Maju Forest and Gillman Barracks Now Have Numbers: 11,000 Homes, More Forest Kept, Site Works From 2027

The consultation ran from 10 July to 6 August. In that time, Mothership reported, HDB received about 7,200 feedback submissions on Maju Forest and 2,300 on Gillman Barracks, and engaged around 1,000 stakeholders on top of that. Much of the feedback was about the loss of habitat and biodiversity. Some asked whether these two sites needed housing at all, and suggested brownfield land instead. At Gillman Barracks, many people also wrote about its heritage and its place in the community.

On 28 October, HDB answered with revised plans. At Maju Forest, the area kept green grows from about 8 hectares to 10, or about 45% of the 23-hectare site, up from 35%. The extra land is in the southern part of the site, and the whole retained area will be safeguarded as a new nature park.

At Gillman Barracks, the green area grows from about 8 hectares to 12, about 60% of the 20-hectare site, up from about 40%. More of the forest around a small hill will be kept, giving a greener front to Telok Blangah Street 31, and the north-south ecological corridor along Lock Road and Malan Road will be widened. That green land will become part of the upcoming Alexandra Nature Park. The 25 buildings first earmarked for keeping are still kept.

One small reading note: the headline's "10 per cent" and "20 per cent" increases are percentage points of each site, 35% to 45% and 40% to 60%. In hectares, Maju gains about 2 and Gillman about 4.

Keeping more forest costs homes, and this time the government said how many. Asked about the trade-off at a doorstop, Mr Tan said Maju Forest would have around 400 fewer units, and Gillman Barracks about 800 fewer. MustShareNews, reporting the same release, totalled that at 1,200 fewer homes than first planned.

What is left, in Mr Tan's words, is "some 11,000 new homes": around 4,000 at Maju Forest, which is public housing, and about 7,000 at Gillman Barracks, of which the media release said 5,500 are public housing. The rest of Gillman is the private and mixed-use part of the plan.

The government's way of holding on to most of the homes on less land is height. Mr Tan said it plans to "build taller where we can" to keep more greenery while still providing homes. He described the result as a "landing spot" and "a right balance" after weighing everything.

This is the number the debate lacked in August. Back then, we said the most useful thing the government could publish was the unit count under the old plan and the new one, because a percentage of a site tells you about area while a unit count tells you what was given up. It has now published the second half of that, plus the size of the cut.

Until now, every timeline on these sites was a guess. The revised plans put dates on the first steps.

At Gillman Barracks, site works are expected to start from the second half of 2027. According to the release, as Mothership reported it, that begins with demolitions, followed by land preparation works expected to start in 2029.

At Maju Forest, preparation works are likely to begin in the first half of 2028, and public access to the site will be restricted once they do. An Environmental Management and Monitoring Plan will be put in place at both sites before work starts on any vegetated area.

Mr Tan said both sites would be developed "progressively over the next decade". That word matters. Neither site is one big launch. HDB will most likely release them in phases, over several BTO exercises, and none of them has been scheduled yet.

About 11,000 homes across the two sites, as the government now puts it: around 4,000 public flats at Maju Forest and about 7,000 homes at Gillman Barracks, 5,500 of them public. Together that is 9,500 public flats.

The extra greenery cost about 1,200 homes, using Mr Tan's figures of around 400 at Maju Forest and about 800 at Gillman Barracks.

To give that a sense of scale: the eight BTO launches HDB has made in Bukit Merah, Clementi and Queenstown since October 2024 ranged from 498 to 1,976 flats, with a median of 950. So the homes given up are about 1.3 typical-sized BTO projects in these towns. That is a real loss, but a modest one against 9,500 public flats that remain.

One caution. This is a plan for development over a decade, not a count of flats launched. The final number will only be known project by project, as each one reaches a BTO exercise.

