Stirling Horizon BTO Review: Queenstown Plus Towers of Up to 47 Storeys, a 55-Month Wait and HDB Comparables Near $1 Million

Stirling Horizon is a flat for a household that has already chosen Queenstown. It asked more of its buyers than any other February 2025 BTO project in months, and at both ends of its price list in money, and the Plus terms then hold them for a decade: bought as a home, that trade can make sense; bought as a stepping stone, it is a costly one.

What the money bought is a new 99-year flat in Queenstown's Stirling estate, which HDB's brochure says will be served by bus services and Queenstown MRT Station on the East-West Line, in towers of 35 to 47 storeys that HDB says offer "expansive views of the nearby park and surrounding landscape". HDB priced the 4-room at $554,000 to $749,000 before grants and set it against nearby resale 4-room flats of its own choosing that sold for $891,000 to $1,050,000: 33% lower, midpoint to midpoint. The 3-room, at $408,000 to $529,000, sat 29% under HDB's 3-room comparables.

What it costs beyond the price is time and freedom. HDB's estimate is 55 months from flat selection, four years and seven months, the longest of the exercise's five BTO projects. The Plus terms follow the keys: ten years before you may sell, counted from the legal completion of your purchase and only while you live there; no letting of the whole flat, ever; 8% of the first sale's price or valuation, whichever is higher, to HDB; and an income ceiling on whoever buys from you.

Beside the exercise's Prime BTO project, Tanjong Rhu Parc Front, the trade is plain. Stirling Horizon's 4-room cost more at both ends of its range and took seven months longer on HDB's estimates, but carried the lighter clawback, 8% against 9%, and the shorter first-timer family queue: 1.9 applications per 4-room flat against 3.7.

Our recommendation, as of September 2026, with the window (10 to 17 February 2025) long closed and booking for most queue numbers likely finished:

• If you booked a Stirling Horizon flat, keep it if your household still passes the ten-year test in the callout below. If life has changed, set the cost of leaving now (the option fee, or 5% of the price if the Agreement for Lease is already signed, then a year's bar on applying) against ten locked years after the keys.
• If you may one day buy a Stirling Horizon flat on resale, the Plus label comes with it: an income ceiling even without a grant, a ten-year MOP of your own and no whole-flat letting.
• If you missed it and want a new Queenstown flat, there is no Queenstown BTO on HDB's preliminary November 2026 list; resale is the route open today.
• Choose something other than Stirling Horizon if you need keys within about three years, or if a sale, a posting abroad or letting the whole flat within ten years of the keys is a real possibility. A Standard flat keeps those doors open.

Everything here comes from HDB's documents and our analysis of HDB's resale records; it is not financial advice, and every figure should be checked with HDB.

Sources: HDB's February 2025 launch release and Annex A, the Stirling Horizon sales brochure and HDB's application rates at the close of applications. The brochure calls the smallest flats "2-room"; HDB's price list names them 2-room Flexi, and so do we.

Stirling estate, Queenstown, in HDB's words. The brochure takes the name from "the project's location within the Stirling estate in Queenstown", bordered by "Queensway Road and Mei Chin Road", and says residents "will be served by bus services and Queenstown MRT Station on the East-West Line that connects to nearby towns". HDB gives no walking times, we have not visited the site, and we claim none.

Inside Stirling Horizon's boundary, per the brochure. Playgrounds and fitness corners placed "to encourage interaction among residents"; a residents' network centre; a sky terrace; a roof garden atop the multi-storey car park; and a 2-storey preschool "facing the western park". HDB credits the "elongated site layout" and "blocks oriented in the north-south direction" with maximising natural ventilation, and says the project's facilities will be open to the public.

What the site plan adds, read on the rendered brochure page. Each of the three blocks rises to two different heights, and the tallest part, 47 storeys, is in Block 187A. The strip of land beyond the western boundary, which the preschool faces, is labelled "site reserved for park". Two plots to the north and north-west are labelled "site reserved for future high-rise residential development (subject to detailed planning)". Across Mei Chin Road the plan shows existing blocks and a market and food centre; at the Queensway end, beyond the car park, a petrol station. HDB states that everything shown around the site is subject to change and planning approval, so if a clear northern outlook matters to you, note that the plan already marks land there for future high-rise housing. The brochure carries HDB's general notice about roads and other land uses, but, unlike some other HDB brochures, no noise or smell note specific to Stirling Horizon.

12 rental flats in Block 186B. HDB: "1 of the blocks will include 12 rental flats"; the site plan puts them in Block 186B. HDB says nothing more about them, and we draw no conclusion from them.

