Developers Just Paid a Record for an EC Its Buyers Cannot Sell for Ten Years

The site is small: 11,535 square metres at Canberra Drive, off the Sembawang end of the North-South line, expected to hold about 185 homes. HDB released it for tender in May, and the tender closed on Thursday, 1 October.

HDB's provisional results came out that night. Thirteen bids. As CNA noted, that is the most for an EC site since the Sumang Walk plot in Punggol, now Piermont Grand, drew 17.

The top offer came from a consortium of SNC Realty, HS Invesco and Kay Lim Realty: $163,903,000, or $825 per square foot per plot ratio. That is a record for an EC site. The previous record, $794 psf ppr, was set by Sim Lian Group at Woodlands Drive 17 in January this year, less than nine months earlier.

It was not a one-bidder outlier either. Provisional results reported by 99.co put the second bid, from Intrepid Investments and TID Residential, at $159,434,000, or $803 psf ppr. That is also above January's record. Two separate groups looked at this site and both decided it was worth more than any EC site sold before.

What makes the price surprising is the rulebook it was bid under. Canberra Drive was the first EC site tendered under the new EC rules, which, as CNA summarised, include:

• The minimum occupation period doubled to ten years. EC buyers must live in the flat for a decade before the usual exit options open up.
• The Deferred Payment Scheme removed. Buyers can no longer delay most of the purchase price until the project is completed.
• A bigger quota and a longer priority period for first-time buyers.

Each of those is designed to make ECs more of a home and less of an investment. A longer MOP pushes the eventual gain further away. Losing deferred payment means buyers need their financing in place earlier. More priority for first-timers tilts the buyer pool towards young families.

Analysts had expected developers to price that in with more conservative bids.

There is one change pulling the other way. Canberra Drive was also the first EC tender to close after the household income ceiling rose to $18,000 a month in August. We explained when that happened that the higher ceiling does not apply to any EC on sale today. It applies to new sites like this one. A higher ceiling means more households can buy, and developers bid for buyers.

Developers have not explained their bids, so this is our reading rather than theirs.

The rule changes make an EC a worse investment. They do not obviously make it a worse home, and they do nothing to the number of households who want one. If anything, the higher income ceiling widens that pool at the same moment the new rules are applied. A family earning $17,000 a month could not buy an EC from an older site. From sites like Canberra Drive, it can.

The other part is supply. EC sites come out a few at a time, and each launch sells to a large, mostly first-time, buyer pool that cannot buy a private launch with the same subsidies. When those launches keep selling at higher prices, as the next section shows, developers bid accordingly.

The new rules are designed to cool investment demand. Developers are bidding on owner-occupier demand. Both can be true.

Here is every EC launch that began selling in the past two years and has lodged enough sales to read, from URA caveat records:

Median transacted PSF over each project's new-sale caveats. Newer launches are still lodging, so their counts are a floor.

Across all EC new sales in the period, the median was $1,770 per square foot.

The trend is the point. $1,650 at Novo Place in late 2024. $1,934 at Rivelle Tampines this year. EC buyers have not been put off by those prices: these five launches together account for thousands of sales.

That is the price history a developer looks at when bidding a record for the next site. Location matters, and Tampines is not Sembawang. But the direction across the whole set is the same.

An EC only reaches the open market after its minimum occupation period. Here is what those resales went for over the past year, by district:

Districts with at least 20 EC resales in the past 12 months.

Across all of them, the median EC resale went at $1,458 per square foot. The median new EC sale was 21 per cent higher.

That gap is not a loss. These resold ECs were launched years ago, many at prices well below today's. Every one of them is at least five years old. What the gap does show is that today's launch prices are well above what the existing EC stock sells for today. A buyer at $1,900 per square foot is paying for a new unit, plus several years of price growth that older EC owners have not seen yet.

In District 27, Canberra Drive's district, 210 EC resales went at a median $1,394, close to the median private resale in the same district (below).

Yes, and this is the change buyers should think about most.

The traditional case for an EC has been a two-step one: buy at a price below a comparable private condo, helped by grants and income-capped eligibility, and wait out the MOP until the flat can be sold on a more open market. The resale table above is that second step. It shows what the exit looks like.

Doubling the MOP to ten years does three things to that deal:

1. The exit is further away. Whatever gain there is takes twice as long to realise. On a yearly basis, the same gain is worth less.
2. More can change in the meantime. Interest rates, the household's needs, the neighbourhood's supply, and the rules themselves.
3. The project is older when it reaches the market. A ten-year-old project competes with newer ones on the resale market.

None of that makes an EC a bad home. For a family planning to stay ten years anyway, the longer MOP costs little. It is the buyer who was counting on an exit at year five whose numbers change. EC buyers should do their sums on a ten-year hold, not a five-year one.

