A Boon Keng Flat With 83 Years Left Just Sold for $1.64 Million. Here Is Who Held the Record Before

Boon Keng is not where most people picture a record-breaking HDB flat. It is a quiet corner of Kallang/Whampoa, though a central one: as Mothership notes, it is about a ten-minute drive from Orchard Road.

City View @ Boon Keng is hard to miss there. It is three 40-storey blocks with 714 flats between them, a mix of three- to five-room units from 731 sq ft to 1,280 sq ft, according to the reporting. Block 9, where the record flat sits, has 238 units, and 158 of them are five-rooms.

The flat that sold is near the top of that block, between the 34th and 36th floors, where the city is the view the project's name promised. Mothership drew the sale from HDB's resale price records, which list a block, a floor range and a size, but nothing about the renovation, the facing or the buyer's reasons. What the record does tell us is that someone valued this flat at $1.64 million.

The record City View broke belonged to its neighbour. In September, a 1,249 sq ft premium apartment at Block 8A Upper Boon Keng Road, part of Kallang Trivista, sold for $1.588 million, about $1,273 psf, Mothership reported. Our records show the same sale, at $1,588,888, on the 28th to 30th floor.

So within roughly a month, the town's five-room record moved up by about $51,000, and passed from one project to the other. The two are neighbours, and quite different. Kallang Trivista is an HDB premium apartment project, HDB's own model with better finishes than a standard flat, and its flats are younger: the record Trivista flat had about 90 years of lease left. City View's has about 83.

City View had been climbing towards this for a while. Mothership puts its previous best at $1.54 million in September 2025. In our data, its highest five-room before this month was $1,550,000, for a 117 sqm flat on the 31st to 33rd floor of Block 8, registered in October 2025. Either way, the new sale clears the project's old high by about $90,000 to $100,000.

City View is a Design, Build and Sell Scheme (DBSS) project. Under DBSS, private developers designed, built and first sold the flats, which remain HDB flats in every legal sense: HDB's eligibility rules, the minimum occupation period and the 99-year lease all apply. It was built in 2011 and, Mothership reports, entered the resale market in 2016, once its first owners had met their minimum occupation period.

DBSS projects are rare, and there will be no new ones. The Ministry of National Development told Parliament in 2018 that land sales for the scheme had been suspended since 2012, with no plans to restart it. Our explainer on DBSS and HUDC flats covers the scheme's history.

Earlier this month we looked at a $1.71 million Natura Loft flat in Bishan, another 2011 DBSS project that set its town's record. The stories rhyme: tall blocks, high floors, prices well above anything else nearby. Kallang/Whampoa adds a twist. Here, DBSS is not the only unusual kind of HDB home competing for the top price.

The fairest comparison is with other five-room flats in the same town, over the same months. Because Kallang/Whampoa also has HDB's own premium apartments (Kallang Trivista, and the McNair Road blocks), we split the town three ways. Here is what our analysis of HDB resale data shows for October 2025 to September 2026:

Three things stand out.

First, every City View five-room that resold in the past year went for $1 million or more. So did every premium apartment. Among the town's other five-room flats, 30 of 99 did.

Second, City View's flats are smaller than the town's standard five-rooms, about 109 sq m against 120, so per square foot the gap is even wider: $1,152 against $716.

Third, the reported $1.64 million sits about 15% above City View's own median, and about 77% above the median for the town's other five-room flats. It is a record even by City View's standards.

The premium apartments are worth a footnote. Their median psf is almost identical to City View's, despite about six more years of lease. But there were only three of them, so we would not lean on that.

Not in the records we hold, which go back to 1990. Before this sale, the highest Kallang/Whampoa resale of any flat type was the Kallang Trivista flat's $1,588,888. Once the City View sale is registered, it will be the town's highest.

The more surprising part is who held the top spot along the way. Here is the highest resale in the town each year since 2015:

Those "3 Room Terrace" rows are HDB's terrace houses at Jalan Ma'mor and Jalan Bahagia, a small enclave of landed public housing in Whampoa that HDB's records file as three-room flats. In half the years since 2015, the town's priciest HDB home was not a tower flat at all, but a terrace house with around 50 years of lease left. The crown has passed between three very different homes, and the 2026 sales have now edged past the 2024 terrace high of $1.57 million.

City View's five-room flats have risen steadily since their first resales in 2016. Here is the yearly picture in our data, to September 2026:

From 2016 to 2025, City View's median five-room price per square foot rose by about 50%, from $742 to $1,114. Prices barely moved for its first five years on the resale market, then climbed from 2021 onwards, as the wider HDB resale market rose.

Height matters too. Over the two years to September 2026, City View five-rooms on the 25th floor and up sold at a median $1,181 psf, about 13% more than the $1,042 psf for flats on the first twelve floors. The highest psf in our data before this month was $1,242, for a flat on the 34th to 36th floor of Block 7. The reported $1,302 psf is about 5% above that.

The record is not a leap out of nowhere: it is a high-floor flat at the top of a range that has been rising for five years.

Mothership's headline leads with the lease, and it is a fair question to ask. A 99-year HDB lease runs down every year, and buyers usually pay less for less lease. Our explainer on lease decay and resale prices covers how that plays out across the market.

Kallang/Whampoa makes an odd test case, because its top prices have come from flats with very different amounts of lease:

• City View's five-room flats had a median of about 84 years left over the past year.
• The premium apartments had about 90 years.
• The town's other five-room flats had about 60 years.
• The terrace house that sold for $1.57 million in 2024 had about 47 years left.

