Chencharu Vines BTO Review: February 2025's Cheapest BTO Flats, on a Wait of Just Over Three Years

On HDB's own figures, nothing in February 2025's BTO exercise came cheaper or sooner than Chencharu Vines. Its starting prices, $108,000 for a 38 sqm 2-room Flexi, $245,000 for a 3-room, $316,000 for a 4-room and $447,000 for a 5-room, were the lowest for each flat type among the exercise's five BTO projects, and so were its seniors' short-lease prices, from $36,000. HDB's estimate of 37 months, "just over 3 years" in its words, was the shortest of the five. As a Standard project it carries a 5-year Minimum Occupation Period and no subsidy recovery on resale. And it has a theme: HDB says the precinct is "inspired by the area's farming heritage", with 2 linear green spaces running through it.

Three things temper that. The flat is basic. Like every February 2025 BTO project, Vines' price covers tiles in the kitchen, bathrooms and household shelter and a WC; the living-room and bedroom flooring, the bedroom and bathroom doors (in the 3-room and bigger flats), the basin and the shower set came through HDB's opt-in Optional Component Scheme at extra cost, or are yours to fit. Thirty-seven months is not a Shorter Waiting Time, a label HDB keeps for estimates under 36 months. And the neighbourhood is unfinished: HDB's February 2025 site plan marks the road along Vines' southern edge as a future road and labels Sembawang Road, along its western edge, as the North-South Corridor under construction.

Where you stand in September 2026 decides what we would do:

• You booked a Vines flat. Keep it. Pulling out now forfeits the option fee if you have only booked, or 5% of the price, not both, if you have signed the Agreement for Lease, and then bars you from applying for a year. The two Yishun BTO projects HDB launched after Vines, both in October 2025, did not start lower for any flat type, even with the finishes they included taken out of their prices. Budget now for the fit-out (the sequence from booking to keys is in how to apply for a BTO flat).
• You still hold a February 2025 queue number. Nineteen months after the window closed, booking is likely over for most numbers; if yours is still live and inside the supply, book if the flat type fits your household.
• You missed it or lost the ballot. Look at HDB's November 2026 exercise, which lists 1,580 preliminary flats in Yishun, and at resale, each on its own numbers. Vines' prices are a record of February 2025, not a guide to what HDB will charge next.
• You may buy a Vines flat on resale one day. The Standard rules carry over: no subsidy recovery for your seller and, if you buy without the CPF Housing Grant, no income ceiling for you.

When we would pass on Vines. A household that needs to move within three years or wants a finished home on day one: resale is the route, and young Yishun 4-room flats (lease from 2015) resold at a median $608,000 from July 2025 to June 2026, most often on Yishun Avenue 4, Yishun Street 51 and Yishun Avenue 11; those are other flats, not Vines. And anyone who wants settled surroundings from the start should know that HDB's site plan marks Sembawang Road, along Vines' western edge, as the North-South Corridor under construction, with a future road and reserved sites on the other sides; HDB encourages applicants to visit the place.

This review is dated September 2026. The application window ran from 10 to 17 February 2025, and every rate quoted is HDB's final figure.

Source: HDB's February 2025 Annex A, with blocks and setting from the sales brochure. HDB's prices leave out grants, the resale levy and "additional payments (if any)". We worked out price per sqm by dividing the midpoint of each range by the floor area including the ledge.

The $108,000 headline belongs to the smallest flat, the 38 sqm 2-room Flexi, and there are only 39 of those; most of Vines is 4-room (305 flats) and 5-room (262), which is where most owners-to-be will be.

Seniors had a cheaper door still: at 55 or older you could choose a 2-room Flexi on a lease of 15 to 45 years, from $36,000 for 15 years on the smaller type, provided the lease runs until every buyer and spouse reaches 95.

At Vines a 4-room buys floor space more cheaply than a 3-room: $3,722 a square metre against $3,913, midpoint to midpoint.

HDB launched 5,032 BTO flats in five projects on 10 February 2025, alongside 5,590 SBF units in what it called "the largest SBF exercise to date". Applicants could apply for one flat type in one town under either the BTO or the SBF exercise. The SBF sold flats left over from earlier BTO launches, with their own prices, waits and rates, so every comparison below is with the other BTO projects only.

Source: HDB's February 2025 Annex A, launch release and final rates. None of the five projects included floor finishes, internal doors and sanitary fittings in its prices. HDB printed Woodlands North Verge's wait as two figures, 47 and 48 months.

