $447,000. That is $2,000, $8,000 and $6,000 more at Green. Neither project's price includes the flooring in the living room and bedrooms, most internal doors or the wash basin and shower set, so the gap is like for like. HDB does not say what sets it. Green's 4-room is listed at 94 sqm, the top of Vines' 4-room range, so it is not a roomier flat to speak of.

The queue is where the two stop being separable. HDB printed one Yishun row per flat type for both projects, so Green has no application rate of its own: on the shared 4-room row, first-timer families filed 1.1 applications per flat set aside for them, the same figure as HDB's median across the February 2025 BTO exercise.

Look elsewhere if you want the flooring, doors and sanitary fittings in the price, or shops listed within your own project: Green's brochure lists none (more in the callout below). This review is as of September 2026 and uses HDB's application figures at the close of the window.

From HDB's February 2025 Annex A; blocks and storeys per the brochure. HDB's prices leave out grants, the resale levy and any additional payments. The per-sqm figure is our own: mid-range price divided by the gross area.

The 4-room and 5-room flats make up about three in every four of the 683, in near-equal numbers. HDB's site plan puts the smaller Type 1 2-room Flexi flats in two of the four blocks only, 967A and 968B. Anyone 55 or older could instead take a short-lease 2-room Flexi, 15 to 45 years, from $37,000 (smaller type) or $50,000 (larger) on the shortest lease, provided the lease carries each buyer and spouse to age 95 or beyond.

What the price leaves out. HDB's general specifications for Green mark the living and dining floor tiles, the bedroom vinyl flooring, the bedroom and bathroom doors of the 4-room and 5-room flats, and the wash basin and shower set as optional. They come through HDB's opt-in Optional Component Scheme (OCS), and opting in adds their cost to the flat's price; opt out and they are yours to fit. Kitchen cabinets, wardrobes, lights, a water heater and window grilles do not appear in the 99-year flats' specifications at all, so they belong in your renovation budget too (see our BTO renovation guide).

Green is built for families first: its 4-room and 5-room flats outnumber its 2-room Flexi flats by more than three to one.

HDB launched Chencharu Vines and Chencharu Green in the same exercise, in the same town, under the same classification, with the same transport sentence in their brochures: bus services and Khatib MRT Station on the North-South Line. Here is what HDB's documents set apart:

Source: HDB's February 2025 Annex A, launch release and final rates, and the two sales brochures. Vines' cheapest prices are HDB's own starting prices for Yishun, which Vines set.

Three readings:

• The price gap is smaller than the spread inside Green. $8,000 separates the two cheapest 4-room flats and $15,000 the two dearest. Inside Green's own 4-room range, $324,000 to $395,000, the cheapest and dearest flats sit much further apart, and HDB says the actual price depends on the unit. Which Green flat you booked moved the price more than which Chencharu project you applied to.
• The month is one median against another. HDB's 38 and 37 months are each measured between two medians, flat selection and the projected completion of a project's blocks. A one-month difference between two medians says little about when any particular block finishes.
• The real difference is on the brochure page. Vines has the 3-room flats and the only shops, eating house and supermarket HDB listed for either project. Both list community living rooms and a roof garden on the car park; the rain garden is the one amenity Green's brochure names that Vines' does not.

On Green's own site plan, the plot across Bah Soon Pah Road to the north-west is labelled "site reserved for public housing under BTO (Chencharu Vines)"; HDB labels the rest of that side for future high-rise development. HDB gives no distance between the two projects, and neither do we.

Green costs a little more than Vines for a little less on the brochure page; what matters is whether you needed something only Vines listed.

HDB's February 2025 release singled out the two Chencharu projects together for their "even shorter waiting times": 1,531 flats at "just over 3 years", 37 months at Vines and 38 at Green, against a release-wide note that 8 out of 10 BTO flats in the exercise had waits of 4 years or less.

Two points follow from HDB's own definitions. First, 38 months is two months past the three-year line: HDB's Shorter Waiting Time label is for estimates under 36 months, and no project in the February 2025 BTO exercise had one. Second, the estimate counts from the median month in which buyers select flats to the median month HDB projects for completing Green's blocks. HDB publishes no completion date for Chencharu Green, and we do not add 38 months to anything to make one. The clock also started some way after the window: HDB releases ballot results within 2 months of the close, and flat booking opens from 4 weeks after the results and can take several months. Once you have booked, MyHDB Page shows a Probable Completion Date for your flat, which is also an estimate and can shift (see BTO construction progress and wait times).

