A Bishan Flat Just Sold for $1.71 Million. The Flats Down the Road Sell for $970,000

Natura Loft is hard to miss in Bishan. Its blocks rise to 40 storeys, well above most of the estate around them, on Bishan Street 24.

This month, a five-room flat on the 37th to 39th floor of Block 273A changed hands for $1.71 million, according to Mothership, which drew on HDB's resale price records. The flat is 1,292 sq ft. At that size, the buyer paid about $1,324 per square foot.

For context, that is the kind of price per square foot many buyers associate with a private condo in the suburbs, not a public flat. And it was paid for a flat with more than 83 years left on its lease, which matters: this is not a short-lease flat being sold at a discount, and it will not be one for a long time.

The sale set a new high for a five-room resale flat in Bishan. It also came within $18,000 of the national record.

Natura Loft is not a standard HDB project. It was built under the Design, Build and Sell Scheme (DBSS), which the Ministry of National Development says was introduced in 2005 to let private developers design and build some public flats.

They are HDB flats, and today they can only be bought on the resale market, as HDB resale flats. What sets them apart is who built them: a private developer designed the project and first sold the flats, which is why many DBSS blocks look quite unlike the HDB estates around them.

Natura Loft has 480 flats across its blocks and was completed in 2011, Mothership reported. Block 273A alone has 160 four- and five-room flats. It is the only DBSS project in Bishan.

There will not be more. MND told Parliament in 2018 that land sales for the scheme have been suspended since 2012, and that it has no plans to reactivate it. Every DBSS flat that exists today is every DBSS flat there will be. Our explainer on DBSS and HUDC flats covers the scheme's history in more detail.

This is not the first time Natura Loft has set the Bishan record. According to Stacked Homes, as cited by Mothership, the previous high was a similar-sized unit at Block 275A, on the 34th to 36th floor, which sold for $1.63 million (about $1,263 psf) in November 2025.

Our own records show that sale too. Over the twelve months to September 2026, the highest five-room resale in Bishan was that $1.63 million flat at Block 275A. Every one of the eight priciest five-room resales in the town over that year was at Natura Loft.

The national record sits a little higher. The most expensive HDB resale flat on record is a five-room flat on Henderson Road in Bukit Merah, which sold for $1.728 million in April 2026. Natura Loft's sale this month came within $18,000 of it.

These records now move every few months. That is worth keeping in mind when you see the next one.

The fairest way to judge Natura Loft is against other five-room flats in the same town, over the same months. Here is what our analysis of HDB resale data shows for October 2025 to September 2026:

The size row is the important one. In some towns, DBSS flats look pricier partly because they are bigger. Not in Bishan: the DBSS flats and the other five-room flats are almost exactly the same size, at about 120 sq m. The gap is not about floor area.

So what is it about? Some of it is height. Natura Loft rises to 40 storeys, and high floors with open views command a premium in any HDB town. Some of it is age and lease: Natura Loft was completed in 2011, so its flats have more lease left than many older Bishan blocks. And some of it is the building itself, the design and finishes buyers are paying for.

Our numbers cannot separate those three. What they do show is that a Natura Loft price tells you about Natura Loft. It does not tell you what a standard Bishan five-room is worth.

Natura Loft is the most expensive, but the pattern holds wherever DBSS flats exist. Over the same twelve months there were 120 DBSS five-room resales across 11 towns. Their national median was $1.17 million, against $738,000 for every other five-room resale.

The gap shows up most clearly in the million-dollar mark. 69% of DBSS five-room resales sold for $1 million or more. For other five-room flats, it was 9.9%.

Town by town, the gap varies:

Selected towns, October 2025 to September 2026. Towns with only a handful of DBSS resales are noisy: read the count before the gap.

Notice that in most towns, the gap per square foot is wider than the gap on price. That is because DBSS five-rooms are usually smaller than the town's other five-rooms: in Tampines, for example, the DBSS median is 109 sq m against 121 sq m. Buyers pay more for less space. Bishan is the exception, where the sizes match, and its gap on price is the widest of all.