Our upcoming EC launches guide lists what is coming and under which rules.

Nobody knows yet, and we are not going to guess. The site has to be awarded, designed, approved and built first. No launch date, unit mix or price has been announced.

What the bid does set is a floor on the developer's costs. At $825 psf ppr, the land alone costs more per square foot of permitted floor area than any EC site before it. Construction, financing, marketing and margin all come on top.

Two cautions about any quick sum:

• psf ppr and strata psf are different measures. The land price is per square foot of permitted gross floor area, which includes common areas. A buyer's PSF is per square foot of strata area, the space they own. You cannot add a construction cost to $825 and get a launch price.
• Location matters. The recent launches in our table are mostly in the east and west. Sembawang is a different market, and the district's own resale figures sit lower.

What we can say is that the developers' combined view is clear. Two groups bid above the previous record, and eleven others bid as well. They expect buyers to pay more for an EC here than buyers have paid for EC land before.

District 27 is a useful comparison because new launches and older stock sit side by side. Over the past year:

URA caveats for postal district 27. ECs that are past their MOP are resold through the same records as condos, so the all-resale line includes them.

Three things stand out.

The new-sale median rests on a single project. Every one of the 104 new sales in the district over the past year was at Canberra Crescent Residences, a private condo. That $2,009 is that launch's price, not a district trend.

ECs are a large part of Sembawang's resale market. Four of the district's busiest resale projects, The Visionaire, Parc Life, The Criterion and The Brownstone, are ECs. Of the 536 resales, 210 were ECs.

Older ECs resell slightly above the district's typical resale. EC resales went at a median $1,394, against $1,344 for all resales. Once an EC is through its MOP, the market prices it like any other suburban condo, and in this district, a little higher.

The open question for Canberra Drive is where its launch price will sit between today's EC launch prices and Canberra Crescent's private new-sale price, and how much buyers will pay for an EC they must hold for a decade.

Several limits, and they cut both ways.

The result is provisional. HDB has published the bids; it has not yet awarded the site. Awards normally follow the top bid, but it is not automatic.

Land psf ppr is not strata psf. We show the land price and flat prices side by side for scale, not as arithmetic.

Recent launches are still lodging. Caveats are lodged over months, so the counts for Rivelle Tampines and Coastal Cabana are a floor, and their medians can still move.

New and resale ECs are not like-for-like. Every resold EC has served its MOP, so it is at least five years old and was launched at an older price. The 21 per cent gap mixes a new-launch premium with an age difference.

Districts differ. A Tampines EC price is not a Sembawang EC price. We show the whole set for its direction, and District 27 separately for the local picture.

What we would not hedge on: in the first test of the new EC rules, developers bid more, not less, and EC launch prices have climbed every year in our records. The new rules have made ECs a longer commitment. They have not made them cheaper.

Two kinds of numbers, kept apart.

From the reporting: the site size and yield, the release in May, the closing date, the 13 bids, the top and second bids and their bidders, the $825 and $803 psf ppr figures, the $794 psf ppr Woodlands Drive 17 record, the Sumang Walk comparison, the list of new EC rules, the $18,000 income ceiling timing and analysts' expectations all come from CNA and 99.co, linked below.

PropKaki's own data, as of 6 October 2026:

• EC launch prices are medians of transacted PSF over URA new-sale caveats for executive condominiums, for launches that began selling within the past two years and have at least 20 new-sale caveats. Duplicate caveats for the same unit are counted once. The all-EC new-sale median covers 3,269 sales.
• EC resale prices are medians over URA resale caveats for executive condominiums in the past 12 months (1,456 sales), by district where a district has at least 20.
• The District 27 split covers all URA private-sale caveats in postal district 27 over the trailing 365 days (696 priced sales), divided by type of sale.

The caveats that matter: recent caveats under-lodge, so counts are a floor; new and resale PSF are not like-for-like; strata PSF and land psf ppr are different measures; and prices are transacted, not asking.

The news:

• CNA: First EC tender under new rules draws record-high bid from developers, 1 October 2026.
• 99.co: Canberra Drive EC provisional tender results, October 2026.

The data:

• PropKaki analysis of URA new-sale caveats for executive condominiums, launches that began selling in the past two years.
• PropKaki analysis of URA resale caveats for executive condominiums, past 12 months, by postal district.
• PropKaki analysis of URA private-sale caveats in postal district 27, trailing 365 days, by type of sale.

This is commentary by the PropKaki Editorial Desk on reporting by CNA and 99.co. The tender result and the rule changes belong to that reporting and to HDB; the EC price analysis, the framing and the opinions are ours.

It is opinion and general information, not financial, legal or property advice. No launch price, date or unit mix has been announced for Canberra Drive, and nothing here is a forecast of one. Check the current EC eligibility rules with HDB before planning a purchase.

Published 6 October 2026.