Redhill Peaks BTO Review: One Prime Project, Two Launches, and the 12% HDB Keeps

Both Redhill Peaks launches have closed. As of September 2026, HDB has published final application rates for the October 2025 and February 2026 exercises. This review is for you if you have a queue number and are deciding whether and what to book, if you missed out and want to know what comes next in Bukit Merah, or if you have booked and are tracking the project.

Our recommendation: if you have a queue number and expect to live here well past the ten-year minimum occupation period (MOP), book; if the next decade might bring a sale, an upgrade or a move abroad, pass on the number.

The case for it is price and place. HDB puts the project "near Redhill MRT station and amenities such as Bukit Merah Town Centre and Redhill Market and Food Centre", in towers of up to 49 storeys. Its 4-room flats were $541,000 to $778,000 in October 2025 and $563,000 to $783,000 in February 2026, before grants: 37% and 34% below HDB's own resale comparables, midpoint to midpoint. And the 12% of the resale price or valuation, whichever is higher, that HDB recovers when you first sell is two percentage points less than at Berlayar Residences or Berlayar Rise, the other Bukit Merah Prime BTO projects launched from October 2025 to June 2026.

The case against is what Prime attaches to that price: ten years before you can sell, no letting of the whole flat, ever, a future buyer who must meet an income ceiling, and a wait that HDB estimates at 53 months for the October blocks and 55 for the February ones, with no completion date published.

• It suits first-timer families who want a city-fringe address, plan to stay for the long haul and can carry a Prime price: HDB's own income ladder pitched Redhill Peaks' 4-room flats at families earning $9,000 a month. Its February 2026 4-room row, 2.2 for first-timer families, was the lowest of any Prime BTO 4-room row HDB published from October 2025 to June 2026, though well above that BTO exercise's median of 0.9.
• Look elsewhere if you need keys within three years (neither launch is a Shorter Waiting Time project); if you may need to sell or let the flat within ten years of moving in; if price comes first (in February 2026, Sembawang Voyage's Standard 4-room flats started at $304,000); or if you want a 2-room Flexi with a room to let, which HDB does not allow in a 2-room flat.

Sources: HDB's launch releases and Annex A; blocks and storeys from HDB's sales brochures; HDB's final application rates.

Why HDB launched it twice. In its release of 4 February 2026, HDB said "Redhill Peaks comprises a total of 2,073 units across two separate land parcels". The second parcel "required more time for site preparation", so HDB launched the two separately "to avoid extending the waiting times". Put simply, the October buyers were not made to wait for the slower site.

What changed in February. The second launch added 91 3-room flats, put every block at 49 storeys, and priced each flat type that appeared in both launches higher at both ends of its range. Its wait estimate was two months longer.

What stayed the same. It is one estate. The February brochure says the new blocks "will form a cohesive precinct with neighbouring Blocks 144A, 144B, 145A, and 145 under the same precinct name", and that residents will have access to additional amenities at those blocks. The October brochure lists an adult fitness station, a playground, a hardcourt and a precinct pavilion, with sheltered walkways linking the residential blocks to a 7-storey car park block that has a preschool at its base and, on its roof, a garden with a running track, fitness stations and a community garden; sky terraces sit on the 39th floor of Blocks 145A and 144B and on the 19th and 39th floors of Block 144A. The February blocks add a residents' network centre, fitness corners for adults and seniors, children's playgrounds and sky terraces of their own. Both brochures say the project's facilities will be open to the public, not only to residents. For getting about, both brochures name bus services along Jalan Bukit Merah, Redhill MRT station on the East-West Line and Bukit Merah Bus Interchange.

Same precinct, same Prime rules: the two halves differ on flat types, wait, price and queue.

HDB Annex A, 99-year lease. We worked out the $ per sqm by dividing each range's midpoint by the size with the air-con ledge. The ranges come before any grant, before any resale levy and before HDB's "additional payments (if any)"; the unit you choose sets your actual price.

Every flat type sold in both launches came back in February 2026 with a higher starting price and a higher top price, and the 4-room midpoint moved from $7,328 to $7,478 per sqm. Our guide to BTO flat types, sizes and prices puts these ranges against every 2026 BTO launch.

Finishes: do not take the February brochure's first line at face value. HDB's Annex A does not mark either launch with its "~" (prices that include floor finishes, internal doors and sanitary fittings). Both brochures list the same basic items: bathroom and kitchen floor and wall tiles and a water closet suite, plus a bedroom sliding partition and a bathroom door in 2-room Flexi flats. Floor finishes for the living and dining room and bedrooms, internal doors and the other sanitary fittings are offered through the opt-in Optional Component Scheme (OCS), and if you opt in, HDB adds the cost of those components to your flat's price. The February 2026 brochure opens by saying the flats "will come with full floor finishes, internal doors, and sanitary fittings", which contradicts its own item list and HDB's price table. Budget as if they are not included, and confirm with HDB at booking; our renovation guide covers what the OCS adds and when you choose it.