• Every flat type, not only the 4-room. Vines' 2-room Flexi ($108,000), 3-room ($245,000) and 5-room ($447,000) also started lower than any other February 2025 BTO project's, and the tops of its ranges and its price per square metre were the lowest for each type too. Chencharu Green, the other Yishun project, came closest on every type the two shared, and sold no 3-room flats.
• The quickest BTO wait, by a month. HDB's release grouped the pair: "1,531 flats at Chencharu Vines and Chencharu Green in Yishun will have even shorter waiting times of just over 3 years, at 37 and 38 months respectively." No BTO project in the exercise had an estimate under 36 months.
• Like for like on finishes. All five February 2025 projects came on HDB's basic specification, with the rest offered through the Optional Component Scheme, so Vines' lead is not a matter of what the price leaves out.
• Beside the resale flats HDB picked. HDB set Vines' flats beside nearby resale flats of its own choosing, with about 91 to 92 years of lease left: 3-room resales at $470,000 to $515,888, 4-room at $560,000 to $638,000 and 5-room at $705,000 to $760,000. Midpoint to midpoint, Vines sat 45%, 42% and 34% below them. HDB's caution applies: "The differences in attributes between the resale comparables and the new flats should be taken into account when making a comparison." Those are prices of other flats, not a value for Vines.

What Yishun launched next. HDB's next Yishun BTO projects came in October 2025, after Vines' window had closed, so they say nothing about how February 2025 applicants chose. For anyone weighing Yishun now, they are a useful marker. Yishun Glade's 4-room ran $343,000 to $415,000 and Chencharu Grove's $358,000 to $439,000, both with a 31-month estimate and with floor finishes, internal doors and sanitary fittings in the price. Using HDB's own prices for those flats without the finishes, both still started above Vines in every flat type they sold. Their 4-room row was shared too: first-timer families filed 1.8 applications per flat set aside for them across the two.

Vines undercut every February 2025 BTO project on every flat type, and neither of HDB's later Yishun launches started lower, even once their finishes are priced out.

The farming theme. HDB's brochure: "Inspired by the area's farming heritage, Chencharu Vines will feature 2 linear precinct green spaces with lush greenery." It adds that the community living rooms are "adorned with colours and motifs of vegetables". That is the whole of HDB's farming story: the brochure tells no history of the farms, and we add none.

Daily errands without leaving the precinct. This is where Vines differs from the other February 2025 Chencharu project. HDB lists "an eating house, supermarket, shops, preschool, and a residents' network centre within the project"; Chencharu Green's brochure lists none of the first three within its own project. Around them sit children's playgrounds, fitness corners, a hardcourt, precinct pavilions and a garden on the roof of the multi-storey car park. The site plan puts the supermarket and eating house on the car park's first storey on the Sembawang Road side, with shops by Block 962A, and marks a space in the car park block "reserved for future community use". HDB says the project's facilities "will be accessible to the public".

Bus and train, in HDB's words. "Chencharu Vines residents will be served by bus services and Khatib MRT Station on the North-South Line that connects to nearby towns." The site plan marks a "possible future bus bay & shelter" on Bah Soon Pah Road. HDB gives no walking time, and we claim none.

Beyond Vines' boundary, per HDB's site plan (checked on the rendered brochure page):

• West: Sembawang Road, labelled "North-South Corridor (U/C)", meaning under construction, with "Sembawang Airbase" labelled on its far side.
• South: Bah Soon Pah Road, marked "(future road)"; beyond it, a "site reserved for school" and a plot "reserved for public housing under BTO (Chencharu Green)".
• North and east: sites "reserved for future high-rise residential development", and a "site reserved for future high-rise development (Khatib Camp)".

The site plan's notes add that "the residential blocks may be completed ahead of the proposed precinct facilities". HDB labels these roads and sites without saying how, or whether, they affect Vines, and we claim nothing about them either; HDB's own line on the site plan is that applicants are "encouraged to visit the place".

The wider Chencharu plan. The brochure's page on Chencharu describes an "upcoming mixed-use Integrated Development" with a new bus interchange, hawker centre and shops, and a new road, Chencharu Link, planned as "a dedicated bus-only corridor". HDB dates none of it. Vines does not need it to make its case: the price and the wait stand on their own.