HDB's indicative prices for Stirling Horizon, on 99-year leases and before grants:

Source: HDB's February 2025 Annex A. HDB's prices exclude grants, any resale levy and "additional payments (if any)"; each unit's price depends on the unit. Per sqm is our arithmetic: the midpoint of the range over the floor area including the air-con ledge.

February 2025 was a BTO and SBF exercise: 5,032 BTO flats in 5 projects alongside 5,590 SBF units, and applicants chose one or the other. The BTO side, 4-room by 4-room:

Source: HDB's February 2025 Annex A, application rates at the close of applications, and launch release.

Stirling Horizon's 4-room outpriced the Prime project's at both ends. In HDB's framework Plus sits between Standard and Prime, but on this list Stirling Horizon's 4-room started and ended higher than Tanjong Rhu Parc Front's Prime 4-room. At $7,320 per sqm at the midpoint, it was the dearest BTO 4-room of the exercise per square metre on our arithmetic, and the same held for its 3-room; its 2-room Flexi flats also top that measure, which counts the air-con ledge, but Tanjong Rhu Parc Front's larger 2-room Flexi started higher and, on the area inside the flat, both of its 2-room Flexi types cost more per square metre; its $749,000 top 4-room was the highest price on the February 2025 BTO list. HDB's documents give no reason for the difference, so we offer none: the list simply shows that Stirling Horizon's 3-room and 4-room flats, in this exercise, cost more than the Prime project's at Tanjong Rhu.

What the higher 4-room prices came with, and what they did not. Against the Prime project, Stirling Horizon's buyers got a clawback one percentage point lighter and a first-timer family 4-room queue about half as long. They did not get time: 55 months against 48. The three Standard projects, in Woodlands and Yishun, sold 4-room flats between them from $316,000 to $528,000, with a 5-year MOP and no clawback, and the two Chencharu projects were the exercise's quickest BTO projects, at 37 and 38 months.

Bare floors at all five February 2025 BTO projects. None of the five February 2025 BTO projects included floor finishes, internal doors and sanitary fittings in the price, so these lists compare directly. At Stirling Horizon the price covers floor and wall tiles in the bathrooms and kitchen and a water closet suite, plus, in the 2-room Flexi, a sliding bedroom partition and a folding bathroom door. The brochure's specifications list the living-room and bedroom floors, the 3-room and 4-room internal doors, and the wash basin and shower set as optional: take them through HDB's Optional Component Scheme, whose cost "will be added to the price of the flat", or fit them yourself after the keys. What HDB lets you change is in our guide to BTO renovation and design within HDB's rules.

Yes, on HDB's own figures. Annex A puts Stirling Horizon at 55 months, measured from the median month of flat selection to the median projected completion month of its blocks: four years and seven months. HDB's launch release said "8 out of 10 BTO flats have waiting times of 4 years or less". Every other BTO project in the exercise was estimated at 48 months or less, so Stirling Horizon's 1,126 flats were the ones outside that group.

Source: HDB's February 2025 Annex A.

No February 2025 BTO project came in under 36 months, HDB's line for a Shorter Waiting Time project; HDB called the two Chencharu projects' 37 and 38 months "just over 3 years".

What the 55 months is, and is not. It is HDB's estimate at launch, not a date. HDB publishes no completion date for Stirling Horizon, and adding the months to February 2025 would be our guess, not HDB's figure: the count starts at flat selection, which came months after the application window, and it is a median across the blocks. The brochure also warns that "the residential blocks may be completed ahead of the proposed precinct facilities". Owners follow their own block's progress on MyHDB Page; how HDB builds these estimates, and how they have moved, is in our guide to BTO construction progress and wait times.

If your plans change inside the 55 months. Fifty-five months is long enough for a household to change. Walking away after booking forfeits the option fee ($500 for a 2-room Flexi, $1,000 for a 3-room, $2,000 for a 4-room). Walking away once the Agreement for Lease is signed forfeits 5% of the flat's price in its place, not on top. Both routes then bar you from applying for a year. The stages are set out in the BTO process, step by step.

After the 55 months, the Plus decade. A Plus flat's MOP runs from the legal completion of the purchase and counts only the time the owners live there, so it begins only once the flat is built and the keys are handed over. The 55 months are not part of the ten years; they come before them.

HDB's application rates for Queenstown at the close of applications, February 2025:

Source: HDB's figures "as at 11:59pm on 17 Feb 2025", the close of the application window. HDB's own results page for this exercise no longer shows them; we read them from the Internet Archive's copy of that page, captured on 18 Feb 2025. A dash means the group could not apply or HDB printed no rate.

