Crawford Heights BTO Review: HDB's First White Flats, in October 2024's Only Prime Project

Applications for Crawford Heights closed on 23 October 2024. Nearly two years on, as of September 2026, booking is long over, so this review is written for people with a decision still in front of them: owners-to-be, future resale buyers and households wondering what Kallang/Whampoa offers next.

Our recommendation: keep a Crawford Heights flat if you mean to live in it well beyond the ten-year MOP; if yours is a White flat, have its rooms planned and priced before the keys; and look elsewhere if you may need to move within a decade of collecting them.

• Waiting for a 3-room or 4-room, planning to stay: keep it. The 4-room range topped every other October 2024 project's, and HDB set its highest clawback that October here, yet the ten-year MOP and the ban on letting the whole flat are the same ones Kallang/Whampoa's two Plus projects carry.
• Holding a White flat: price the rooms before the keys. HDB delivers no bedroom walls and would not sell White-flat owners flooring for the living/dining area, the bedrooms or (in a 3-room) the dry kitchen, or bedroom doors, so every partition is your contractor's job, done under HDB's renovation rules.
• Unsure you will stay ten years after the keys: weigh the exit now. Before the keys, cancelling costs the option fee, or 5% of the price once the Agreement for Lease is signed, and then a year before you can apply again. After the keys, a Prime flat can never be let whole and cannot be sold on the open market for ten years.
• Thinking of buying one from its first owner one day: you would take on the letting ban, an income ceiling that applies even without a grant, and a ten-year MOP of your own. The 9% is settled on that first sale.
• Hoping for another Kallang/Whampoa BTO: HDB's preliminary list for November 2026 has no flats in the town; the last FAQ sets out the other routes.

Crawford Heights charged the most of any October 2024 BTO project for a 4-room and took HDB's highest clawback that October; what it gives back is an address by North Bridge Road and, for owners who chose it, a flat with no bedroom walls to build around.

HDB's October 2024 launch release and its price annex (Annex B); block, storeys, flat mix and finishes from the sales brochure. Floor areas include the air-con ledge.

Named for its location and its height. In the brochure's words: "Bounded by North Bridge Road and Crawford Street, Crawford Heights is named for its location and impressive height and consists of a single 40-storey residential block with 312 units of 3- and 4-room flats." HDB calls it "a sanctuary close to the Rochor River" and gives no distance to the river; nor do we.

Inside the boundary. HDB lists a preschool, a residents' network centre, playgrounds, fitness stations and "the roof garden atop the Multi-Storey Car Park", and says: "Facilities in this project will be accessible by the public." We read the site plan on the rendered brochure page, because the text extraction misses it. It shows the car park as Block 20, with the preschool at its first storey and a space reserved for future community use; the residents' network centre is on the first storey of Block 20A, which has no flats at that level (they start on the second); and the plan also marks a precinct pavilion and drop-off porches.

Just outside it. The same plan labels existing public housing along the site's southern and western sides, existing electrical substations and bin centres just beyond the boundary, a market and food centre across North Bridge Road, and the Rochor River and Kallang Riverside Park across Crawford Street. Beyond its general notes on roads, construction and noise, the brochure names no disamenity for this site, and it asks applicants to visit the place before booking.

Lavender MRT Station and the buses. "Residents will be served by bus services and Lavender MRT Station." The site plan also marks existing bus bays and shelters on North Bridge Road and Crawford Street. HDB gives no walking times, and we add none.

Inside the flats. There is one 3-room size and one 4-room size, and HDB designed both without beams in the internal spaces: "Residential units in Crawford Heights are designed without beams within the internal spaces, which results in a consistent headroom instead of having lower headroom at areas with beams." That holds for default and White flats alike.

One tower, one 3-room size and one 4-room size: at Crawford Heights, what sets one flat apart from the next is the unit you picked and whether it came with bedroom walls.

HDB's release, on 16 October 2024: "HDB launched 8,573 Standard, Plus, and Prime flats in 15 projects under a new flat classification framework in the October 2024 Build-To-Order (BTO) exercise today". No SBF ran alongside it. Crawford Heights was the one project classed Prime. HDB also counts the Prime Location Public Housing flats it sold before October 2024 as Prime, with the same ten-year MOP, so these were not the first flats with a ten-year Prime MOP; they were the only flats to carry the Prime label in the framework's first BTO exercise.