A $1.71 million flat is the far tail of the market. But the tail has been getting longer. On our count of HDB resale records:

The 2026 figures cover a partial year whose latest months are still being lodged. Don't read the share as a full-year figure.

That 2025 share lines up with what MND told Parliament in April: about 6 per cent of resale flats sold above $1 million that year, as Mothership reported.

Bishan is one of the towns where these flats cluster. Since the start of 2025, it has recorded 160 million-dollar resales, seventh among HDB towns. Toa Payoh leads with 506, followed by Bukit Merah and Queenstown. All are mature, central towns.

MND's point, which Mothership also reported, is that the wider market still offers a range of prices: four-room flats with long leases in towns such as Sembawang and Yishun were available below $600,000 in 2025. Both things are true. Million-dollar flats are no longer rare, and they are still not the typical HDB flat.

If you are selling a standard five-room in Bishan, treat this headline with care. Former Minister Desmond Lee warned in 2024 that record prices can push sellers' expectations up and make buyers anxious. Your comparable is not Natura Loft. Over the past year, Bishan's other five-room flats sold at a median $970,000. Your own block, floor, lease and condition will put you somewhere around that, not near $1.71 million.

If you are buying, the same logic applies in reverse. A DBSS flat is a specific product with a specific premium, and over the past year that premium in Bishan has been about 61% on price. Whether the design, height and finishes are worth that much to you is a personal call. What our data cannot tell you is whether the premium will hold, widen or narrow over time.

One thing DBSS buyers can count on is scarcity. No new DBSS flats are coming, because land sales for the scheme have been suspended since 2012. Every future buyer of a Bishan DBSS flat will be choosing from the same 480.

If you qualify for grants, MND noted that eligible first-time resale buyers can get up to $230,000 in housing grants.

This is general commentary, not advice on any purchase or sale.

Some limits, stated plainly.

The premium mixes several things. The 61% gap compares two medians. It does not control for floor level, remaining lease, which block a flat is in or its condition. Natura Loft's height alone accounts for some of it. We have not tried to price the DBSS label separately, and you should not read the gap as "what DBSS is worth".

Bishan's DBSS row is small. Nine DBSS five-room resales in a year is enough to show the gap is large. It is not enough to pin its size precisely.

The record itself is not in our numbers yet. Our HDB data runs to September 2026, and HDB's monthly records take time to fill in. The $1.71 million sale is reported by Mothership from HDB's resale price records. Our analysis covers the twelve months before it.

One project can be a town's whole DBSS row. In Bishan, it is Natura Loft and nothing else. That makes the comparison cleaner, but it also means the "DBSS" column is really one development's story.

What we would not hedge on: a Natura Loft record says very little about what an ordinary Bishan flat will sell for.

Two kinds of numbers, kept apart.

From the reporting: the $1.71 million sale, its floor, size and price per square foot, the previous Bishan record (which Mothership attributes to Stacked Homes), Natura Loft's unit count, height, completion year and remaining lease, the national record of $1.728 million, and MND's and Mr Lee's comments all come from Mothership, linked below. The DBSS scheme's start date and the suspension of its land sales come from MND.

PropKaki's own data, from HDB resale records to September 2026:

• The DBSS comparison looks at five-room resales registered from October 2025 to September 2026 and splits each town's sales into DBSS and every other flat model. Price per square foot is the resale price divided by the floor area.
• Million-dollar counts are resales at $1,000,000 or more, by year and by town, from 2023 to September 2026.
• The $18,000 gap to the national record is simple subtraction of the two reported prices.

The news:

• Mothership: 5-room DBSS flat in Bishan sells for S$1.71 million, 7 October 2026.

Official:

• Ministry of National Development: Written answer on DBSS flats sold for more than $1 million, 8 May 2023.
• Ministry of National Development: Written answer on review of DBSS for HDB flats, 6 February 2018.

The data:

• PropKaki analysis of HDB resale transactions, October 2025 to September 2026 (DBSS comparison), and 2023 to September 2026 (million-dollar counts).

This is commentary by the PropKaki Editorial Desk on reporting by Mothership. The sale details and the comments quoted belong to that reporting; the DBSS and million-dollar 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.

Published 7 October 2026.