What 1.9, 0.5 and 4.4 measure. HDB counts one group's applications and divides by the flats reserved for that group: a measure of how crowded that group's queue was, not of anyone's chances. From this exercise HDB shortlists applicants up to 200% of supply, down from 300%; HDB puts about 20% of applications down to repeat applicants from earlier launches, some still waiting to book; and ballot chances differ between applicant groups. The mechanics are in our guide to BTO application rates and results.

4-room: the family queue with real pressure. First-timer families sent in 1.9 applications for every flat reserved for them, about one flat for every 1.9 applications, against HDB's median of 1.1 for first-timer families across the February 2025 BTO exercise's 3-room and bigger flats. Among that exercise's BTO 4-room rows, only the Prime Tanjong Rhu Parc Front's, at 3.7, ran longer. Second-timer families faced 19.8, above HDB's second-timer median of 16.3 for the February 2025 BTO exercise.

3-room: half as many first-timer families as flats. At 0.5, first-timer families sent in half as many applications as there were 3-room flats set aside for them, the thinnest first-timer 3-room queue of the February 2025 BTO exercise. Second-timer families, applying for the same 81 flats, faced 17.0. HDB gives no reason and the rates cannot supply one. A 66 sqm flat may have looked small for a young family facing ten locked years; the 3-room's $408,000 start was dearer than any other 3-room on that BTO list; the wait was 55 months. Each is plausible, none is proven, and more than one may have weighed. What is certain is what the 3-room offered: HDB's own income ladder counted a Plus 3-room as affordable to a $7,000-a-month family.

2-room Flexi: the exercise's largest BTO batch of the type, and singles below the median. Stirling Horizon's 459 2-room Flexi flats were the largest 2-room Flexi batch of the February 2025 BTO exercise, and drew 1,048 applications. First-timer singles faced 4.4 per flat set aside for them, below HDB's singles' median of 5.2 for the February 2025 BTO exercise; seniors faced 1.4; families, first-timer or second-timer, barely applied, at 0.1 each.

Queenstown's queues, nineteen months later. HDB invites applicants to book in queue order from about 4 weeks after the ballot results, and booking takes several months, so for most February 2025 queue numbers it is likely over. None of these rates predicts Queenstown's next launch.

HDB's Table 1 row for Stirling Horizon (February 2025 launch release; the row is Stirling Horizon's alone, as Queenstown's only Plus BTO project in the exercise), HDB's own starting prices after grants:

HDB: "The starting prices after grant amounts are illustrative. The actual grant amount received will depend on the household's income and eligibility." HDB's headline for the exercise, a Yishun Standard 3-room from $140,000 and 4-room from $236,000 after grants, described the Chencharu flats, not these.

Where HDB's income ladder put Stirling Horizon. HDB's table of housing options for the exercise assumes typical prices and CPF covering the loan "with little or no cash payment":

• At $4,000 a month (EHG $80,000): no Stirling Horizon 3-room or 4-room. HDB's options stopped at Standard 3-rooms and the Chencharu 4-rooms; its ladder lists no 2-room Flexi at any income.
• At $7,000 (EHG $30,000): a Plus 3-room, so a Stirling Horizon 3-room, but no Plus 4-room.
• At $9,000 (EHG $5,000): "any of the Standard, Plus or Prime flats", a Stirling Horizon 4-room included.

Our illustration: each flat type's lowest price, less a first-timer family's EHG at four incomes.

Source: our arithmetic on HDB's EHG bands. The largest EHG, $120,000, goes to families earning up to $1,500 a month; none is paid above $9,000. The grant you actually get is set by your HFE letter.

February 2025 applicants were assessed on the ceilings then in force: $14,000 a month for families, $21,000 for extended families and $7,000 for a 99-year 2-room Flexi. HDB has since raised them to $16,000, $24,000 and $8,000, for HFE letters applied for from 24 Aug 2026.

The loan test on a $554,000 to $749,000 4-room. On our arithmetic with HDB's loan rules (a 75% HDB loan over 25 years, assessed at a 3.0% floor, with the instalment capped at 30% of income), the cheapest 4-room at $554,000 calls for a household income of $6,568 a month and the dearest, at $749,000, $8,880. A 3-room needs $4,837 to $6,271, and a 2-room Flexi $2,656 to $4,327. Grants reduce the loan, and the rate actually charged is lower than the floor.