What else changed that October.

• Grants had just risen. HDB: the Enhanced CPF Housing Grant "was increased from the previous maximum grant amount of $80,000 to $120,000 for families; and from $40,000 to $60,000 for singles" (announced 20 August 2024).
• HDB lent less. Its loan limit "has been lowered from 80% to 75% from this BTO exercise".
• Ceilings were lower than today's. Families were assessed on $14,000 a month for a 4-room ($21,000 for extended families). For HFE letters from 24 August 2026, HDB has raised these to $16,000 and $24,000.

HDB's October 2024 price list, 4-room ranges from the top:

HDB's October 2024 launch release and price annex. HDB counts Costa Riviera I and Costa Riviera II as two of its 15 projects; its price annex gives them one row, so this table has 14. "~" marks prices that include floor finishes, internal doors and sanitary fittings.

Where Crawford Heights sat. No other project's 4-room range started or ended as high. Its 9% was one percentage point above the 8% at Kallang View, Towner Breeze and Merpati Alcove, and its 50 months trailed only Central Trio @ AMK's 59 and Taman Jurong Skyline's 52. Three Standard projects, West BrickVille @ Bukit Batok, Fernvale Oasis and Fernvale Sails, priced in floor finishes, internal doors and sanitary fittings. HDB printed no without-finishes prices that year, so we make no dollar adjustment; the point is only that their prices cover more than Crawford Heights' does.

What cannot be shown. HDB's application-rate results page for October 2024 is no longer online, and the Internet Archive holds no copy of its figures. This review therefore gives no application rate for Crawford Heights and makes no estimate of how crowded its queue was, whether from later exercises' rates or from anything else. What HDB published at launch survives, and the rest of this review works from that.

Crawford Heights was the October 2024 BTO exercise's one Prime project, its dearest 4-room and its highest clawback; how many households applied for it has not survived.

HDB's words. The October 2024 release: "HDB will pilot a new White flats concept at the Crawford Heights Prime project ... The prices for the White flats will be lower by $6,000 and $8,600 for 3-room and 4-room flats respectively". The brochure: "White flats will feature a contiguous living and bedroom space, without partition walls, to provide greater flexibility to flat buyers in configuring the layout of their flats." And: "Buyers who do not opt for a White flat will be provided with a default flat layout with bedroom walls."

Two versions of the same flat, item by item. HDB's brochure plans show the White 3-room at 66 sqm and the White 4-room at 90 sqm, the same as the default flats. What differs is what HDB fits and what it offers as extras:

The Crawford Heights sales brochure (finishes, White flat and OCS pages). "If you opt-in for OCS, the cost of the optional components will be added to the price of the flat."

HDB's own reasons: leaving out the flooring "will offer greater flexibility for flat owners to plan and design their living spaces", and "Bedroom doors will also not be offered, as there are no internal bedroom partition walls in a White flat."

The beams matter as much as the walls. Every Crawford Heights flat, White or default, is designed "without beams within the internal spaces" (one of HDB's White-flat plans specifies the living/dining area and bedrooms), and the brochure's layout pages add that residents "will have greater flexibility in configuring the layout of their flat according to their needs". In a White flat that is the enabling detail: with an even ceiling, where you put a partition is not dictated by a beam overhead.

What the reduction does not tell you. HDB published the $6,000 and $8,600, not what it costs to put rooms back. We hold no OCS price list for Crawford Heights and no contractor's quote, so we make no estimate. If you want two or three bedrooms in a White flat, those walls, their doors and the flooring are for you and your contractor to price and build under HDB's renovation rules; our renovation guide covers the rules room by room. HDB's White-flat OCS leaflet was plain about timing: "Choose the OCS items you want before your flat selection appointment." For Crawford Heights' owners-to-be the layout choice has already been made; the brochure describes no switch afterwards.

A Prime detail to check. A Prime flat can never be let whole; the one letting route open to its owner is a spare bedroom, with HDB's approval. A White flat is handed over with no bedroom walls. If a lodger might ever be part of your plans, ask HDB how it would treat a room you build before counting on it.

