Kembangan Wave BTO Review: October 2024's Cheapest Plus 4-Room, Which HDB Said a $7,000 Household Could Buy

Kembangan Wave was the lowest-priced way into a Plus 4-room in October 2024, and it carries every Plus condition in full.

HDB's October 2024 exercise, the first run under its Standard, Plus and Prime framework, closed on 23 October 2024. Two years on, the booking appointments are long past, so we write for three readers: households waiting for their Kembangan Wave keys, people who may later buy one of these flats second-hand and inherit its rules, and families deciding whether Bedok's next launch is for them. One gap comes first. HDB's page of October 2024 application rates has gone offline, and there is no copy of its figures in the Internet Archive either, so this review states no rate for Kembangan Wave and does not guess at how many households competed for it.

The 4-room is the reason to look. At $453,000 to $592,000 before grants for 89 sqm, it undercut, at the bottom of its range and at the top, every other Plus and Prime 4-room HDB sold that October. HDB's own income ladder named it, alongside Central Trio @ AMK's, as a Plus 4-room that a household on $7,000 a month could buy. Its 41-month estimate was the shortest HDB gave any Plus project that October, and HDB set its subsidy recovery at 6%, a rate only Central Trio @ AMK shared.

What the low price leaves untouched. It is still a Plus flat. You must live in it for 10 years before you can sell it; letting the entire flat is off the table for good, MOP or no MOP; HDB takes 6% of the higher of the resale price and its valuation on the flat's first sale; and whoever buys it from you must pass an income test and then serve their own ten years. It is also a basic flat: flooring outside the wet areas, the 4-room's internal doors and the taps and shower sets are yours to add.

The 2-room Flexi, for singles and small households. At $190,000 to $285,000 before grants, it is the flat HDB's ladder chose as its Plus example for a single earning $3,000 a month, which makes Kembangan Wave the only Plus project HDB named for both a family and a single. Being Plus, it cannot be let out whole; being a 2-room flat, it cannot take a lodger in a bedroom either.

Where we stand. If your household expects to be in Bedok for well over a decade, Kembangan Wave is the October 2024 Plus flat we would most want to hold: the lowest Plus 4-room price, the shortest Plus estimate and the joint-lowest percentage to HDB, in a project with a community club, a supermarket and an outpatient healthcare facility built into it, by an MRT station. If a posting abroad, a bigger family or a sale inside ten years is a real possibility, the price does nothing for you on any of those, and a Standard flat, bought new from HDB or on the resale market, gives you more ways out.

Compiled from HDB's October 2024 launch release and price list, and from the Kembangan Wave brochure and its site plan.

HDB's October 2024 price list, 99-year leases; HDB's figures leave out grants, the resale levy and "additional payments (if any)". Type 1 and Type 2 are the brochure's labels. We divided the middle of each price range by the size including the ledge to get the per-sqm column.

• A hub with homes attached. The brochure describes "a 5-storey integrated building, which will house a Community Club with an eating house, supermarket, shops, a kidney dialysis centre, an outpatient healthcare facility, a community plaza, a sheltered basketball court, and a roof garden with an outdoor sheltered fitness area", plus, at the foot of the residential blocks, a preschool and a residents' network centre, and calls the project "a new social anchor in the area". HDB's site plan labels that building Block 117, a five-storey multi-storey car park with the community club and an accessible roof garden, and HDB states that all of the project's facilities are open to the public. Expect to share them with the surrounding estate.
• Beside the station. HDB places the project "right next to Kembangan MRT station", an East-West Line stop. On the site plan, the integrated building fills the southern end of the plot, between the station and the two residential blocks. The brochure also says residents can look forward to a dedicated cycling path along Jalan Kembangan and an enhanced Siglap Park Connector "for more seamless access to East Coast Park and Bedok Reservoir". HDB states no walking times, so we quote none.
• Across Jalan Kembangan. The site plan marks existing private housing on the far side of the road and, among it, two Chinese temples, a columbarium and a Buddhist heritage centre. Some buyers weigh neighbours like these and others do not; if you are buying one of these flats later, go and look for yourself, as HDB's own plan urges applicants to do.
• Keys may come before the hub. A note on HDB's site plan warns that the homes may be finished before the precinct's shared facilities, so that owners can move in sooner. Do not count on the community club or the supermarket being open on key day.
• The Type 2 layout. In the 46 sqm 2-room Flexi, HDB's brochure provides a flexible space that "can be used for dining, a study or to place an extra bed".
• Basic inside. HDB tiles the floors of the bathrooms, the kitchen and the household shelter (and the 4-room's service yard), tiles the kitchen and bathroom walls and fits the WC; 2-room Flexi flats come with their bedroom sliding partition and folding bathroom door as standard. Living-room and bedroom floors, the 4-room's internal doors, and the wash basin and shower set are sold as opt-in extras under HDB's Optional Component Scheme, added to the price, or left to your own contractor: see BTO renovation and design ideas.