Short-lease 2-room Flexi for buyers aged 55 and above. Leases run from 15 to 45 years, and the one you choose has to last until every buyer and spouse turns 95. In October 2025 the smaller Type 1 cost $61,000 to $95,000 on a 15-year lease and $110,000 to $169,000 on a 45-year lease; in February 2026, $72,000 to $99,000 and $129,000 to $177,000.

What the loan needs. To borrow HDB's maximum 75% over 25 years, assessed at HDB's 3.0% floor, Redhill Peaks' cheapest October 2025 4-room ($541,000) needs a monthly household income of about $6,414 under the 30% cap; its dearest February 2026 4-room ($783,000) needs about $9,283. That top end sits above $9,000, where the Enhanced CPF Housing Grant (EHG) stops. HDB's own income ladder, built on typical selling prices, points the same way. In October 2025 it listed a 4-room Prime flat in Bishan Terraces, Redhill Peaks and Mount Pleasant Crest for families earning $9,000 (EHG $5,000), and only Standard BTO 4-room flats at $7,000. In February 2026 it pointed families earning $7,000 at Standard and Plus 4-room flats, and those earning $9,000 at a 4-room flat in any of that launch's BTO projects. For singles, the February 2026 ladder reached Prime 2-room Flexi flats at an income of $4,500 (EHG about $2,500), not $3,500.

After the EHG. How much EHG you get turns on your household's average gross income per month across the 12 months before you applied for your HFE letter. Taking the lowest price of each flat type, and the launch it comes from:

HDB's EHG bands for first-timer families, by gross monthly household income. The 3-room row assumes your household met the project's 3-room income ceiling, which HDB states in each launch release: $14,000 or $7,000 depending on the project for HFE letters applied for before 24 August 2026, and $16,000 or $8,000 from that date.

HDB's own launch releases illustrate the same thing with an assumed grant rather than an income: a 4-room from $486,000 after grants in October 2025 and $508,000 in February 2026 (EHG $55,000), a February 2026 3-room from $295,000 (EHG $90,000), and a 2-room Flexi from $63,000 in October 2025 and $95,000 in February 2026 with the full $120,000 EHG. HDB's October 2025 rows cover Berlayar Residences too; the starting prices are Redhill Peaks' own lowest. HDB calls these figures illustrative: your grant depends on your income and eligibility.

A single buying a first flat at 35 or older pays HDB's additional $15,000 on a 2-room Flexi, so Redhill Peaks' lowest October 2025 price of $183,000 becomes $198,000: $158,000 after an EHG (Singles) of $40,000 for someone earning $2,000 a month, $173,000 (EHG $25,000) at $3,000 and $188,000 (EHG $10,000) at $4,000. These are illustrations on HDB's bands; your HFE letter sets your actual grant and loan.

Even after the grant this is a Prime price: HDB's own illustration starts Redhill Peaks' February 2026 4-room flats at $508,000 after grants, against $224,000 for a Standard 4-room in the same exercise.

The price list is only half of what you pay for a Prime flat. The other half is written into HDB's rules, and it applies to both Redhill Peaks launches alike.

Source: HDB's Standard, Plus and Prime framework and its renting and eligibility rules; subsidy recovery from HDB's launch releases.

The 12% in dollars. HDB recovers 12% of the resale price or valuation, whichever is higher, when the flat is first resold: $12,000 on every $100,000, or $120,000 on every $1,000,000. We do not guess what any Redhill Peaks flat might fetch in ten or more years. The point is that the recovery scales with the sale, so the more the flat is worth then, the bigger HDB's share.

Where 12% sits. HDB sets the rate for each Prime project at launch. For the Prime BTO projects launched from October 2025 to June 2026, it set 10% for Bishan Terraces and Lakeview Cascadia, 12% for Redhill Peaks and Mount Pleasant Crest, and 14% for both Berlayar Residences and Berlayar Rise. Redhill Peaks sits mid-table, lighter than both Berlayar projects in the same town.

Who can buy it from you. A resale Prime flat comes with an income ceiling even when the buyer takes no grant. For households applying for an HFE letter on or after 24 August 2026, families must earn no more than $16,000 a month ($24,000 for extended families), and a single aged 35 or above no more than $8,000 to buy a resale 2-room Prime flat (HDB). A resale Standard flat bought without a grant has no ceiling. HDB revises these limits from time to time, as it did in August 2026; what stays fixed is that your eventual buyer must qualify.