The farm-inspired greens, the supermarket, the eating house and the shops are Vines' own, though HDB warns the blocks may be finished before its precinct facilities; the wider Chencharu hub carries no date at all.

An application rate divides the applications from one group of buyers by the flats HDB set aside for that group. It measures how crowded a queue was, not your chance of a flat. From this exercise HDB cut its shortlist to 200% of supply, where it had gone up to 300%, and it estimates that about 20% of applications come from repeat applicants of earlier launches who may still be waiting to book. The table gives HDB's figures at the close of applications, "as at 11:59pm on 17 Feb 2025", from the Internet Archive's copy of a results page HDB no longer shows.

Source: HDB's final figures for the February 2025 exercise (window 10 to 17 February 2025). A dash means the group cannot apply or HDB printed no rate. HDB's medians across the exercise's BTO rows: 1.1 for first-timer families and 16.3 for second-timer families (3-room and bigger), 5.2 for first-timer singles (2-room Flexi).

• 3-room, Vines' own row. 254 applications for 90 flats. First-timer families filed 1.3 per flat set aside for them, above the 1.1 median and higher than on any other 3-room row in February 2025's BTO exercise; second-timer families filed 11.8, below their median of 16.3. Vines was the only Yishun BTO project with 3-room flats that February, and the lowest-priced 3-room among that exercise's BTO projects.
• 4-room, shared with Chencharu Green. 1,034 applications for 576 flats. First-timer families filed 1.1, exactly HDB's median, or about one flat for every 1.1 applications from that group; second-timer families filed 15.5. For first-timer families the other 4-room queues ran from 0.9 at Woodlands North Verge through 1.9 at Stirling Horizon to 3.7 at Tanjong Rhu Parc Front. In Standard projects that February, HDB said "at least 95% of the 4-room and bigger flats are set aside for first-timer families"; later exercises, from July 2025, gave second-timers a bigger share.
• 5-room, shared with Chencharu Green. 1,168 applications for 509 flats: 1.4 from first-timer families and 20.6 from second-timer families, both above the medians. Woodlands North Verge, the only project outside Yishun to sell 5-room flats in February 2025's BTO exercise, drew a lower first-timer family rate on its own 5-room row.
• 2-room Flexi, shared with Chencharu Green. 931 applications for 356 flats. First-timer singles filed 5.9 per flat set aside for them, above their 5.2 median; seniors filed 1.5, second-timer families 1.0 and first-timer families 0.2.

A shared row cannot show whether Vines' flats or Green's drew more of those applications: only HDB knows how the queue divided.

What may have shaped the Yishun queues. HDB does not say, and neither can we. Several things were public during the window, and any of them may have played a part, though none is proven. Pulling applicants towards Yishun: the exercise's lowest BTO prices and shortest BTO waits, and HDB's own income ladder, which pointed a family earning $4,000 at a 4-room Standard flat in Chencharu Vines and Chencharu Green. Pulling them elsewhere: the one-flat-type, one-town limit across a BTO exercise and a 5,590-unit SBF, and Woodlands North Verge's 1,563 flats, the largest BTO project of the exercise, though with a longer estimate of 47 or 48 months.

Ballot chances, as HDB's rules stand today. A First-Timer (Parents & Married Couples) family has three ballot chances, plus first priority under the Family and Parenthood Priority Scheme when it applies for a Standard flat of 4 rooms or fewer; any other first-timer family has two, and a second-timer family one. The extra chances are a Standard-project rule: a first-timer family whose Standard applications have failed twice or more earns one extra chance on each Standard application after that, to a ceiling of five chances for Parents & Married Couples families and four for the rest. HDB also said from this exercise that applicants who received a queue position but did not book within the supply "will not be eligible to apply for a flat in subsequent BTO/SBF exercises until after their flat booking appointment". All the rates are in BTO application rates and results.

The 3-room was the only February 2025 queue HDB printed for Vines alone, and first-timer families pressed it harder than any other 3-room row in that BTO exercise.

HDB's own table. HDB's release prints one starting price per town and classification, before and after an assumed grant. The Yishun Standard row covers both Chencharu projects, and every "from" price in it is a Vines flat: Vines' 2-room Flexi, 4-room and 5-room started below Green's, and Green sold no 3-room flats.

