37,413 Applicants, 4.7 per Flat: What November's BTO Rush Says About Where to Apply Next

The 5pm figure is what most people saw. But the last evening of a BTO exercise is busy, and by the time HDB's final rate file was marked final, at 11.59pm on 11 November, the count had reached 37,413.

Here is the final picture for first-timer families, the group most buyers belong to:

• Toa Payoh Hillside, 4-room: 6,317 applicants for 584 flats, and 7.0 first-timer families per flat. At 5pm the papers had it at just over six.
• Plantation Dew in Tengah, 4-room: 5.5 first-timer families per flat. Its 5-room and 3Gen flats, balloted together, finished at 4.0.
• Bayshore Sails and Bayshore Oasis in Bedok, 4-room: 3.2.
• Chencharu Acres in Yishun, 4-room: 2.7.
• Sembawang Anchor, 4-room and 5-room: 0.7 and 0.4. Fewer first-timer families than flats.

So this was not a rush everywhere. It was a rush to particular places, and a shrug at one.

Toa Payoh Hillside is the only Prime project in the exercise, next to Caldecott MRT station, and it comes with a subsidy recovery of 11% when an owner first sells. Realion Group's Christine Sun told The Straits Times that schools nearby, including CHIJ Primary and Secondary, and the estate's amenities drove demand. Lee pointed to rarer touches, such as a balcony on some of the 4-room flats. The dearest of those, according to HDB's Annex A, is priced at $832,000 before grants.

The most striking number belongs to another group. Second-timer families, households who have owned a flat before, applied for Hillside's 4-rooms at 45.4 per flat. That is partly arithmetic: HDB's Annex B sets aside at least 90% of 4-room and bigger flats for first-timer families and up to 10% for second-timers, so second-timer applications chase a thin slice of the flats. At Bayshore Sails, second-timer families applied for the 90 three-room flats at 57.4 per flat.

Seniors came too: Hillside's Community Care Apartments, now open from age 55, drew 525 applicants for 256 units.

Tengah is HDB's newest town, and it is usually described as a town still being built. November suggests buyers now see it differently. Plantation Dew's 4-room flats drew 5.5 first-timer families per flat, and its 2-room Flexi flats drew 19.2 first-time singles per flat, the highest singles rate in the exercise.

SRI's Mohan Sandrasegeran told CNA that Tengah is becoming an established community, with residents moving in and amenities such as Plantation Plaza and Parc Point arriving. He also pointed to the coming Jurong Region Line and the planned move of ACS (Primary) to Tengah in 2030. ERA's Eugene Lim said the pricing offers a much cheaper way into the town, and Sun suggested the white flats on offer may be a novelty to young buyers.

The prices help explain it. A Plantation Dew 4-room runs from $339,000 to $445,000 before grants, on HDB's figures, against $558,000 to $796,000 for a Hillside 4-room without a balcony. A Standard project in a young town is good value, and buyers have noticed. (We looked at another Tengah trade-off, smaller kitchens, in October.)

Here is November against every exercise since February 2025, on HDB's final rate files:

November has the most applicants and the highest rate per flat of the six. The clearest jump is in the column that matters most to families: the median first-timer-family rate for 3-room and bigger flats was 2.7, about 1.9 times June's 1.4.

Singles moved much less. Their median rate for 2-room Flexi flats, 8.8, matches July 2025's.

Two older yardsticks come from the reporting, not our files: October 2024 drew 35,678 applicants for 8,573 flats, per CNA, and August 2022's rate was 7.8, per Huttons.

National Development Minister Chee Hong Tat said the rise was "not unexpected", because more Singaporeans can now apply, as CNA reported. Analysts credited both the higher ceiling and the locations. HDB does not say how many applicants were newly eligible, so nobody can split the two cleanly. Our files allow two checks.

Was November simply a richer menu? Not unusually. 55% of its flats were in Plus or Prime projects. June's share was 61% and October 2025's 57%, yet both drew far less demand per flat.

How did the same towns do last time? Four-room first-timer-family rates:

Yishun is the cleanest test: Standard projects in the same town, climbing from 1.1 to 1.8 to 2.7. Sembawang barely moved.

Our read, which is opinion: the ceiling probably widened the pool, and the wider pool went where buyers always go. It did nothing for Sembawang, where, Sun told CNA, almost 4,000 flats had been launched in February and June. More eligible buyers did not make an unwanted location wanted.

Not "one in seven", exactly. An application rate is the number of applicants in a group for each flat on offer, and HDB's Annex B explains why that is only a rough guide:

• It is a ballot. HDB shortlists applicants by computer ballot, not first come, first served, and gives queue positions to up to 200% of the flat supply. A queue number beyond the supply may not end in a flat.
• Quotas shape the odds. At least 90% of 4-room and bigger flats go to first-timer families, which is why their rate is far lower than second-timers'.
• Same-town projects share a ballot, and priority schemes and ethnic quotas at booking move individual odds in ways one rate cannot show.

Two rules in the same annex matter for strategy. A first-timer family that does not book a flat when one is available moves into the second-timer category for a year, unless the count is waived, for example because it had 10 or fewer flats to choose from. And since October 2024, the unsuccessful attempts that earn extra ballot chances count only when they are in Standard projects. Losing the Hillside ballot does not build that credit; losing at Plantation Dew can.

