Tampines Has the Most People, Punggol the Newest Flats. What a Young or Ageing Town Means for HDB Buyers

The ranking is a familiar one. According to The Straits Times, Tampines had 296,060 residents in June 2026, ahead of Bedok (272,120), Sengkang (265,830), Woodlands (255,280) and Jurong West (250,890). Punggol was eighth, with 204,490.

Tampines was built as an HDB town in the early 1980s. In 2016 it had 259,110 residents and sat third, behind Bedok and Jurong West. It has since overtaken both, the report said, because their populations shrank while Tampines kept adding people.

It is also getting younger in one respect. Tampines ranked eighth in 2026 for the share of residents under 15, at 14.9%, up from outside the top ten a decade earlier. That is what happens when a mature town keeps getting new estates on its edges: the old blocks age, and new families arrive in the new ones.

Tampines is big, but it is not among the ten fastest-growing planning areas. Sengkang grew about 1.9% a year over the past decade, adding 46,450 residents and climbing from sixth to third. Its neighbour Punggol grew 4.6% a year, adding 74,110 people to the 130,380 it had in 2016, and entered the top ten for the first time. Among the larger areas, Bukit Batok (1.8%) also outpaced Tampines, as The Straits Times reported.

The children follow the new flats. Tengah, the newest HDB town, had the highest share of residents under 15, at 20.3%, followed by Punggol at 19.6%. Sengkang was sixth, at 16.3%.

These are the towns where young couples collected keys over the past ten years. For a buyer, that history matters more than the headcount, because it decides what is on sale today and what will be on sale next.

At the other end, the report said Outram has the oldest residents: 28.9% are aged 65 and above and the median age is 50. In Outram, Ang Mo Kio, Jurong East, Bukit Merah and Rochor, more than one in four residents were elderly.

SingStat's own summary, quoted by The Straits Times, put the pattern plainly: new estates, the ageing of older areas and shifting profiles are reshaping the map.

One warning before the numbers. SingStat uses the URA's 55 planning areas, which do not always match how people think of a neighbourhood. The report's example: the Paya Lebar planning area, mostly the air base, has 20 residents, while the homes near Paya Lebar MRT fall within Geylang (121,350). HDB uses its own towns again, and they do not line up exactly either. We say which one each figure uses.

We counted the dwelling units in every standing residential HDB block, grouped by the URA planning area each block sits in. That gives 1,175,959 HDB homes across 32 planning areas. Here is SingStat's ranking beside ours:

Residents: SingStat via The Straits Times (citizens and PRs, all housing types). HDB columns: PropKaki count of standing HDB blocks, weighted by units.

Tampines leads on both counts, with 87,410 HDB homes. Below it the order changes. Jurong West, Woodlands and Sengkang each hold about 76,000 HDB homes. Bedok, second by residents, is sixth by HDB homes, with 64,414. Bukit Batok is thirteenth.

We have deliberately not divided one column by the other. The population counts people in condos, landed homes and ECs too, and household sizes differ, so a "residents per flat" figure would mislead. What the table does show is the right-hand side: how much of each area's HDB stock is new, and how much is old.

This is the age profile of every planning area with at least 15,000 HDB homes, by the year each block was completed. Each row sums to 100%.

Weighted by dwelling units, not blocks. Age as at 2026.

Across all HDB homes, 39% are in blocks 40 years or older and 24% in blocks under 15. The median HDB home was completed in 1994.

Then the towns pull apart. Tengah is entirely new: all 15,476 units were finished from 2023, with a median completion year of 2024. Punggol is next, with 61% of its units built in 2012 or later and none older than 40 years. Sengkang has no 40-year-old blocks either, but more of its stock dates from the late 1990s and 2000s; its median year is 2005.

The ageing end is just as clear. 84% of Ang Mo Kio's HDB homes are 40 years or older, 77% of Bedok's, 67% of Jurong East's and 63% of Bukit Merah's. Three of those, Ang Mo Kio, Jurong East and Bukit Merah, are among the areas the report named for elderly residents. Outram, too small for the table, has 76% of its HDB homes in blocks 40 years or older.

Tampines sits in between: 34% of its HDB homes are 40-plus, but 28% were built from 2012. That mix of old core and new edge helps explain why its population held up while Bedok's, with 8% new stock, slipped.

The age of a town flows straight into the resale market, because the flats on sale are the flats the town has. Here are resales by HDB town from October 2025 to September 2026:

HDB towns as in the resale record. 4-room medians rounded to the nearest $1,000. October 2026 is still being registered and is left out.

Two things stand out. First, the lease. A 4-room bought in Punggol came with a median 88 years left; in Sengkang, 85. In Ang Mo Kio it was 54 years and in Bedok 60. Tampines, at 69, is close to the national 74.

Second, price does not simply follow lease. Punggol's 4-room median, $680,000, is above Ang Mo Kio's $615,000, but not by the margin 34 extra years might suggest. Older central towns carry a location premium that offsets the shorter lease. And Toa Payoh shows what happens when new blocks land in an old town: its 4-room median hit $1.00M, with 91 years left. Of its 401 4-room resales, 161 were on Bidadari Park Drive and Alkaff Crescent, at a median $1,100,000.

Comparing towns mixes location with age. A cleaner test is to stay inside one town and split its 4-room resales by when the lease began:

Lease from 2016 = mostly flats that have only just passed their five-year MOP.