Against the whole February 2025 BTO exercise:

Source: HDB's February 2025 Annex A, launch release and final rates, sorted by waiting time. HDB prints Woodlands North Verge's wait as 47/48 and does not say which blocks take which. No project in that BTO exercise had floor finishes, internal doors and sanitary fittings in its price, so the 4-room prices compare like for like.

• Second on the clock and second on the 4-room price in the February 2025 BTO exercise, behind Vines both times, by one month and by $8,000.
• Second-least crowded 4-room row for first-timer families in that BTO exercise. The shared Yishun 1.1 sat above only Woodlands North Verge's 0.9, and below Stirling Horizon's 1.9 and Tanjong Rhu Parc Front's 3.7.

Later Yishun launches, for context only. In October 2025, HDB launched Yishun Glade (569 flats) and Chencharu Grove (826 flats), both Standard and both estimated at 31 months, with 4-room ranges of $343,000 to $415,000 and $358,000 to $439,000. Those prices include floor finishes, internal doors and sanitary fittings, which Green's do not, so they are not like for like with Green's. Both came after February 2025 and explain nothing about how Green's applicants chose; they do show that HDB has since published shorter estimates than Green's 38 months for Yishun BTO projects. Both windows have closed too; the town's next BTO flats are in HDB's November 2026 exercise (see our BTO launch schedule).

Green's 38 months is HDB's median from flat selection across four blocks: not a key date, and two months past the 36-month line, so not a Shorter Waiting Time.

HDB's own results page for February 2025 no longer shows the figures. Ours come from the Internet Archive's copy of that page, captured 18 Feb 2025, which HDB labels "as at 11:59pm on 17 Feb 2025", the close of the application window. They are HDB's figures at the close of applications.

HDB's rate is a ratio: how many applications a household group sent in, over how many flats HDB reserved for that group. It is a crowding gauge, not a probability. HDB estimates that about 20% of applications are from repeat applicants from earlier launches who may still be waiting to book, and from this exercise it shortlisted up to 200% of the flats, down from 300%.

Source: HDB's final February 2025 rates (window 10 to 17 February 2025); Chencharu Vines is in every row, and the 3-room row was Vines' alone. Green's flats are from Annex A. Dashes: the group was not eligible or HDB gave no figure. For comparison, HDB's medians for the February 2025 BTO exercise were 1.1 (first-timer families) and 16.3 (second-timer families) for 3-room and bigger flats, and 5.2 (first-timer singles) for the 2-room Flexi.

• 4-room: 1.1, level with HDB's median. About one flat for every 1.1 applications from first-timer families, before ballot chances. Second-timer families filed 15.5, just under their median of 16.3, a figure that divides by very few flats: in February 2025 HDB reserved at least 95% of Standard projects' 4-room and bigger flats for first-timer families. HDB raised the second-timer share from the July 2025 exercise.
• 5-room: busier than the 4-room. First-timer families filed 1.4 and second-timer families 20.6, both above HDB's medians. HDB does not say why. Two things were public during the window and may have counted, though neither is proven: only the two Chencharu projects and Woodlands North Verge sold 5-room flats in that BTO exercise, and HDB's own release pointed families earning $7,000 a month to a 5-room Standard flat in Vines or Green. HDB's figures cannot separate either from anything else.
• 2-room Flexi: a singles' queue. First-timer singles filed 5.9, above their median of 5.2; seniors 1.5, second-timer families 1.0 and first-timer families 0.2.
• One row, two projects. Green supplied 271 of the row's 576 4-room flats and 247 of its 509 5-room flats. HDB's figures do not show how the applications divided between Green and Vines, so a "Green rate" cannot be worked out from them.

If you are applying again. HDB's rules now give three ballot chances to First-Timer (Parents & Married Couples) families, who also take first priority under HDB's Family and Parenthood Priority Scheme when applying for a Standard flat of 4 rooms or fewer; two to other first-timer families; one to second-timer families. For a first-timer family, each Standard BTO application after two unsuccessful ones adds a chance, capped at five in total for Parents & Married Couples families and four for the rest. A rule that began with this very exercise also matters: anyone given a queue position beyond the supply cannot apply in a later BTO or SBF exercise until their booking appointment has passed. HDB's June 2026 release steered applicants towards projects with rates of around one or lower. Every recent project's rates are in BTO application rates and results.

At Chencharu there is no Green queue to read: every rate HDB printed for Green is a Yishun rate it shares with Vines.

Our grant table, on Green's own prices. HDB sizes the Enhanced CPF Housing Grant (EHG) on average gross household income across the 12 months before the HFE application: $120,000 at the top, for first-timer families on up to $1,500 a month, tapering to nothing past $9,000.

PropKaki arithmetic: Green's lowest prices less HDB's EHG bands for first-timer families. A full grant requires a lease that lasts until the youngest buyer is 95.