Our view: at the very top of the market, lease is one factor among several, not the deciding one. A terrace house with 47 years left sold for almost as much as a City View flat with nearly twice the lease. A City View flat with 83 years has now outsold a Trivista flat with about 90. What these buyers seem to pay for is something rare: land and a house in one case, height and a view in the other.

That cuts both ways. A record buyer is betting the rarity holds its value as the lease shortens. With 83 years left, City View still has a long runway, but every future record there will be set with less.

Not any more. Across Singapore, from November 2025 to October 2026, 130 DBSS five-room flats resold in 11 towns. Their national median was $1.12 million, against $738,000 for every other five-room flat. About 68% of DBSS five-room resales crossed $1 million, against 10.4% of other five-rooms.

Kallang/Whampoa's DBSS gap is among the widest. On the same basis, with the premium apartments counted among the town's "other" flats, its DBSS five-rooms sold about 54% above the rest of the town, the second-widest gap of the 11 towns. Only Bishan's, at about 65%, was wider. Toa Payoh's was about 48%.

Million-dollar flats in general are no longer rare either. In 2023, 1.8% of all HDB resales crossed $1 million. In 2025, it was 6.4%, or 1,593 flats, close to the roughly 6% MND cited in Parliament this year, Mothership reported. Since January 2025, Kallang/Whampoa has had 267 million-dollar resales, the fourth-most of any town after Toa Payoh, Bukit Merah and Queenstown. Our guide to million-dollar HDB flats looks at where they cluster and why.

The national record still sits higher than either Boon Keng or Bishan: $1.73 million, for a five-room on Henderson Road in Bukit Merah, registered in April 2026.

If you own a standard five-room flat in the town, this sale is not a price for your flat. Over the past year, the town's other five-room flats sold at a median of $928,000, and their median lease was about 60 years. A City View record says little about them.

If you own a City View or Trivista flat, the sale is closer to home, but floor and size still decide a lot. Over the past two years, City View's high floors sold about 13% more per square foot than its low floors. A low-floor 107 sqm unit is not a $1.64 million flat because its neighbour on the 35th floor was.

If you are buying, ask what you are paying for. In this town, a DBSS or premium apartment five-room has cost roughly $500,000 more than a standard five-room at the median. That buys a younger lease, height and a different kind of building. Whether that is worth it depends on how long you plan to stay.

And if you are a seller reading the headline, remember the point then-Minister Desmond Lee made in 2024, as Mothership recalls: record prices raise sellers' expectations. Buyers still compare like with like. It is worth checking the recent sales in your own block, at your own height, before setting a price.

Some limits, stated plainly.

The record is not in our data yet. Our HDB data runs to September 2026 for the analysis here, and HDB's October records are still filling in. The $1.64 million sale is Mothership's reporting from HDB's resale price records. Everything we have calculated covers the sales before it.

Our dates and the reporting can differ. Mothership puts City View's previous high at $1.54 million in September 2025. Our records show a slightly higher $1,550,000 sale registered in October 2025. HDB's data uses the month a resale is registered, which can trail the deal by weeks.

The premium mixes several things. City View's gap over the rest of the town compares medians. It does not separate the DBSS label from height, lease, size, block position or renovation.

The numbers are small. Fifteen City View resales and three premium apartment resales in a year show the gap is large, but not its exact size. One high-floor sale can move a yearly median.

What we would not hedge on: a City View record is a story about City View, and about how buyers value height and rarity. It is not a new price for Kallang/Whampoa.

Two kinds of numbers, kept apart.

From the reporting: the $1.64 million sale, its floor, size and price per square foot, the previous record at Kallang Trivista and its psf, City View's unit count, block heights, unit sizes, completion year, resale start year and remaining lease, its previous record as reported, and MND's and Mr Lee's comments all come from Mothership, linked below. The suspension of DBSS land sales comes from MND.

PropKaki's own data, from HDB resale records:

• The town comparison looks at Kallang/Whampoa five-room resales registered from October 2025 to September 2026, split into City View (Blocks 7, 8 and 9 Boon Keng Road), HDB premium apartments, and every other model. Price per square foot is the resale price divided by the floor area.
• City View's history covers its five-room resales from 2016 to September 2026; the floor comparison covers October 2024 to September 2026.
• The town record table takes the highest resale of any flat type in Kallang/Whampoa each year, from records going back to 1990.
• The national DBSS figures cover five-room resales from November 2025 to October 2026, a window that includes October's partly registered month; million-dollar counts run from 2023 to October 2026.
• The $51,000, $90,000 to $100,000 and roughly $500,000 gaps are simple subtraction of the reported prices and the medians above.

The news:

• Mothership: Boon Keng flat with 83 years left on lease sells for S$1.64 million, 22 October 2026.

Official:

• Ministry of National Development: Written answer on review of DBSS for HDB flats, 6 February 2018.

The data:

• PropKaki analysis of HDB resale transactions: Kallang/Whampoa five-room resales, October 2025 to September 2026; City View @ Boon Keng five-room resales, 2016 to September 2026; Kallang/Whampoa yearly highs, 2015 to October 2026; national DBSS five-room resales, November 2025 to October 2026; million-dollar resales, 2023 to October 2026.

Related reading: our commentary on the $1.71 million Natura Loft flat in Bishan.

This is commentary by the PropKaki Editorial Desk on reporting by Mothership. The sale details and the comments quoted belong to that reporting; the town comparison, the record history, the framing and the opinions are ours.

It is opinion and general information, not financial or property advice, and not a valuation of any flat.

Published 30 October 2026.