Singles. For a first-timer single aged 35 or older, Stirling Horizon's flat was the 2-room Flexi, with HDB's additional $15,000 built into the price: the cheapest becomes $239,000, or $199,000, $214,000 and $229,000 after the EHG (Singles) on incomes of $2,000, $3,000 and $4,000. A single's ceiling for a new 2-room Flexi was $7,000 at the time ($8,000 from 24 Aug 2026). Remember what HDB's rules do to a Plus 2-room Flexi: the Plus terms bar letting the whole flat, and no 2-room flat may let a bedroom, so it can never be let at all.

For buyers aged 55 and above: the short-lease 2-room Flexi. Buyers aged 55 and above could take a 2-room Flexi on a lease of 15 to 45 years, provided it covers every buyer and spouse to at least age 95:

Source: HDB's February 2025 Annex A (leases of 20, 25, 35 and 40 years sit between these).

A Stirling Horizon owner's terms, one by one.

• Selling it, at the earliest: not before the 10-year minimum occupation period, where a Standard flat such as those at Chencharu or Woodlands North Verge carries 5 years.
• HDB's 8%, at the first sale: when the flat is first sold, however long after the MOP, HDB takes 8% of the resale price or valuation, whichever is higher: $8,000 on every $100,000, or $80,000 on every $1,000,000. The obligation does not lapse with time.
• Whole-flat letting, at any stage: never, even after the MOP. The ban binds later owners too.
• Spare bedrooms, by flat type: a 3-room or 4-room owner may let spare bedrooms with HDB's approval, with no MOP to meet and a citizen or permanent-resident owner qualifying. A 1-room or 2-room flat may not let a bedroom at all, so a Stirling Horizon 2-room Flexi can never be let, whole or in part.

Where 8% sits on HDB's Plus scale. HDB's February 2025 release: "the subsidy recovery percentages will be 8% for the Plus project and 9% for the Prime project". Across the Plus BTO projects HDB launched from February 2025 to June 2026, 8% is the joint highest, level with Kebun Baru Breeze and Kebun Baru Ridge; Oak Ville @ AMK carries 7%, and Kim Keat Crest and Tampines Nova 6%. How the three classifications differ, in subsidy and in rules, is covered in our guide to BTO flat types, sizes and prices.

Buying a Stirling Horizon flat second-hand, later. The Plus label does not end with the first owner:

• A $16,000 family ceiling, grant or no grant. For HFE letters from 24 Aug 2026 that is $16,000 a month for families ($24,000 for extended families) and $16,000 for singles aged 35 and above buying without the Singles Grant. A resale Standard or Unclassified flat bought without a grant has no ceiling at all. HDB can change these figures before any Stirling Horizon flat may be sold.
• Your own Plus MOP, ten years long. Buying a resale Plus flat starts your own MOP, ten years rather than five; our guide to flats reaching their MOP explains how the clock is counted.
• The letting ban passes to you. It binds you as it bound the seller.

HDB's 8% is charged when the flat is first sold. These are HDB's rules as at September 2026; check them with HDB when the time comes.

HDB's own resale comparables for Stirling Horizon (Annex A, February 2025):

Source: HDB's February 2025 Annex A; the gap is our arithmetic. HDB gave no comparable for the 2-room Flexi, saying there was none nearby.

Reading HDB's Queenstown list. HDB chose these flats and warns that "The differences in attributes between the resale comparables and the new flats should be taken into account when making a comparison." Three differences matter here:

• Age. About 89 years of lease left, against a fresh 99-year lease: the comparables were roughly a decade into theirs.
• Size. The 4-room comparables span 88 to 96 sqm, a range rather than a match for Stirling Horizon's 89 sqm (including the air-con ledge, 86 sqm inside). HDB records the 3-room comparables at 63 sqm; Stirling Horizon's 3-room is 66 sqm with its ledge and 63 sqm inside.
• Rules. None of them is a Plus flat. No Plus flat can have been resold yet: the label began with HDB's October 2024 exercise and carries a ten-year MOP. The comparables changed hands without a clawback and without Plus letting and resale conditions.

Even the dearest Stirling Horizon 4-room on HDB's list, at $749,000, sat below the bottom of HDB's comparable range, $891,000. Much of that gap is HDB's discount, as our prices guide puts it; it is not a valuation of a Stirling Horizon flat, and we make no forecast of one.

Queenstown's resale market, July 2025 to June 2026. These figures come from after the application window, so they describe the market owners-to-be are waiting in, not anything applicants saw when they applied:

Source: PropKaki's analysis of HDB resale registrations for Queenstown.