Big. Our BTO launch tables hold HDB's last six exercises, from October 2024 to June 2026, in which it launched 39,940 BTO flats across all towns. Here is every launch in the three towns around the two sites:

That adds up to 7,915 flats in Bukit Merah, Clementi and Queenstown, about 20% of everything HDB launched in those six exercises. The 9,500 public flats now planned at the two sites are about 1.2 times that.

The split is lopsided. Most of the recent supply was in Bukit Merah: 6,036 flats across 6 launches (Redhill Peaks counts twice because HDB offered it in two exercises). Gillman's 5,500 public flats are about 91% of that again. Clementi, by contrast, got one project in the window, the 753-flat Clementi Emerald in July 2025. Maju Forest's 4,000 flats would be more than five times that.

So for Bukit Merah, Gillman extends a pipeline that is already flowing. For Clementi, Maju Forest is a step change.

Set against the HDB homes already standing in each planning area, and the resale market that turns them over:

Three things stand out.

Clementi gains the most, proportionally. Maju Forest's 4,000 flats would add about 14% to Clementi's 28,712 HDB homes. Gillman's 5,500 add about 10% to Bukit Merah's 53,071.

Both towns are old. About 66% of Clementi's HDB homes and 63% of Bukit Merah's are in blocks completed before 1990. In Clementi, the flats that changed hands in the past year had a median of just 54 years of lease left, against 71 years for all HDB resales. A new 99-year estate is a very different product from most of what the town sells today.

The supply is large next to the resale market. Clementi recorded 497 HDB resales in the 12 months to September 2026. Maju Forest's 4,000 flats are about 8 years of that turnover. Gillman's 5,500 are about 6 years of Bukit Merah's 908 resales.

None of this tells you where prices will go, and we are not going to pretend it does. These flats arrive over a decade, not at once, and new BTO flats sell at HDB's prices, not at resale prices.

No launch date has been announced, and no classification either. What has been announced is when the ground work starts: from the second half of 2027 at Gillman Barracks (demolitions first, then land preparation from 2029) and from the first half of 2028 at Maju Forest.

The start of site works is not a launch date, and HDB has not said when the first project will be offered. But it does put a floor under when the first keys could come. HDB's estimated waiting times on the eight recent launches in these towns ran from 34 to 56 months, with a median of 54 months. As a rough illustration, not a forecast: if a first project launched around the time works begin, waits of that length would put the first keys somewhere around 2031 or 2032, with later phases following through the decade.

On classification, every recent launch in Bukit Merah and Clementi in our tables was Prime, and Queenstown's Stirling Horizon was Plus. Prime flats carry a 10-year minimum occupation period and a subsidy recovery when sold. Sites this close to the city could well be classified the same way, but HDB decides that at each launch. Treat it as likely, not settled.

Competitive, but not wildly out of line with the rest of Singapore. For the 4 projects in these towns where HDB published a rate for the project on its own, there were 3.9 applicants per flat. Across all 20 projects in our tables with their own rate, the figure was 3.7.

The busiest was June 2026's Berlayar Rise in Bukit Merah, with 4.7 applicants per flat across 1,976 flats. Clementi Emerald drew 4.4; Queenstown's Stirling Horizon, a Plus project, 2.5.

These rates count all applicants together, first-timers and second-timers. Your own odds depend on your applicant group and the flat type, which our application-rates guide breaks down. And 9,500 flats arriving in phases over a decade would add choice, not guarantee a flat: recent central launches here have still drawn more applicants than flats.

We would not plan around them yet, and the new dates make that clearer, not less so.

The flats already launched in Bukit Merah are not due until 2029 at the earliest, by HDB's estimates. Maju Forest and Gillman Barracks start their site works after that window opens, and the first keys there look like an early-2030s event at best. If you need a home in this part of Singapore within the next few years, these sites are not the answer.

If you can wait, the useful thing to do is watch HDB's BTO exercises for the first project at either site, and read its terms carefully when it comes, especially if it is Prime. Our BTO launch schedule tracks each exercise, and our reviews of the nearby launches, such as Berlayar Rise and Clementi Emerald, show what recent flats here have cost and how long they take.