Kembangan Wave is two blocks and a hub: most of what HDB's brochure describes for its residents is inside the project, not down the road.

HDB offered 8,573 flats across 15 projects in October 2024, by its own account more projects than any single BTO exercise before it, and held no SBF that round; Costa Riviera I & II take a single line in its price list. All of them offered 4-room flats, which makes the 4-room the one comparison that covers the whole field:

From HDB's October 2024 price list and launch release (subsidy recovery), all before grants, sorted with the Plus and Prime projects first.

• Against the other Plus projects, and the Prime one. Kembangan Wave's cheapest 4-room, $453,000, was the only Plus 4-room priced below Central Trio @ AMK's $481,000 start, and its dearest, $592,000, came in under the top of every other Plus and Prime range. All eight Plus and Prime projects sold basic flats, so on fittings their list prices compare directly. On the Bedok and Ang Mo Kio price lists the 4-room is the same 89 sqm at all four projects, so the lower price here does not mean a smaller flat.
• Against the two Bayshore projects. HDB started Bayshore Palms' 4-room at $495,000 and Bayshore Vista's at $514,000, for the same 89 sqm, on estimates of 47 and 45 months. HDB gave no account of how it priced the three Bedok lists; it did explain their different subsidy-recovery rates, which we come to below.
• Against the Standard projects. A Standard flat carries none of the Plus conditions, and five of the six Standard projects started their 4-room lower, from $290,000 at Taman Jurong Skyline to $358,000 at Fernvale Sails. Three of them, West BrickVille @ Bukit Batok, Fernvale Oasis and Fernvale Sails, came with floor finishes, internal doors and sanitary fittings in the price, and HDB published no stripped-down prices for them that year, so their lists buy more than Kembangan Wave's and we make no dollar adjustment. The exception is Costa Riviera I & II in Pasir Ris, whose Standard 4-room range, $481,000 to $595,000, sat above Kembangan Wave's at both its cheap and dear ends; we compare the ranges, not the two flats' floor areas.
• On HDB's clock. Kembangan Wave's 41 months was the shortest of the seven Plus estimates, which ran up to 59 at Central Trio @ AMK, and shorter than Crawford Heights' 50. HDB's Shorter Waiting Time flats, due in under three years, were all Standard: West BrickVille @ Bukit Batok (24 months), Fernvale Sails (27) and Fernvale Oasis (33). HDB's estimates for the projects launched from October 2025 to June 2026, and how to follow a project's construction, are in BTO construction progress and wait times.

Compare classifications on the list prices, not HDB's after-grant figures: HDB assumed a bigger grant on a Standard 3-room or 4-room than on a Plus one. HDB's February and June 2026 BTO price lists, by flat type and classification, are set out in BTO flat types, sizes and prices.

In October 2024 no Plus project undercut Kembangan Wave's 4-room on price or on HDB's wait estimate, and only Central Trio @ AMK matched its 6%.

HDB's October 2024 release included a table of what households at different incomes could afford "with little or no cash payment", assuming typical selling prices and CPF savings covering the monthly loan. For families it read:

HDB's October 2024 launch release, "Housing Options for Different Household Incomes". Its rows for singles appear in the 2-room Flexi answer below.

• Two Plus names at $7,000, and Kembangan Wave is the cheaper. The Bayshore projects' 4-rooms, which share Bedok's Plus line in HDB's starting-price table, are not named on that row, although its 3-room clause ("a 3-room Standard, Plus or Prime flat in any of the projects") takes in Bayshore Vista's 3-room; HDB's $9,000 row covers most of the exercise's flats. No row below $7,000 names a Plus 4-room.
• HDB's headline Bedok Plus 2-room Flexi and 4-room prices were Kembangan Wave's. HDB's starting-price table gives each town and classification a single line, and Bedok's Plus line covers all three projects. Its 2-room Flexi and 4-room "from" prices both belong to Kembangan Wave: the 2-room Flexi from $190,000, or $70,000 after an assumed $120,000 EHG, and the 4-room from $453,000, or $398,000 after an assumed $55,000. (The line's 3-room price is Bayshore Vista's; Kembangan Wave sells no 3-room.) A Bayshore 4-room started higher than that line suggests. HDB labels these after-grant prices illustrative.