HDB's own starting prices for Yishun are Vines' flats. HDB's launch release prints one starting-price row per town and classification, and the "from" price is the lower of the two Chencharu projects:

HDB calls these figures illustrative. Its headline for the BTO exercise, that Standard buyers in Yishun "can purchase a 3-room flat starting from $140,000, or a 4-room flat starting from $236,000", describes two Vines flats: Green had no 3-room, and its cheapest 4-room started $8,000 higher.

Why HDB's $6,000 is not a near-free flat. HDB's asterisk on the Yishun 2-room Flexi: when a household's EHG exceeds 95% of the price, buyers still pay 5% of the price in CPF or cash. An EHG of $120,000 is more than the $108,000 price, so HDB's "from $6,000" is that 5% minimum payment as HDB printed it, on Vines' cheapest 2-room Flexi, and the same rule would apply at Green's $110,000 for a household receiving the full $120,000. No grant makes a flat free.

HDB's "little or no cash" ladder. Using typical selling prices, HDB's release matched incomes to flats a household could pay for "with little or no cash payment": a family earning $4,000 (EHG $80,000), a 4-room Standard flat in Chencharu Vines and Chencharu Green; at $7,000 (EHG $30,000), a 5-room Standard flat in the same two projects; at $9,000 (EHG $5,000), "any of the Standard, Plus or Prime flats", in HDB's words (a 2-room Flexi aside: its ceiling was $7,000).

Singles and seniors. A first-timer single aged 35 or older carries HDB's extra $15,000 inside the price, so Green's cheapest 2-room Flexi is $125,000 to a single. The singles' EHG tops out at $60,000 and stops once your own income passes $4,500; on it, that flat costs $85,000 at $2,000 a month (EHG $40,000), $100,000 at $3,000 (EHG $25,000) and $115,000 at $4,000 (EHG $10,000). Buyers aged 55 and above could take a short lease from $37,000.

The loan. A full HDB loan sized at HDB's rules:

Our sums: 75% of the price borrowed from HDB over 25 years, tested at HDB's 3.0% assessment rate, with the instalment kept within 30% of income. Grants shrink both price and loan, HDB's actual interest rate sits under the 3.0% test, and only your HFE letter fixes what you get.

Ceilings have moved since. Green's applicants were judged against the limits then in force: $14,000 a month for a family's 4-room or bigger flat, $21,000 for an extended family and $7,000 for a 99-year 2-room Flexi. Households applying for an HFE letter from 24 August 2026 face $16,000, $24,000 and $8,000.

Both of HDB's Yishun headline prices belong to Vines; at Green, the first-timer family on $5,000 a month starts at $259,000 for a 4-room.

Green's price list jumps from a 48 sqm 2-room Flexi at up to $181,000 straight to a 94 sqm 4-room from $324,000. There is no middle rung. Every other project in the February 2025 BTO exercise sold 3-room flats; Green alone did not.

Who that affects:

• A small family or couple with a 3-room budget. HDB's release put "a 3-room flat in any of the Standard projects" within reach of a $4,000-a-month family. At Chencharu, that could only mean Vines.
• Seniors right-sizing. At Green the choice was the 2-room Flexi, on a 99-year lease or a short lease of 15 to 45 years from $37,000.
• A family that stretched to a 4-room. The 4-room is where Green starts for families wanting more than two rooms. A full HDB loan on the cheapest, $324,000, needs a household income of about $3,841 a month at HDB's assessment rate, before any grant.

If you need a 3-room in Yishun now. Yishun has 1,580 of the roughly 7,960 flats HDB has pencilled in for November 2026, spread over 2-room Flexi to 5-room types, 3-room included. The count is preliminary: which project, what classification and how long a wait are not published until launch day (our BTO launch schedule tracks it). No Sale of Balance Flats is on the calendar; the most recent, in February 2026, had 4,320 flats, and HDB had not announced another as at 18 September 2026. On the resale market:

Source: PropKaki analysis of HDB resale registrations. The young-flat median mostly describes Yishun Avenue 4 (33 resales), Yishun Avenue 11 (15) and Yishun Street 31 (14). These are other flats, not a price for anything at Chencharu.

A first-timer family that has applied for Standard flats before should count those attempts: under HDB's current rules, two or more unsuccessful Standard BTO applications earn an extra ballot chance on each later one.

Green has nothing between a 48 sqm 2-room Flexi and a 94 sqm 4-room: a household that needed the middle size was never Green's applicant.

With every launch HDB prints nearby resale flats it chose as comparables. For Green:

HDB's Annex A for February 2025; the discount is PropKaki's midpoint-to-midpoint sum, the same method as our BTO prices guide. HDB gave no comparable for the 2-room Flexi.