The young-lease flats sold for more everywhere. In Punggol and Sengkang, where even the "older" flats are fairly young, the premium was modest: $34,000 and $44,000. In Tampines it was $132,000 ($770,000 against $638,000).

In the mature towns the gap balloons: $350,000 in Bedok and $456,000 in Ang Mo Kio, where a young-lease 4-room resold for a median $1,029,000 across 70 sales. Treat those two with care. The new flats in old towns tend to sit on the best-placed sites, near MRT stations and town centres, so the premium is partly location, not only lease. It still tells you what the market pays for the rare new block in an established area.

Most HDB flats can be resold once their five-year minimum occupation period (MOP) is up, counted from key collection. So the blocks finished in the past few years are tomorrow's resale listings. We counted them:

Planning areas. Completion year is our proxy for key collection.

Nationally, 55,213 HDB units were completed in 2021-2023, which reach their MOP around 2026 to 2028, and 46,220 in 2024-2026, which follow from around 2029.

Tengah is the big one: none of its flats has resold yet, and every one of its 15,476 units is in this wave. Tampines (14,202) and Punggol (11,561) are next. Sengkang's 7,069 are all from 2021-2023, so they arrive sooner. Bedok, Jurong West and Ang Mo Kio have fewer than 1,600 each.

You can already see this in turnover. Over the past year, Bukit Batok resold 30 flats for every 1,000 sold HDB flats in the town, Sembawang 28 and Punggol 27, against 18 in Ang Mo Kio and 23 nationally. In Punggol and Bukit Batok, about half of all resales (51%) were flats with leases from 2016. Young towns trade more because their owners are at the life stage of upgrading, and because more of their flats have just become sellable.

Not every new flat joins at five years. Prime and Plus flats carry a 10-year MOP, so part of the recent supply in central and well-located areas will reach the resale market later.

It depends on what you need the flat to do. Our view, framed as opinion:

• A young town such as Punggol, Sengkang or Tengah gives you lease: a resale 4-room with 85 to 88 years left. It gives you more sellers to choose from as each MOP batch arrives, and more bargaining room when several identical flats are listed at once. The trade-off is that a young town is still filling in. Malls, schools, clinics and transport lines in new estates are often still being built when the first residents move in, so buy for what is there, not only for what is planned.
• An ageing town such as Ang Mo Kio or Bedok gives you location and a finished town: markets, schools and an MRT line that have been there for decades, often at a lower 4-room median than the young towns. The trade-off is lease. A flat with 54 years left can still be a sound home, but it narrows who can buy it from you later, and how much of it can be financed with CPF and a loan.
• The new block in an old town is the premium option, and priced like one: $1,029,000 for a young-lease 4-room in Ang Mo Kio, $1,100,000 on Bidadari's streets.

The population table adds one more thought. Towns that are greying today were young once. A town's age profile shifts over 20 to 30 years, and the families who buy into Punggol now will be the seniors in its 2050 figures. What lasts is the location and the lease you start with.

A few limits on all of this.

• Three different maps. Population and stock age are by URA planning area; resale prices are by HDB town. They match for most towns but not all. Kallang/Whampoa spans the Kallang and Novena planning areas, and HDB's Central Area spans Outram, Rochor and Downtown Core.
• A median hides the spread. Bedok's 4-room resales ran from $418,000 to $1,200,000 in the year; Ang Mo Kio's from $438,000 to $1,168,888. Your block, floor and lease matter more than the town figure.
• Population is not HDB. SingStat's counts include condos, landed homes and ECs. Sengkang's and Punggol's growth is mostly HDB, but not all of it.
• The MOP wave is a ceiling, not a forecast. Most owners do not sell the day their MOP ends. The count tells you how many flats become eligible, not how many will be listed.
• Lag. The newest month of resales is still being registered, so our window stops at September 2026.

Two kinds of numbers, kept apart.

From the reporting: every population, growth, age and children figure comes from The Straits Times' report of SingStat's newsletter of 28 October 2026. We have not recomputed them.

PropKaki's own data:

• HDB stock and age use HDB's property information for every standing residential block, weighted by dwelling units, grouped by the URA planning area each block sits in. Age bands use 2026 minus the completion year and sum to 100% in every row.
• Resale figures use HDB resale registrations from October 2025 to September 2026, by HDB town. "Resales per 1,000" divides the year's resales by the sold (non-rental) units in that town's standing blocks.
• The young-lease split uses each flat's lease commencement year: 2016 or later against earlier.
• The MOP wave counts units in blocks completed 2021-2026, as a proxy for key collection.

Where an HDB town and a planning area differ, this is how the HDB homes split:

The news:

• The Straits Times: Tampines is Singapore's most populous planning area, but Punggol and Sengkang are growing faster, 29 October 2026, reporting the Singapore Department of Statistics' newsletter.

Data:

• HDB, via data.gov.sg: Resale flat prices based on registration date from Jan-2017 onwards.
• HDB, via data.gov.sg: HDB Property Information.
• PropKaki analysis of both, October 2026.

This is commentary by the PropKaki Editorial Desk on reporting by The Straits Times. The population figures belong to SingStat and that reporting; the HDB stock and resale analysis, 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. Check a flat's remaining lease, and what you can finance against it, with HDB, CPF and your bank before you buy.

Published 30 October 2026.