Applying HDB's EHG bands to Kembangan Wave's lowest price for each flat type, a first-timer family would pay:

Our application of HDB's family grant bands. HDB sizes the EHG on the household's average gross income in the year before the HFE application: $120,000 at $1,500 a month or less, tapering to nothing above $9,000. The full grant also depends on the lease reaching the youngest buyer's 95th birthday.

And the income a full HDB loan calls for, grant aside:

Our sums: a loan for three-quarters of the price, repaid over 25 years, sized at HDB's 3.0% assessment rate and capped at 30% of income. HDB's release said the loan limit had "been lowered from 80% to 75% from this BTO exercise". A grant cuts the price and so the loan, and the interest HDB really charges is below its 3.0% test rate.

• Our loan table and HDB's row point the same way. Before any grant, a full 75% HDB loan on the cheapest 4-room needs about $5,370 a month and on the dearest about $7,018, so a household on $7,000 passes HDB's 30% test on all but the top of the range even before the EHG lowers the price. HDB's ladder, built on typical selling prices and CPF covering the loan, named the same flat at that income; they are different tests, and your HFE letter settles the loan.
• What October 2024 applicants were tested against. Families buying a 4-room faced HDB's then ceiling of $14,000 a month, and a 99-year 2-room Flexi had a $7,000 ceiling. HDB lifted those to $16,000 and $8,000 for anyone requesting an HFE letter on or after 24 August 2026. The grant had also just grown: HDB's release noted the EHG's rise, announced on 20 August 2024, from $80,000 to $120,000 for families and from $40,000 to $60,000 for singles.

At $7,000 a month, HDB's ladder named a Kembangan Wave 4-room and our loan table clears all but the top of its range before any grant; the Bayshore 4-rooms in the same Bedok line were not named at that income.

First-timer singles aged 35 and up. Singles gained the right to apply for a new 2-room Flexi anywhere HDB builds them in this very exercise; until then HDB had confined them to projects in non-mature estates. HDB's ladder then gave singles two rows. At $2,000 a month (EHG $40,000) it named only Standard 2-room Flexi flats, at Taman Jurong Skyline and Fernvale Oasis. At $3,000 (EHG $25,000) it added Fernvale Sails and West BrickVille @ Bukit Batok, and a 2-room Flexi Plus flat at Kembangan Wave. No other Plus project appears on either row. A single buying a new 2-room Flexi also pays HDB an extra $15,000, folded into the price, and HDB's ladder counted it:

HDB's singles page and its EHG (Singles) bands, applied by us to the $190,000 Type 1 flat. A single's grant tops out at $60,000 and disappears once your income goes above $4,500 a month.

October 2024 singles were tested against a $7,000 ceiling for a 99-year 2-room Flexi; for HFE letters requested from 24 August 2026 it is $8,000. Two rules then fix what the flat can be. As a Plus flat it cannot be let as a whole, and HDB allows bedroom letting only in 3-room or bigger flats, so no part of it can be let at any point. The Type 2 layout's flexible space, for "dining, a study or to place an extra bed", is the extra space the larger flat gives you instead.

Buyers aged 55 and up, on a short lease. Seniors could choose a lease of 15 to 45 years, provided it takes every buyer and spouse to age 95 or beyond, and HDB fits grab bars in these flats:

HDB's October 2024 price list.

Short-lease buyers could also add a package of elderly-friendly fittings under the Optional Component Scheme, at extra cost.

For a single on $3,000 a month, this was HDB's one Plus example; the larger Type 2 layout adds a flexible corner, and HDB's rules allow no letting of any part of the flat.

Subsidy recovery is the slice of the sale price HDB claws back the first time a Plus or Prime flat changes hands. HDB fixed each project's rate at launch, in Table 2 of its October 2024 release:

HDB's October 2024 launch release, Table 2. Standard projects have no subsidy recovery.

HDB explained the Bedok gap this way: the Bayshore projects "are more favourably located near East Coast Park and a proposed sports and recreation facility". That is the whole of HDB's stated reasoning for the Bedok rates as we hold it, and we add nothing to it.