A pilot HDB repeated once by June 2026. A year later HDB offered White flats again at Mount Pleasant Crest in Toa Payoh, with the same $6,000 and $8,600 reductions. Neither project has been built, so no White flat has yet been lived in or resold. Anyone who one day buys a Crawford Heights White flat on resale would be buying its first owner's partitions, if any, rather than an HDB layout, and can compare them with the plans in HDB's brochure.

In HDB's first White flats the beamless structure is the enabling detail and the $6,000 or $8,600 the smaller one: owners who want bedrooms will be building them themselves.

HDB's October 2024 price annex, 99-year lease. Per sqm is our arithmetic: the middle of each range over the floor area including the ledge. HDB's prices exclude grants, any resale levy and "additional payments (if any)"; the unit you chose sets your price, and OCS items you opted into are added to it. Our prices guide sets each flat type in context.

HDB's Kallang/Whampoa Prime row. HDB's release printed one starting-price row per town and classification. Kallang View and Towner Breeze share the Kallang/Whampoa Plus row; the Prime row belongs to Crawford Heights alone:

HDB: "The starting prices after grant amounts are illustrative. The actual grant amount received will depend on the household's income and eligibility."

Your grant, by household income. For first-timer families on the cheapest unit of each type (the Enhanced CPF Housing Grant tops out at $120,000 for incomes up to $1,500 a month, and none is paid above $9,000):

HDB's EHG bands, on average gross monthly household income over the 12 months before the HFE application; the full grant needs the lease to cover the youngest buyer to age 95. HDB set a new 3-room's income ceiling at $14,000 or $7,000 project by project, and its October 2024 release does not say which applied at Crawford Heights, so we show no $9,000 figure for the 3-room; a household earning more than $7,000 should confirm its eligibility with HDB.

What HDB's loan test asks. HDB's loan limit fell to 75% from this exercise. Over 25 years, tested at HDB's 3.0% assessment floor against a cap of 30% of income, before any grant:

Our arithmetic on HDB's loan rules. HDB charges less than the 3.0% it tests at, and a grant shrinks the loan.

Rules of the day, and today's. Applicants were assessed on $14,000 a month for a family buying a 4-room and $21,000 for an extended family (a new 3-room's ceiling was $14,000 or $7,000, project by project). For HFE letters applied for from 24 August 2026 those are $16,000 and $24,000, and a new 3-room's is $16,000 or $8,000. None of that changes the October 2024 ballot; anyone buying one of these flats on resale is tested against the resale Plus and Prime ceiling of $16,000 ($24,000 for extended families), which applies even without a grant.

No 2-room Flexi. Crawford Heights offered 3-room and 4-room flats and nothing smaller. HDB's route for first-timer singles in that release was the 2-room Flexi flat, which singles could now apply for "across all locations where such flats are available"; Crawford Heights had none.

Crawford Heights had HDB's Kallang/Whampoa Prime starting-price row to itself: a 3-room from $300,000 and a 4-room from $513,000 after HDB's assumed grants, with a White flat $6,000 or $8,600 lower again.

Kallang/Whampoa had three projects in October 2024, and on HDB's rules for owners they differ less than their labels suggest:

HDB's October 2024 launch release (subsidy recovery, White flats) and price annex; the MOP and letting rules are HDB's for Plus and Prime flats alike.

9% in dollars, and when it is due. HDB takes 9% of the resale price or its valuation, whichever is higher: $9,000 on every $100,000, or $90,000 on every $1,000,000. It is due on the flat's first sale, whenever that comes, and it does not shrink or lapse with the years. We make no estimate of what any Crawford Heights flat might sell for.

Highest of its BTO exercise, lowest of the Prime BTO projects to June 2026. 9% was the highest subsidy recovery HDB set in October 2024. Every later Prime BTO project up to June 2026 carried at least as much: 9% at Tanjong Rhu Parc Front; 10% at Bishan Terraces and Lakeview Cascadia; 11% at Alexandra Peaks, Alexandra Vista and Toa Payoh Ascent; 12% at Clementi Emerald, Mount Pleasant Crest and Redhill Peaks; 14% at Berlayar Residences and Berlayar Rise. Those rates were set after Crawford Heights' window closed, so they describe HDB's later pricing, not anything October 2024 applicants could weigh.

The ten years. The MOP runs from the legal completion of your purchase, at key collection, and only time you actually live in the flat counts; our MOP guide sets out HDB's method. Added to HDB's 50-month estimate, that is roughly fourteen years from the median month of flat selection before an open-market sale is possible, and longer if your keys come late or you move in later.

