A Queenstown Flat Just Sold for $1.818 Million, a New HDB Record. It Is Rarer Than the Headlines Suggest

Dawson Road is one of the more striking parts of Queenstown: a row of tall HDB towers within walking distance of Queenstown MRT station, with Redhill station also nearby, as Mothership notes. SkyParc @ Dawson is one of the newest of them.

Mothership describes the project as 810 flats in three blocks, 34 to 43 storeys tall, completed in 2020. It was built as a dedicated replacement site under the Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme (SERS), which means many of its first owners were residents of older blocks that HDB had acquired for redevelopment. Our explainer on SERS and VERS covers how the scheme works.

HDB's block records show how scarce the big flats are here. Of SkyParc's 810 flats, only 74 are five-rooms, and all of them are in Block 96, which rises 43 storeys. The flat that sold is between the 40th and 42nd floors, close to the top of that block.

As with every record story, the details come from HDB's resale price records, which list a block, a floor range, a size and a lease, but nothing about the view, the renovation or the buyer's reasons. What we do know is that someone paid $1.818 million for it.

The record SkyParc broke belonged to City Vue @ Henderson in Redhill. Mothership reports a 1,216 sq ft five-room there sold for $1.728 million, about $1,421 psf, in April 2026. Our records show the same sale, at $1,728,000, on the 46th to 48th floor of Block 96A Henderson Road, with about 92 years of lease left.

Mothership calls it the record for the flat type, but it was more than that. In HDB resale records going back to 1990, no HDB flat of any type had sold for more. The new sale clears it by $90,000, or 5.2%.

The record has been moving quickly. Since 2019, 18 different months have produced a new all-time high for an HDB resale. Here are the ones since 2022:

Every row except one is a five-room flat. The exception is a Tiong Bahru adjoined flat on Moh Guan Terrace, a rare double unit. Dawson Road has now held the national record four times, three of them through the loft units at SkyTerrace @ Dawson, SkyParc's older neighbour.

What makes this record unusual is how new SkyParc is to the resale market. Its flats could only be resold once their owners had met HDB's five-year minimum occupation period, and the first resale in our records was registered in December 2025. Since then, 93 SkyParc flats have changed hands, mostly three-rooms.

Only 5 of those were five-rooms. Here is every one, with the reported sale at the bottom:

Before this sale, the project's best five-room was $1,520,000, on the 37th to 39th floor. The new record is about $298,000 above that, and a few floors higher. That is a big jump for a small step up the building, which is the first hint that this is a sale about one flat, not a new price for the project. The median of SkyParc's five earlier five-room resales was $1.445 million.

Queenstown's SERS estates have produced headlines before: in June we looked at a SERS two-room that sold for $540,000 nearby.

Rare enough that we can count them. In HDB resale records back to 1990, only 124 flats have ever sold for $1.5 million or more, and the first was in June 2023. Only 5 have reached $1.7 million, all of them this year. The SkyParc sale will be the sixth.

Two things are true at once. These flats are a sliver of the market: in 2025, the 39 resales at $1.5 million or more were 0.16% of all HDB resales. But the sliver is growing quickly. With October still being registered, 2026 already has 62.

They are also concentrated in very few places. Here is where all 124 were:

Only 10 towns have ever had one. All 29 in the Central Area were at Pinnacle@Duxton on Cantonment Road, and 11 of Queenstown's 18 were on Dawson Road alone. 104 of the 124 were five-room flats. In other words, the $1.5 million HDB flat is mostly a handful of tall, central, younger projects, sold one high floor at a time. Recent siblings of this story include City View @ Boon Keng at $1.64 million and Natura Loft in Bishan at $1.71 million.

The price is a record. The price per square foot, on the reported size, is not, though it is close.

On our records, the highest price per square foot for any HDB resale since 2020 is $1,553, for a four-room at Pinnacle@Duxton registered in October 2026. The reported $1,522 would rank just behind it. And the second spot belongs to SkyParc's neighbour: a five-room at SkyTerrace @ Dawson, Block 91, sold for $1,600,000, about $1,501 psf, in September.

There is a wrinkle worth flagging. Every SkyParc five-room in our data is 108 sqm, about 1,163 sq ft. Mothership gives the record flat as about 1,195 sq ft. That may be a different layout, or a conversion difference; we will know when HDB's data shows the registered floor area. A smaller registered size would push the psf higher.

The fairest comparison is with other five-room flats in the same town, over the same months. Queenstown is an unusual town to do it in, because Dawson Road alone has four newer projects. Here is what HDB resale data shows for October 2025 to September 2026:

Across all 86 Queenstown five-room resales in that year, the median was $1.231 million, or $967 psf. The reported $1.818 million is about 48% above that.

The more telling line is the last one. Outside Dawson Road, Queenstown's five-room flats are bigger, about 117 sqm against 99 to 108, yet sold for less: a median $1.185 million and $900 psf. On a per-square-foot basis, the record flat's reported $1,522 is about 69% above them. Only 2 of those 69 flats reached $1.5 million.

Notice, too, that SkyParc is not the dearest project on Dawson Road per square foot. Its older neighbour SkyTerrace sold every one of its six five-rooms for $1.5 million or more, at a median $1,412 psf. The record belongs to SkyParc; the street's price per square foot crown, for now, does not.

Mothership's headline leads with the lease, and in Queenstown that matters more than in most towns. It is one of Singapore's oldest estates, so its flats range from nearly new to more than half-way through their 99 years. Here is what Queenstown's four- and five-room resales sold for, by lease left, over October 2024 to September 2026:

The bands cover all 544 four-room and 154 five-room resales in the window. Five-rooms with 90 or more years left sold at about 71% more per square foot than those with under 60 years left. For four-rooms, the gap was about 79%.