HDB itself warns that its resale comparables differ from the new flats in their attributes, and asks buyers to allow for that. HDB printed the same comparables for Vines' 4-room and 5-room (the same price ranges, sizes and remaining lease), so these gaps set both Chencharu projects against one benchmark, not against each other.

For the wider town, PropKaki's analysis of HDB resale registrations in Yishun, July 2025 to June 2026:

The young-flat medians lean on a few streets: Yishun Avenue 4 alone accounts for 57 of the 278 young 4-room resales and 26 of the 116 young 5-room ones. None of those streets is a Chencharu road, and no Green flat has been sold. Read the table as what other Yishun flats fetched, never as a price for Green, for which we give no resale figure, rent or forecast. A resale flat also skips the 38-month wait and comes with whatever its estate already has.

HDB gave Green and Vines identical resale comparables, so its comparables cannot tell you which of the two was better value.

Standard is the lightest of HDB's three classifications. For a Green owner, and for whoever buys from you later:

• Selling. Five years' occupation first, the Minimum Occupation Period, then the open market. Standard means no share of the price goes back to HDB, and no 10-year MOP of the kind Plus and Prime owners serve. Our guide to HDB flats reaching MOP covers when the clock runs.
• A Green flat's next owner. Buying a resale Standard flat carries no income ceiling in itself; your buyer meets one only by taking the CPF Housing Grant or an HDB housing loan, where the family ceiling is $16,000 a month for HFE letters from 24 August 2026.
• A whole-flat tenancy. Three conditions: the MOP served, a Singapore Citizen owner, and HDB's approval. Occupant numbers are capped by flat type, and a non-citizen quota applies: once it is full, the tenants must be Singaporeans or Malaysians.
• Spare rooms, and the 2-room Flexi exception. At Green this rule splits the project in two. A 4-room or 5-room owner may let spare bedrooms before the MOP, whether a Citizen or a Permanent Resident. A 2-room Flexi owner may not let a bedroom at all, since only a 3-room or bigger flat may.

If you are having second thoughts before the keys. The option fee paid at booking was $500 for a 2-room Flexi and $2,000 for a 4-room or 5-room. Withdraw after booking and the fee is gone; withdraw after signing the Agreement for Lease and HDB takes 5% of the price instead. In both cases you then wait 12 months before applying again. Skipping your booking slot was penalised too, unless 10 or fewer BTO flats were left to pick from: a first-timer family drops into the second-timer category for 12 months, and singles and second-timer families are barred from all sales exercises for a year. HDB's booking steps are laid out in our step-by-step BTO application guide.

These are HDB's rules, not a forecast; confirm them with HDB when the time comes.

At Green the bedroom rule splits the project cleanly: a 4-room or 5-room owner may let a spare bedroom before the MOP, a 2-room Flexi owner never may.

What we read. HDB's February 2025 launch release and its Annex A price list (flats, prices, floor areas, the estimated waiting time, short-lease prices and HDB's resale comparables); the release's starting-price table and its income ladder; the Chencharu Green sales brochure, including the site plan and location map, which we read on the rendered PDF pages; HDB's final application rates for February 2025, taken from the Internet Archive's copy of HDB's results page because HDB's own page no longer shows them; PropKaki's property_rules for grants, income ceilings, ballot chances, the MOP and HDB's renting rules; and PropKaki's analysis of HDB resale registrations in Yishun, July 2025 to June 2026. Chencharu Vines' figures come from the same HDB documents and its own brochure; the other February 2025 projects and the October 2025 Yishun launches are compared only on figures from HDB's releases and price lists.

How the sums were done. Price per square metre divides the middle of each price range by the floor area with the air-con ledge. The resale gap compares midpoints. The differences between Green and Vines subtract HDB's printed prices, low end from low end and high end from high end. The loan figures assume a 75% HDB loan over 25 years at HDB's 3.0% assessment floor, with a 30% cap on income. Grant figures apply HDB's EHG bands to Green's lowest prices.

What this review will not tell you. No completion date or year: HDB publishes none, and adding a wait to a launch month would be an inference. No resale price, rent or return for Chencharu Green, which has not been built or resold; the resale figures describe other flats. No forecast of any kind, and no claim about how any site on HDB's plan will affect the flats. No distances or walking times. This is a desktop analysis of HDB's documents and data, not a site or showflat visit. Application rates are HDB's final figures for a closed exercise, shared with Chencharu Vines on every row Green appears in, and they do not predict the next one. Grant figures are illustrations; your HFE letter decides your grant and loan. Nothing here is financial advice: verify every figure and rule with HDB before you act on it.