HDB calls these illustrative: "The actual grant amount received will depend on the household's income and eligibility." Its headline for the whole exercise, that "buyers of Standard flats in Yishun can purchase a 3-room flat starting from $140,000, or a 4-room flat starting from $236,000", describes Vines' 3-room and Vines' 4-room.

HDB's $6,000 is a minimum payment, and a grant never makes a flat free. HDB got there by assuming the largest Enhanced CPF Housing Grant, $120,000, which only a first-timer family earning up to $1,500 a month receives, and which is more than the $108,000 price. When the grant exceeds 95% of the price, HDB still requires the buyer to pay 5% of the price in CPF or cash, and HDB's "from $6,000" carries its footnote on that 5% rule. Few families were in that queue anyway: on the Yishun 2-room Flexi row, shared with Chencharu Green, first-timer families filed 0.2 applications per flat set aside for them, against 5.9 from first-timer singles, who pay more (below).

On HDB's EHG bands, at four household incomes. For first-timer families the grant depends on average gross monthly household income over the 12 months before the HFE application, and there is none above $9,000.

PropKaki arithmetic on HDB's EHG bands for first-timer families, applied to Vines' lowest prices. The full grant needs the lease to cover the youngest buyer to age 95.

For a single. First-timer singles, who must be 35 or older, paid $15,000 more than a family for the same flat, folded into the price: Vines' cheapest 2-room Flexi cost a single $123,000. After the EHG for singles (at most $60,000, and none once your own income passes $4,500), that is $83,000 on $2,000 a month (EHG $40,000), $98,000 on $3,000 (EHG $25,000) and $113,000 on $4,000 (EHG $10,000). A buyer of 55 or more had the short-lease option instead, from $36,000.

HDB's income ladder named Vines twice. Using typical selling prices, HDB's release said a family on $4,000 a month (EHG $80,000) could afford a Chencharu Vines or Chencharu Green 4-room "with little or no cash payment", and one on $7,000 (EHG $30,000) a 5-room at either. A family on $9,000 (EHG $5,000) could, on HDB's reckoning, buy any of the Standard, Plus or Prime flats.

The ceilings then were lower. The income limits that applied in February 2025 were $14,000 a month for a family's 4-room or larger flat, $21,000 for an extended family and $7,000 for a 99-year 2-room Flexi. They became $16,000, $24,000 and $8,000 only for HFE letters applied for from 24 Aug 2026.

The loan, at the bottom and top of the ranges.

Our sums on HDB's loan rules: 75% of the pre-grant price borrowed from HDB over 25 years, tested at HDB's 3.0% floor rate, with the monthly instalment kept within 30% of income. Any grant shrinks both price and loan, HDB's actual interest rate is lower than that floor, and only your HFE letter fixes the grant and the loan.

Every after-grant price HDB used to headline February 2025's BTO exercise belonged to a Vines flat; the grant your HFE letter gives you, not HDB's illustration, sets what you pay.

HDB's estimate for Vines is 37 months, three years and one month, counted from the median month of flat selection to the median projected completion month of the project's blocks. Three things follow from that definition.

• It is a middle figure. Some of Vines' seven blocks may be finished before the estimate and some after it; HDB's number sits in the middle.
• It starts at flat selection. Ballot results come within 2 months of applications closing, selection opens from 4 weeks after that, and working through the queue takes several months. Measured from the day you applied, your wait runs longer than 37 months.
• It is not a date. HDB publishes no completion date for Vines, and adding 37 months to a launch month would be our inference, not HDB's figure.

Across the exercise's BTO projects, 37 months led: Chencharu Green was estimated at 38, Tanjong Rhu Parc Front at 48, Stirling Horizon at 55, and Woodlands North Verge at 47/48, two figures HDB printed without saying which blocks take which. Yishun's October 2025 projects later came in at 31 months, under HDB's line; that describes those launches, and was not something February 2025 applicants could weigh.

For owners-to-be. Follow the project through HDB's own updates, and keep in mind the site-plan note that the blocks "may be completed ahead of the proposed precinct facilities". Our guide to BTO construction progress and wait times explains how HDB's estimates are built and how to track a project.

Thirty-seven months was February 2025's quickest BTO estimate, and it sits one month over the line HDB draws for a Shorter Waiting Time.