What 6% means in money. $6,000 for every $100,000 of the resale price or HDB's valuation, whichever is the larger, and $60,000 for every $1,000,000. The one-point gap to Bayshore is $1,000 per $100,000. The charge is collected at the flat's first sale, however many years away that is; it does not shrink or run out while you own the flat. We make no forecast of what a Kembangan Wave flat might resell for.

Where 6% sits among Plus BTO projects. From October 2024 to June 2026, no Plus BTO project had a lower rate than 6%, which Kembangan Wave shares with Central Trio @ AMK, Kim Keat Crest and Tampines Nova; HDB set the rest at 7% or 8%. Our prices guide lists the rates HDB set from October 2025 to June 2026.

Of the Plus terms, only the percentage is lighter at Kembangan Wave, and HDB put the Bayshore pair's extra point down to location, in its own words.

In the order you would meet them:

• First, the build. HDB's 41-month figure runs from flat selection (the median month) to projected completion (the median month across the two blocks): three years and five months. HDB's Shorter Waiting Time label is reserved for estimates under 36 months, so Kembangan Wave does not qualify. HDB has put no completion date on the project, and we have not constructed one.
• Then ten years in residence. HDB starts the MOP clock on the day the purchase legally completes, which is when you collect the keys, and stops it for any period you do not live there. HDB's 41-month estimate plus a 10-year MOP comes to about thirteen years and five months from the median month of flat selection before a sale is possible, for a household that moves in at once and stays; it is an estimate plus a rule, not a timetable. How MOP dates play out for real projects is covered in HDB flats reaching MOP.
• Letting. The ban on letting a Plus flat as a whole is permanent, outlasts the MOP and passes to every later owner. Spare bedrooms follow a separate rule: in the 4-room you may let them with HDB's approval, even while the MOP is still running, as long as the owner is a Singapore Citizen or PR. The 2-room Flexi, being smaller than a 3-room, may not let a bedroom at all.
• Selling. Once the MOP is over, HDB collects 6% of the resale price or its own valuation, whichever is larger, on the first sale.
• Your eventual buyer. Anyone buying a resale Plus flat must pass HDB's income test whether or not they take a grant, whereas someone buying a resale Standard flat with no CPF Housing Grant faces no such test (an HDB loan brings its own ceiling). For HFE letters requested from 24 August 2026 the limit is $16,000 a month for families and $24,000 for extended families (previously $14,000 and $21,000), and $16,000 for a single aged 35 or over buying without the Singles Grant (previously $14,000). Your buyer then starts their own ten-year occupation period.
• Cancelling now. An owner-to-be who has signed the Agreement for Lease and cancels forfeits 5% of the price (had you cancelled before signing, you would have lost only the $500 option fee on a 2-room Flexi or the $2,000 on a 4-room), and in either case is shut out of HDB applications for a year.

From flat selection, a Kembangan Wave household should plan on about thirteen years and five months before a sale is even possible, and on never letting the whole flat at all.

Nothing in this section is a Kembangan Wave price. Kembangan Wave has not been completed and none of its flats has ever changed hands, so it has no resale price and no rent figure, and its owners cannot sell before their ten years are up.

What HDB set it against. Alongside each flat type, HDB's price list shows resale deals it picked nearby:

HDB's October 2024 price list; the percentage is ours. HDB itself cautions that its comparables and the new flats differ in their attributes and that buyers should allow for this. It gave no comparable for the 2-room Flexi.

With about 91 years left, HDB's comparables are young flats, and Kembangan Wave's dearest 4-room sits below the cheapest of them: its list is below HDB's resale comparables, which differ from it in age and in the other ways HDB warns about.

Twelve months of Bedok resales, July 2025 to June 2026, for scale:

Our analysis of HDB's resale records for Bedok: figures for other flats, not this project.

• The typical Bedok 4-room is an older one. Only 84 of the 463 4-room resales were on leases that began in 2015 or later. The all-ages median, $585,000, lands inside Kembangan Wave's $453,000 to $592,000, near its top, and most of the flats behind it are on leases that began before 2015.
• The young-flat median belongs to three streets. Most of the 84 young 4-room resales, at a median of $878,000, were on Bedok North Street 4, Bedok North Road and Bedok South Road; Jalan Kembangan is not among the leading streets for any flat type. That median describes those estates, not this corner of the town.
• Bedok's 2-room resales are mostly on older leases. Of the 20 resales at a median of $325,000, 1 was on a lease from 2015 and the other 19 on older leases, so the median says little about a new 2-room Flexi.
• The dates matter. These resales took place from July 2025 to June 2026, long after the October 2024 window closed: they help a reader today, and explain nothing about the choices applicants made then.