Letting. You can never rent out the whole flat, and neither can anyone who buys it from you. Spare bedrooms are a different matter: with HDB's approval you can let them before the MOP, as a citizen or PR owner, provided the flat is a 3-room or larger (HDB). A 2-room Flexi cannot let even one bedroom. That covers 368 of February 2026's 1,052 flats, and the 78 Type 1 and 333 Type 2 2-room Flexi flats of October 2025.

The ten years count from when your purchase is legally completed, not from booking; our guide to flats reaching MOP explains how the clock runs.

At Redhill Peaks you are buying a decade of living there, with HDB's share of the eventual sale fixed today.

HDB's application rate counts the applications from one household type for every flat reserved for that type. It tells you how crowded a queue was, not the odds that you personally get a flat. Three things blur it: about 20% of applications are repeat ones from earlier launches, some from households still waiting to book; HDB can shortlist as many as 200% of the flats on offer, so a queue number is not a flat; and the number of ballot chances depends on your group, with three for first-timer parents and married couples in HDB's FT(PMC) category, two for other first-timer families and one for second-timer families.

HDB reports rates by town and flat type rather than by project, so in October 2025 Redhill Peaks and Berlayar Residences sat in the same Bukit Merah 2-room Flexi and 4-room rows:

HDB's final rates (October 2025, February 2026). In the October 2025 rows, flats and applications are the two projects together. "–": that group cannot apply, or HDB did not print a rate.

4-room, October 2025: about one flat for every 3.1 applications from first-timer families, in the row shared with Berlayar Residences, against a median of 1.9 across the October 2025 BTO exercise. Second-timer families faced 23.8 in that shared row (median 15.9).

4-room, February 2026: 2.2 on a row of its own, against a median of 0.9 across the February 2026 BTO exercise, and 16.6 for second-timer families (median 14.8). Still a crowded queue, but the lowest rate for first-timer families in any Prime BTO 4-room row HDB published from October 2025 to June 2026; our rates guide has every row. Berlayar Rise's 4-room flats drew 3.3 in June 2026.

3-room, February 2026: 0.8. First-timer families sent fewer applications than the 3-room flats reserved for them, while second-timer families, who get a far smaller share of the flats, faced 19.4.

2-room Flexi, both launches: families barely applied (first-timer families: 0.1 in the October row shared with Berlayar Residences, 0.0 in February). The contest was among seniors (2.7 in the October row shared with Berlayar Residences, 2.4 in February) and first-timer singles (7.4 in the shared October row and 8.3 in February, against HDB's BTO singles medians of 7.4 and 7.3).

For a family after a 4-room, February's own row (2.2) ran well below October's shared Bukit Merah row (3.1); for a single after a 2-room Flexi, neither launch was short.

HDB Annex A and final rates (June 2026 rates). HDB printed two waiting times for Berlayar Rise.

Across Bukit Merah's Prime BTO launches from October 2025 to June 2026, Redhill Peaks is the cheapest 4-room ticket with the lightest exit charge. Its October 2025 4-room range was also the lowest-starting of the four Prime BTO projects in that exercise, just under Bishan Terraces ($543,000 to $735,000) and below Mount Pleasant Crest ($558,000 to $787,000) and Berlayar Residences. HDB's own October 2025 income ladder listed Redhill Peaks, but not Berlayar Residences, among the 4-room Prime flats a family earning $9,000 a month could typically buy.

Where Berlayar Rise can win is time: the lower of its two estimates, 49 months, is shorter than either Redhill Peaks figure. Berlayar Residences, at 56 months, is the slowest of the four launches in the table.

On queues, HDB's data cannot tell the two October projects apart: the 3.1 covers both. Berlayar Rise's 3.3 in June 2026 was higher than Redhill Peaks' 2.2 in February.

What the table cannot price is the setting. HDB places Redhill Peaks near Redhill MRT station, Bukit Merah Town Centre and Redhill Market and Food Centre. Berlayar Residences was the first project in HDB's new Berlayar estate, and HDB's brochure puts Berlayar Rise next to Telok Blangah MRT Station (our launch schedule covers HDB's Berlayar plans). Bukit Merah also had two Prime projects in July 2025, Alexandra Peaks and Alexandra Vista; we have not compared their prices or rates here.

Nothing at Redhill Peaks has been built or sold on, so there is no price or rent of its own to report. Every figure in this section is what other flats sold for.

HDB's comparables. With each price list, HDB set the new flats against transacted prices of resale flats nearby that it chose as comparables:

HDB Annex A; we worked out the gap from the midpoints. HDB itself cautions that its comparables differ from the new flats in their attributes, and that you should allow for that when comparing.