• The MOP. Five years before the flat can be sold or let out whole.
• Selling. No subsidy recovery. The 8% and 9% HDB set for February 2025's Plus and Prime projects, Stirling Horizon and Tanjong Rhu Parc Front, do not apply to a Standard flat.
• The person you sell to. A resale Standard flat bought without the CPF Housing Grant has no income ceiling. A buyer who takes the grant must meet HDB's ceiling: for families, $16,000 a month for HFE letters from 24 Aug 2026.
• The whole flat to a tenant. Allowed after the MOP, for a Singapore Citizen owner, with HDB's approval. HDB caps how many people may live in it by flat type, and where the non-citizen quota has been filled, tenants must be Singaporeans or Malaysians.
• A spare bedroom to a tenant. No MOP needed in a 3-room, 4-room or 5-room, and the owner may be a Citizen or a Permanent Resident. The 2-room Flexi is the exception: its owners may never let a bedroom.

We say nothing about what a Vines flat might sell or let for: it has not been built and has never been resold. How the MOP is counted, and what happens as flats reach it, is in HDB flats reaching MOP.

At Vines, the low entry price does not come with a Plus or Prime exit: the 8% or 9% HDB set for February 2025's Plus and Prime projects never touches a Vines sale.

Yishun's slice of November 2026. HDB has flagged about 7,960 flats in Bedok, Geylang, Sembawang, Tengah, Toa Payoh and Yishun, with 1,580 preliminary flats in Yishun across 2-room Flexi, 3-room, 4-room and 5-room types. HDB names no project or classification before launch, and nothing about Vines tells you what those flats will cost or how many people will apply: rates for a closed exercise do not predict the next one. If you are a first-timer family whose Vines application failed, on HDB's rules as they stand now it should count towards the two unsuccessful Standard applications after which HDB adds a ballot chance to each later Standard application. HDB's advice, from its June 2026 release, is to "consider applying to projects with lower application rates, such as those with an application rate of around one or lower". Dates are in the BTO launch schedule.

Balance flats, if HDB runs another sale. SBF exercises sell flats left over from earlier BTO launches. The last, in February 2026, offered 4,320 flats; as at 18 September 2026 HDB had not announced another. See HDB's Sale of Balance Flats.

Resale. These are other Yishun flats, not Vines, sold from July 2025 to June 2026, well after Vines' application window:

PropKaki analysis of HDB resale registrations. A lease-from-2015 median follows wherever the young flats happen to be; the last column shows where.

A resale flat skips the ballot and the construction wait, but it has fewer years of lease left and, on these medians, costs well above what Vines charged: HDB's own comparables for Vines had about 91 to 92 years of lease left.

Missing Vines shut one February 2025 door; Yishun's November 2026 list and its resale market are both open, each at its own price.

The HDB documents and data behind this review. HDB's February 2025 launch release (the BTO and SBF totals, HDB's wording on the wait, starting prices before and after grants, the income ladder, the shortlisting change and the Standard quota) and its Annex A price list (flats, floor areas, prices, the estimated waiting time, short-lease prices and HDB's resale comparables). The Chencharu Vines sales brochure (setting, blocks, facilities, transport, finishes and specifications, and the site plan, which we read on the rendered PDF page because the text extraction misses it). HDB's final application rates for February 2025: HDB's results page no longer shows them, so they come from the Internet Archive's copy captured on 18 Feb 2025, which HDB labels "as at 11:59pm on 17 Feb 2025". PropKaki's property_rules for grants, income ceilings, ballot chances, the MOP and HDB's renting rules. PropKaki's analysis of HDB resale registrations in Yishun, July 2025 to June 2026. Figures for Chencharu Green, Woodlands North Verge, Stirling Horizon and Tanjong Rhu Parc Front come from the same February 2025 HDB documents, and for Yishun Glade and Chencharu Grove from HDB's October 2025 documents, including its prices without finishes.

Sums we did ourselves. Price per square metre divides the middle of each price range by the floor area including the air-con ledge. The gap to HDB's resale comparables compares midpoints. The loan table assumes 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 Vines' lowest prices.

Where this Vines review stops short, deliberately. No completion date or year for Vines or for anything planned around it: HDB publishes none, and adding a wait to a launch month would be an inference. No resale price, rent or return for Vines, which has not been built or resold; the Yishun figures describe other flats. No forecast of prices or rates for any later launch. No noise or other effect from the roads, the airbase or the reserved sites on HDB's site plan, and no distances. No figure for the Optional Component Scheme. 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 and do not predict the next one, and three of Vines' four rows are shared with Chencharu Green. 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.