Dawson Road sets the young-flat medians. Queenstown's young-flat medians are mostly Dawson Road's: 82 of the 122 young 4-room resales and 57 of the 87 young 3-rooms. Dawson Road is not one of the roads HDB names around Stirling Horizon, so read those medians as the price of one cluster of young Queenstown flats, not of the town, still less of this project. The all-ages 3-room median of $440,000 even sits inside Stirling Horizon's own 3-room range: most of those resales are flats whose leases began before 2015, with less lease left, so a new 3-room here and an old one elsewhere in the town cost similar sums for very different leases.

HDB's comparables near $1 million show how far below them HDB priced Stirling Horizon; they are older flats sold without Plus terms, and they put no value on this one.

A new flat. HDB's next exercise, in November 2026, is to offer about 7,960 flats in Bedok, Geylang, Sembawang, Tengah, Toa Payoh and Yishun. Its preliminary list, read on 19 Sep 2026, shows no Queenstown flats, and HDB names no projects or classifications before a launch. Stirling Horizon was also the only Queenstown BTO project in HDB's exercises from October 2024 to June 2026. The calendar, and how to watch for the next Queenstown launch, is in our BTO launch schedule.

An SBF, if HDB holds one. An SBF exercise sells flats left over from earlier BTO launches. The last, in February 2026, offered 4,320 flats, and as at 18 September 2026 HDB had not announced another. Queenstown was among the towns in that February 2026 SBF, as our SBF guide sets out. Whether any Stirling Horizon flats will be left over for a later SBF is for HDB to say.

Queenstown resale, open today. From July 2025 to June 2026, a Queenstown 4-room of any age resold at a median $1,000,000, and one with a lease from 2015 at $1,100,000, mostly on Dawson Road; a 3-room at $440,000 and $805,000 (the full table is above). A resale Standard or Unclassified flat bought without a grant carries no income ceiling, and once you have met your own five-year MOP it can be let whole with HDB's approval if you are a citizen. A Stirling Horizon flat will never offer that. The trade runs the other way on price and lease: you pay today's resale price for a flat already some years into its lease, where a BTO buyer waits years for a fresh one.

Our recommendation: if you missed Stirling Horizon and ten locked years were never the obstacle, watch HDB's launch lists for Queenstown's next BTO; if they were, a Standard flat elsewhere, or a resale Standard flat in Queenstown, keeps selling open after your own five-year MOP, and whole-flat letting too if you are a citizen.

What Stirling Horizon's figures are built from. HDB's February 2025 launch release: the BTO and SBF totals, the waiting-time wording, the 8% and 9% subsidy recovery rates, Table 1's after-grant starting prices, the income ladder and the shortlisting change. Its Annex A price list: flat types, floor areas, flat counts, prices, the 55-month estimate, the short-lease prices and HDB's resale comparables, for Stirling Horizon and the four other February 2025 BTO projects. The Stirling Horizon sales brochure: the setting, facilities, transport, finishes and rental flats, with its site plan read on the rendered PDF page, not the text extraction, for the storey heights by block, the block holding the rental flats and the land reserved around the site. HDB's application rates at the close of applications (see the note under the rates table). PropKaki's property_rules records, each sourced to an HDB page, for grants, income ceilings, the MOP, letting, option fees and cancellation. And PropKaki's analysis of HDB resale registrations for Queenstown, July 2025 to June 2026. The other Plus projects' subsidy recovery rates come from HDB's releases for October 2025 to June 2026.

Arithmetic we added to HDB's Queenstown figures. The price per square metre (range midpoint over the floor area including the air-con ledge), the gaps between the midpoints of the new-flat and comparable ranges, the subsidy recovery per $100,000 and per $1,000,000, the after-grant prices on HDB's EHG bands, and the loan and income table.

What this Queenstown review leaves out, on purpose. No completion date or year: HDB published none, and adding the waiting time to the launch would be our inference. No resale price, rent or forecast for Stirling Horizon, which is unbuilt and has never been sold; HDB's comparables and the town figures describe other flats. No reason for any queue: HDB records how many applied, not why, and we cite nothing published after the application window as a reason. No distances or walking times. The application rates describe a closed exercise and do not predict the next one. Grant figures, HDB's and ours, are illustrations; your HFE letter decides your grant and loan. The rules for owners and resale buyers are HDB's as at September 2026 and can change. This is a desktop analysis of HDB's documents and data, not a site or showflat visit, and it is not financial advice: verify every figure and rule with HDB before you act.