Redhill Peaks is priced below HDB's resale comparables, and those comparables are young flats themselves, with more than 90 years of lease left. So little of the gap is about lease: most of it is HDB's subsidy, paid for with the wait and the Prime rules. HDB printed no comparable for the 2-room Flexi in either launch.

Resales across the town, July 2025 to June 2026:

Our analysis of HDB's resale registrations for Bukit Merah: other flats, not Redhill Peaks.

Check where the young flats sold before trusting the median. The $990,000 median for young 4-room flats leans on Telok Blangah Street 31: 43 of the 95 resales were there, with Boon Tiong Road and Henderson Road next at 16 each, and none of the three is Redhill Close. The young 5-room median of $1,500,000 rests on just 13 resales on two streets, and the young 3-room median of $745,000 on 44, again led by Telok Blangah Street 31. The distance between the all-ages 3-room median ($435,000) and the young one ($745,000) shows how far a town median moves with the age and location of whatever happened to sell. For 2-room flats there is almost nothing young to read: 32 resales in the year, and 1 with a lease from 2015.

Treat these figures as the market you are buying into, not as a value for your flat: a Redhill Peaks owner cannot sell for ten years, and hands HDB 12% of the resale price or valuation, whichever is higher, on the first sale.

HDB gives an estimated waiting time in months, not a date: 53 months (about 4 years and 5 months) for the October 2025 launch and 55 months (about 4 years and 7 months) for February 2026. Each is measured between the median month in which buyers pick their flats and the median month in which HDB expects that launch's blocks to be finished, so your own block may differ, and neither launch was a Shorter Waiting Time project (under 36 months). We do not add the months to a launch date to produce a completion year, because HDB has not published one.

There are two figures because there are two parcels, launched separately; HDB has not said why the February estimate is two months longer. It launched the second parcel on its own because it "required more time for site preparation", and did so "to avoid extending the waiting times". The brochures add that HDB may finish the flats before the precinct facilities, so that keys can be handed over sooner.

Among the October 2025 Prime BTO launches, 53 months sat between Bishan Terraces (47) and Mount Pleasant Crest (59); our guide to BTO waiting times lists every project. Once you have booked, MyHDB Page shows your block's building progress and its probable completion date.

• November 2026 BTO: HDB's preliminary list has about 7,960 flats across six towns (Bedok, Geylang, Sembawang, Tengah, Toa Payoh, Yishun), none of them in Bukit Merah; projects and classifications are named only at launch. Our launch schedule tracks what HDB has announced.
• Sale of Balance Flats (SBF): this is where HDB offers flats that earlier BTO launches did not sell. February 2026's SBF offered 4,320 flats, and no further SBF had been announced by 18 September 2026. HDB has not said whether any Redhill Peaks flats will be left over. Our SBF guide explains how it works.
• Resale: Bukit Merah's young 4-room flats (lease from 2015) resold at a median of $990,000 from July 2025 to June 2026, led by Telok Blangah Street 31 (43 of 95 resales). A resale Plus or Prime flat carries an income ceiling even without a grant; a resale Standard flat bought without a grant does not.
• Your ballot chances next time: the extra chance HDB gives first-timer families after two or more unsuccessful applications counts only applications for Standard flats, so missing out at Redhill Peaks does not build it.

If better odds are the goal, HDB suggests aiming at projects whose rates run at about one or lower. No Bukit Merah BTO 4-room row from October 2025 to June 2026 came near that: the lowest was Redhill Peaks' own 2.2, in February 2026.

Sources behind the figures. HDB's launch releases and Annex A for October 2025 and February 2026 (flats, prices, sizes, waiting times, resale comparables and subsidy recovery), including HDB's 4 February 2026 explanation of the two land parcels; HDB's sales brochures for both launches (setting, blocks, storeys, facilities, transport and finishes); HDB's final application rates for October 2025 and February 2026, and for Berlayar Rise in June 2026; PropKaki's property_rules records for grants, the MOP, renting, income ceilings and ballot chances, each sourced to HDB's pages; and PropKaki's analysis of HDB resale registrations in Bukit Merah from July 2025 to June 2026. Price per sqm, the loan and income figures, the after-grant prices and the gaps to HDB's comparables are our arithmetic on HDB's numbers.

Where HDB's documents disagree. The February 2026 brochure's opening line says the flats come with full floor finishes, internal doors and sanitary fittings; its item list, its OCS pages and HDB's Annex A price marks say otherwise. We have followed the item list and Annex A and have not claimed that full finishes are included.

Claims left out on purpose. No completion date or year: HDB published none, and adding a waiting time to a launch month is an inference. No resale price or rent for Redhill Peaks, which has not been built or resold, and no forecast of what it may be worth. The town's resale figures describe other flats. Application rates describe two closed exercises and do not predict the next one. Grant figures are illustrations on HDB's bands; 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 book.