Letting, as HDB allows it here. The whole flat: never, not after the MOP and not by any later owner. A spare bedroom in a 3-room or 4-room: allowed with HDB's approval, with no MOP to wait out, and the owner may be a Singapore Citizen or a permanent resident. For contrast, a Standard flat's owner may let the whole flat once the MOP is met, if the owner is a Singapore Citizen and HDB approves.

Buying one second-hand, after the first owner's decade. A household buying a resale Plus or Prime flat faces an income ceiling even without a grant; a resale Standard or unclassified flat bought without a grant has none. For HFE letters from 24 August 2026 that ceiling is $16,000 a month for families and $24,000 for extended families (previously $14,000 and $21,000). The buyer inherits the letting ban and starts a ten-year MOP of their own. Singles should check first: HDB's income rules for singles name resale Plus flats, but for Prime only a resale 2-room, and Crawford Heights has no 2-room flats.

In Kallang/Whampoa that October, Prime and Plus shared the ten-year MOP and the letting ban; Crawford Heights' label added one percentage point to what HDB takes back, and left the MOP and the letting rules its owners live with unchanged.

The 50 months come from HDB's October 2024 price annex. They are a median-to-median estimate: your own selection month, and the block's actual completion, can fall either side of it. We do not add them to the launch month, because HDB published no completion date and the sum would be our inference.

• When the clock started. HDB says ballot results come within 2 months of applications closing, booking opens from 4 weeks after that, and booking takes several months to complete. HDB's estimate counts from the median month of flat selection within that booking period, not from the window.
• Beside HDB's three-year mark. Shorter Waiting Time means under 36 months. HDB's release named Fernvale Oasis, Fernvale Sails and West BrickVille @ Bukit Batok as Shorter Waiting Time flats "with waiting time of less than 3 years", and Costa Riviera I & II as "slightly over 3 years". Crawford Heights, at 50, was neither.
• Within the October 2024 list. Estimates ran from 24 months at West BrickVille @ Bukit Batok to 59 at Central Trio @ AMK; only Central Trio @ AMK and Taman Jurong Skyline (52) were longer than Crawford Heights.
• Within Kallang/Whampoa. Kallang View was estimated at 43 months and Towner Breeze at 48, so Crawford Heights carried the longest estimate of Kallang/Whampoa's three October 2024 projects.
• Tracking Block 20A after booking. HDB's current Probable Completion Date for your flat is on MyHDB Page, and it can move with construction; our waiting-times guide explains where to find it and what happens at key collection. The brochure also notes that the residential block may be completed ahead of the precinct facilities, so some of what it lists could open after the first households move in.

For Crawford Heights, HDB offers an estimate and no date: once your flat is booked, the Probable Completion Date on MyHDB Page, not the 50 months, is the figure to follow.

Crawford Heights is unbuilt and has never been resold, so it has no resale price and no rent. Everything below is the price of other flats.

What HDB set it against.

HDB's October 2024 price annex, with our midpoint-to-midpoint gap. HDB chose the comparables and cautions: "The differences in attributes between the resale comparables and the new flats should be taken into account when making a comparison." For the 3-room, HDB found none nearby.

The oldest yardstick HDB printed that October. The flats HDB picked have about 77 years of their lease left, against a new 99-year lease at Crawford Heights; every other October 2024 project's comparables had more years left. Those flats predate the Plus and Prime framework and carry none of its terms: no ten-year MOP, no clawback and no letting ban. The 27% measures HDB's pricing against older flats that are free of the Prime terms; it is not a sum any owner here can bank.

What other Kallang/Whampoa flats resold for, July 2025 to June 2026. These postdate the October 2024 window, so they serve as context and nothing more.

PropKaki analysis of HDB resale registrations in Kallang/Whampoa. None of these flats is in Crawford Heights.

Reading the two medians. The young-flat medians describe the streets in the right-hand column, none of them North Bridge Road or Crawford Street: the $1,050,000 4-room figure is largely St. George's Lane and McNair Road. The all-ages 4-room median, $908,000, falls inside HDB's comparable range; the young-flat median sits above it. For the 3-room, the town's all-ages median of $455,000 sits inside Crawford Heights' own 3-room range of $390,000 to $523,000, but it buys an older flat you can move into now, not a new one after a 50-month wait.