At the other end, The Straits Times noted that first-timers applying for Sembawang Anchor's 4-room and 5-room flats are "virtually guaranteed" a chance to pick one. Our explainer on application rates goes further.

Most Hillside applicants will not get a flat there. For some, the next stop is resale, and Toa Payoh has young flats as well as old ones. Over November 2025 to October 2026, PropKaki's analysis of HDB resale data counts 223 Toa Payoh 4-room resales with 90 or more years of lease left, about half of the town's 4-room resales.

The cheapest young 4-room resale in Toa Payoh, at $820k, cost about what the dearest Hillside 4-room does, at $832k. The median young resale sat $258k above the top of Hillside's range and $532k above its bottom. ERA's Lim told CNA the starting price compares favourably with HDB's comparables.

The resale buyer gets a flat now instead of years from now, and no 11% clawback on a later sale. The Hillside buyer gets a 10-year minimum occupation period and that clawback, which we weighed for June's Prime flats. For a family planning to stay, the BTO gap is large enough that a second try may be worth more than the wait costs.

HDB's resale records from January 2017 to November 2026 contain no Tengah resale at all. The nearest substitutes are young flats in the HDB towns around it:

November 2025 to October 2026, PropKaki analysis of HDB resale data, by HDB town.

Bukit Batok has by far the most young flats, so it is the best like-for-like. Its median young 4-room sold $235k above the top of Plantation Dew's 4-room range ($339k to $445k), and its median young 5-room $202k above the top of the 5-room range ($494k to $626k). HDB's own comparables for Plantation Dew, at about 91 years left, ran from $571k to $706k for a 4-room.

Choa Chu Kang and Jurong West are cheaper, but their young-flat samples are small, and a median of 23 or 48 sales is a weak guide.

HDB plans about 4,300 BTO flats in Bishan, Tampines, Tengah and Toa Payoh in February, with about 5,000 Sale of Balance Flats alongside, CNA reported. We set out those projects last week; November adds a fresh read on two of the four towns.

Four-room first-timer-family rates in February's towns, over our six exercises:

Our view, which is opinion and not advice:

• None of February's towns has been an easy 4-room in this window, apart from Kim Keat Crest's Plus flats in February 2026. Expect competition in all four.
• If you lost at Hillside, Toa Payoh's February project is the obvious second try, but plan on a crowd.
• If you lost at Plantation Dew, February's Tengah project is a real option, and a Standard-project loss counts towards the extra ballot chances HDB gives repeat applicants, under its rules.
• Eligible families with children get the extra ballot chance per child from February, the first exercise where it applies.
• If certainty matters more than location, look at the Sale of Balance Flats round. Sembawang's lesson holds: the easy flats are the ones fewer people want.

Some limits, stated plainly.

The headline was a snapshot. The reports used the 5pm count; we use HDB's final file.

A rate is not a probability. Quotas, priority schemes and the ballot sit between a rate and your chance.

We cannot measure the ceiling's effect. HDB does not publish how many applicants were newly eligible. The same-town comparisons are suggestive, not proof.

Our rate history is short. It starts in February 2025; HDB's October 2024 rates no longer survive.

Resale data lags. Our window ends in October 2026, whose registrations may still be filling in. "Young" means 90 or more years of lease left.

Tengah's neighbours are not Tengah. Their prices are a yardstick, not a price for a Tengah flat.

What we would not hedge on: demand concentrated hard on Toa Payoh and Tengah, and both are in February's exercise.

Two kinds of numbers, kept apart.

From the reporting: the 5pm count, the analysts' and minister's comments, the 2022 and 2024 yardsticks and the February 2027 plans, from The Straits Times and CNA.

From HDB: final rates from its November 2026 rate file (final at 11.59pm on 11 November, read on 13 November); prices and resale comparables from Annex A; ballot and quota rules from Annex B.

PropKaki's own analysis:

• The exercise history uses HDB's final rate files from February 2025, kept in PropKaki's BTO launch tables, with each project's classification. Medians are across HDB's town-by-flat-type rows and match HDB's printed medians for the earlier five.
• Resale prices are HDB resale registrations from November 2025 to October 2026, by HDB town and flat type, with lease left as HDB records it.
• The gaps between resale medians and BTO price ranges are simple arithmetic.

The news:

• The Straits Times: Toa Payoh, Tengah flats most popular in Nov BTO launch; highest application rates since Aug 2022, 11 November 2026.
• CNA: First BTO exercise under raised income ceiling set to draw highest number of applications in two years, 11 November 2026.
• CNA (video): More than 35,000 applications for 7,964 flats on offer in November BTO exercise, 11 November 2026.

Official:

• HDB: final application rates, November 2026 BTO exercise.
• HDB: Annex A, November 2026 BTO flat supply, prices and resale comparables.
• HDB: Annex B, administrative details for the November 2026 BTO exercise.

The data:

• PropKaki analysis of HDB final BTO application rates, February 2025 to November 2026, and HDB resale transactions, November 2025 to October 2026.

Related reading: our commentaries on the November launch and its prices, February 2027's projects and the $16,000 income ceiling.

This is commentary by the PropKaki Editorial Desk on reporting by The Straits Times and CNA. The 5pm figures, the analysts' views and the February plans belong to that reporting; the final-rate analysis, the comparisons with earlier exercises, the resale figures, 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 13 November 2026.