HDB's own comparables sit well above the Kembangan Wave list, but Bedok's typical 4-room, on an older lease, sold for about what its dearest new 4-room cost.

• Bedok's October 2025 launch, for reference. A year after Kembangan Wave, HDB launched Ping Yi Court: a Standard project of 862 flats on a 33-month estimate, with 4-room flats at $498,000 to $624,000 before grants. Its prices include floor finishes, internal doors and sanitary fittings, and its 4-room is a different size, so its ranges do not line up like for like with Kembangan Wave's. Because it came a year later, it tells us nothing about why October 2024 applicants chose as they did, and its own window has long closed.
• HDB's next Bedok batches. HDB plans about 7,960 flats for November 2026, spread over Bedok, Geylang, Sembawang, Tengah, Toa Payoh and Yishun. In Bedok, HDB's Flat Portal shows 1,640 flats (2-room Flexi, 3-room, 4-room) and 860 flats (2-room Flexi, 4-room), both marked preliminary. Project names and classifications stay under wraps until launch day, so the prices, waits and terms are unknown; dates are kept up to date in our BTO launch schedule. If they come as Plus, this review's trade-offs carry straight over; if they come as Standard, weigh their terms against Kembangan Wave's before you weigh the prices. As HDB's current rules read, first-timer families get two extras only on Standard flats: First-Timer (Parents & Married Couples) families have first priority under the Family and Parenthood Priority Scheme for a 4-room or smaller flat, and after two or more unsuccessful Standard applications a family earns one more ballot chance with each further Standard application, up to five chances for those families and four for other first-timer families.
• If HDB runs another Sale of Balance Flats. That exercise sells units unsold from earlier BTO launches. February 2026's round had 4,320 flats, and as at 18 September 2026 no further round had been named. HDB does not name an SBF's towns until it launches one, and nothing in our data says whether any Bedok flats would be in it.
• Resale. Bedok had 463 4-room resales in the year to June 2026, at a median of $585,000, most on older leases. Buy a resale Standard or older unclassified flat without a CPF Housing Grant and HDB applies no income limit (an HDB loan has its own); a resale Plus flat carries one, as above. Applying, booking and the cost of pulling out are walked through in how to apply for a BTO flat, step by step.

For the next Bedok launch, read the classification HDB prints on launch day before you compare any price with Kembangan Wave's.

Sources behind each number. HDB's October 2024 launch release (the size of the exercise, the Standard, Plus and Prime framework, the Shorter Waiting Time list, the income ladder, the starting-price table, the loan limit, the grant increase and Table 2's subsidy-recovery rates with HDB's reason for the Bedok gap) and its price list, Annex B of that release (flats, sizes, prices, short-lease prices, the waiting-time estimates and HDB's resale comparables); the Kembangan Wave sales brochure (setting, blocks, facilities, transport, finishes and the Optional Component Scheme), including its site plan, which we read on the rendered page for the block layout and the neighbouring uses; PropKaki's property_rules for the EHG bands, income ceilings, ballot chances, the MOP and HDB's letting rules; HDB's preliminary list for the November 2026 exercise; and PropKaki's analysis of HDB resale registrations in Bedok, July 2025 to June 2026. The other October 2024 projects' figures come from the same release and price list; Ping Yi Court's from HDB's October 2025 release and price list.

How we did the arithmetic. Price per square metre is the midpoint of each price range over the floor area including the air-con ledge. The gap to HDB's comparables compares midpoints. The loan table assumes a 75% HDB loan over 25 years, tested at HDB's 3.0% floor with a 30% cap on income. Grant figures apply HDB's EHG bands to Kembangan Wave's lowest prices.

Boundaries of this review. No application rate and no estimate of demand, for the reason given at the top. No completion date or year: HDB publishes none, and adding the wait to the selection month would be an inference. No resale price, rent or return for Kembangan Wave, which has not been built or resold; every resale figure here describes other flats. No forecast of prices, rents or future application rates. This is a desktop review of HDB's documents and data, not a site or showflat visit. Grant figures are illustrations, and your HFE letter decides your grant and loan. None of this is financial advice: verify every figure and rule with HDB before you act on it.