This is opinion and general information, not advice on whether to buy or wait.

The numbers are firmer than in August, but they are still plans.

The unit counts are estimates for "the next decade". "Some 11,000", "around 4,000" and "about 7,000" are rounded figures from a doorstop and a media release. Each project's real size is fixed only when HDB launches it, and it can shift with design, height limits and the environmental monitoring now promised.

The dates are for site works, not homes. A start date for demolition or land preparation does not tell you when a BTO exercise will include these sites. Our 2031-2032 key estimate is an illustration built on recent waiting times, not anything HDB has said.

Our stock and launch figures have limits. The HDB homes counts come from HDB's property information dataset, by planning area; flats launched since 2024 are still being built and are not in them. Our launch tables cover six exercises, October 2024 to June 2026, so anything launched since then is not counted. And some projects shared an application rate with others, so the applicants-per-flat figures cover only four of the eight local launches.

The debate may not be over. Groups opposed to the plans had pressed for more forest to be kept before this revision. A revised plan is the government's answer, not necessarily the end of the argument.

From the reporting. The revised hectares and percentages, the feedback counts, the 11,000, 4,000, 7,000 and 5,500 home figures, the 400 and 800 fewer homes, the dates and all quotes come from Mothership's report of HDB's 28 October 2026 media release and Mr Tan's doorstop the same day, with the totals checked against MustShareNews' report of the same release. We have not seen the release itself.

PropKaki's own data:

• BTO launches are HDB's launch releases and Annex A tables for the six exercises from October 2024 to June 2026, as loaded into our launch tables, which reconcile to HDB's published totals (39,940 flats). Applicants per flat is HDB's final application count divided by flats, only for projects where HDB published a rate for that project alone.
• HDB homes today is the total of dwelling units in residential HDB blocks in each planning area, from HDB's property information dataset. "Built before 1990" uses each block's completion year.
• Resales are HDB resale registrations from October 2025 to September 2026. October 2026 is still being registered and is left out. Median lease left is the median remaining lease of the flats sold.
• "In years of resales" divides the planned public flats by that 12-month resale count. It is a sense of scale, not a forecast.

Our earlier pieces used the Clementi 4-room resale ranking and the private-price table for Districts 4 and 21. We have not repeated them here.

The news:

• Mothership: Increase in retained green spaces in Maju Forest & Gillman Barracks with construction to start in 2027 & 2028 respectively: HDB, 29 October 2026.
• MustShareNews: More greenery to be retained at Maju Forest & Gillman Barracks, but 1,200 fewer homes planned, 29 October 2026.

The data:

• HDB BTO launch releases, Annex A and final application rates, October 2024 to June 2026, as loaded by PropKaki.
• HDB property information dataset (residential blocks and dwelling units), as loaded by PropKaki.
• PropKaki analysis of HDB resale transactions, October 2025 to September 2026.

Our earlier commentary on these sites:

• New Flats Are Coming to Clementi — a Town Where Resale Runs $800k, 28 July 2026.
• "Nothing Is Cast in Stone" — and Suddenly the Flats in Clementi Are a Question Again, 4 August 2026.
• The Plans Moved: More Greenery Will Be Kept at Maju Forest and Gillman Barracks, 20 August 2026.

This is commentary by the PropKaki Editorial Desk on reporting by Mothership, corroborated by MustShareNews. The plans, the figures from HDB and the minister's words belong to that reporting; the supply analysis, the framing and the opinions are ours.

It is opinion and general information, not property, financial or investment advice, and not a forecast of any BTO launch. The plans are to be carried out over a decade and details may change, so check HDB's own published materials, including the Feedback Summary Reports and revised environmental study reports HDB said it will publish on HDB InfoWEB, before acting on anything.

We hold no position on whether these sites should be developed.

Published 30 October 2026.