HDB compared Crawford Heights with flats about 77 years from the end of their lease; the town's young 4-room median belongs to St. George's Lane, McNair Road and Bendemeer Road, and its young 3-room median to Jalan Tenteram, Bendemeer Road and St. George's Lane, not to a new tower by the Rochor River.

• HDB's next exercise. HDB expects about 7,960 flats in Bedok, Geylang, Sembawang, Tengah, Toa Payoh and Yishun (HDB, 23 August 2026). Its Flat Portal, read on 19 September 2026, listed none in Kallang/Whampoa, and HDB names projects and classifications when it launches them, not before. Our launch schedule tracks what it announces.
• The town's later Prime launch, for reference. Tanjong Rhu Parc Front, launched in February 2025, was Prime too: 812 flats, a 48-month estimate, a 4-room range of $548,000 to $727,000 and the same 9% subsidy recovery. Its window has closed as well, and because it came after Crawford Heights it says nothing about how October 2024's applicants chose.
• The balance-flat route. The Sale of Balance Flats sells flats left over from earlier BTO launches. The last, in February 2026, offered 4,320 flats; as at 18 September 2026 HDB had announced no other. Our SBF guide shows what each town's rows held and the terms that come with Plus and Prime flats.
• Extra ballot chances, as HDB's rules stand today. A first-timer family unsuccessful in two or more BTO applications for Standard flats gets one more ballot chance for each later BTO application for a Standard flat, up to five chances in total for First-Timer (Parents & Married Couples) families and four for other first-timer families. An application for a Prime or Plus project does not count towards the two, and the extra chances apply only to Standard flats. HDB's own advice, in 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"; our rates guide explains how quotas and chances work.
• Resale. It is the one route open today. A resale Standard or unclassified flat bought without a grant has no income ceiling; a resale Plus or Prime flat, including a Crawford Heights flat once its first owner's MOP is over, has one even without a grant. The town's young-flat medians and their streets are in the resale section above.

Kallang/Whampoa has no BTO flats on HDB's November 2026 list, so for now the way into the town is resale, where the young 4-room median of $1,050,000 is set largely on St. George's Lane and McNair Road.

Which HDB page each number rests on. HDB's October 2024 launch release and its price annex (Annex B that year; Annex A set out the new framework): flats, floor areas, prices, the 50-month estimate, HDB's resale comparables, its after-grant starting prices, its income ladder, the subsidy recovery percentages, the White flat reductions, the grant increase and the lower loan limit. The Crawford Heights sales brochure: the setting, block, storeys, flat mix, facilities, transport, finishes, the White flat and OCS terms and the beamless design; we read the site plan and unit-distribution page on the rendered PDF, because the text extraction misses them, and claim no distances from them. The other October 2024 projects' figures come from the same HDB documents, and the later Prime projects' subsidy recovery from their own launch releases. PropKaki's property_rules records, each sourced to HDB, give the EHG bands, the income ceilings then and now, the MOP, the letting and resale rules, ballot chances, the option fee and cancellation. The resale tables are PropKaki's analysis of HDB resale registrations in Kallang/Whampoa from July 2025 to June 2026. Price per square metre, the square-foot conversions, the after-grant prices at four incomes, the loan and income figures, the per-$100,000 sums, the midpoint gap to HDB's comparables and the conversion of months into years are our arithmetic on HDB's figures and rules.

How we handled the queue. We give no application rate (the exercise section says why) and did not substitute a later exercise's rates or any other measure, and nothing published after the application window is used to explain how applicants behaved; the resale figures postdate the window and appear only as context.

What we chose not to say about Block 20A. No completion date or year: HDB published none, and adding the waiting time to the launch month would be our inference. No resale price, rent or profit for Crawford Heights, which is unbuilt and has never been resold; the town's resale figures and HDB's comparables describe other flats. No application rate or estimate of demand. No cost for building bedrooms in a White flat. No forecast of any kind. No distance or walking time. Grant figures, HDB's and ours, are illustrations; your HFE letter decides your grant and loan. This is a desktop analysis of HDB's documents and data, not a site or showflat visit. It is not financial advice: verify every figure and rule with HDB before you act.