We would not read that as the price of lease alone. Queenstown's youngest blocks are also its tallest, many sit around Dawson Road and Queenstown MRT, and newer flats tend to be smaller, which lifts psf. Older flats are often bigger, which is why the five-room price gap is narrower than the psf gap. Our explainer on lease decay and resale prices looks at the effect across the whole market.

Our view: at the very top, lease is part of the package rather than the whole story. The record flat combines almost every feature this market pays for at once: about 94 years left, a floor above 40, a short walk to the MRT, and a town close to the city. Each of those is scarce. Together, in one five-room, they are very scarce.

It is a fair worry, and the government has addressed it directly. Mothership recalls that in an April 2026 parliamentary reply, the Ministry of National Development said about 6% of resale flats sold above $1 million in 2025, and that HDB's flash estimate for the first quarter of 2026 showed resale prices down 0.1%. MND also pointed to four-room flats with at least 70 years of lease selling for around $650,000 to $700,000 in Tampines and Punggol in 2025, and for less in towns further out.

Our data tells a similar story about the million-dollar tier, and a sharper one about its growth:

The 2026 figure is a running total for a year still being registered, so we would not treat it as the year's final share. Since January 2025, Toa Payoh has had the most million-dollar resales, followed by Bukit Merah and Queenstown. Our guide to million-dollar HDB flats looks at why they cluster.

Then-Minister Desmond Lee made the point in 2024 that record prices are a very small share of transactions, and that more than half of the very high-priced flats were on floors above 30, Mothership reports. He also warned that headlines can raise sellers' expectations and make buyers anxious. Our view is that both of those are true. A $1.818 million flat is a record for a corner of the market, not a price for HDB flats in general. But that corner has grown fast: until June 2023, nobody had paid $1.5 million for one.

If you own a five-room elsewhere in Queenstown, this is not a price for your flat. Over the past year, the town's five-rooms outside Dawson Road sold at a median $1.185 million, with about 71 years of lease left. A record in a 2020 tower says little about a flat in a much older block.

If you own at SkyParc or a neighbouring Dawson project, the sale is closer to home, but it is still one flat near the top of a 43-storey block. SkyParc's other five-rooms have sold between $1.345 million and $1,520,000, and the gap between its lowest and highest floors was wide even before this sale. Floor, facing and layout will decide where yours sits.

If you are buying, ask what you are paying for. Near the top of this market, the premium buys a long lease, height, transport and centrality, in one flat. Whether that is worth it depends on how long you plan to stay, and how comfortable you are that the next buyer will value the same things as the lease shortens.

And if you are selling, remember the point Mr Lee made: record headlines raise expectations, but buyers still compare like with like. Recent sales in your own block, at a similar height, are a better guide than any record. Our guide to negotiating an HDB resale price covers how to use them.

Some limits, stated plainly.

The record is not in our data yet. HDB's October 2026 registrations are still filling in: 750 resales so far, against 2,245 for September. The $1.818 million sale is Mothership's reporting from HDB's resale price records. Every figure we calculated covers sales registered before it.

The size, and so the psf, may change. Mothership gives about 1,195 sq ft. Every SkyParc five-room we hold is 108 sqm, about 1,163 sq ft. Until HDB publishes the registered floor area, treat the psf as approximate.

The numbers are small. SkyParc has five earlier five-room resales; the Dawson projects have between two and six each in the past year. One high-floor sale can move a median a long way.

Medians mix many things. Our project and lease comparisons do not separate lease from floor, size, block age, location or renovation.

What we would not hedge on: this is a record for one flat in one block, set by a rare mix of features. It is a signal of how far the top of the HDB market has moved, not a new price for Queenstown.

Two kinds of numbers, kept apart.

From the reporting: the $1.818 million sale, its floor, size, price per square foot and lease; City Vue @ Henderson's $1.728 million, size and psf; SkyParc's completion year, SERS status, unit count, block heights and MRT access; MND's April 2026 parliamentary reply; and Mr Lee's 2024 comments all come from Mothership, linked below.

PropKaki's own data, from HDB resale records (data.gov.sg) and HDB block records:

• The record history takes each registration month whose highest resale beat every earlier one, in records from January 1990.
• The $1.5 million and $1.7 million counts cover every resale in our records, by registration year and by HDB town, to October 2026, a month still being registered.
• The psf ranking covers resales since January 2020; psf is the resale price divided by the floor area in square feet.
• The Queenstown comparison covers five-room resales registered from October 2025 to September 2026, grouped by project using HDB's block records (SkyParc = Blocks 94 to 96, SkyTerrace = 89 to 93, SkyVille = 86 to 88, Dawson Vista = 78 and 79 Dawson Road).
• The lease table covers Queenstown four- and five-room resales from October 2024 to September 2026.
• SkyParc's history covers every resale since its first, in December 2025; its five-room count and Block 96's height come from HDB's block records.
• Million-dollar counts run from 2023 to October 2026.
• The $90,000, 5.2%, $298,000, 48% and 69% gaps are simple comparisons of the reported price or psf with the figures above.

The news:

• Mothership: Queenstown 5-room HDB flat with 94 years left on lease sold for record S$1.818 million, 1 November 2026.

The data:

• PropKaki analysis of HDB resale transactions (data.gov.sg): national record history, January 1990 to October 2026; every resale at $1.5 million or more; Queenstown five-room resales, October 2025 to September 2026; Queenstown four- and five-room resales by lease left, October 2024 to September 2026; SkyParc @ Dawson resales, December 2025 to October 2026; million-dollar resales, 2023 to October 2026.
• HDB property information (block records) for SkyParc @ Dawson's unit mix and block heights.

Related reading: our commentaries on City View @ Boon Keng at $1.64 million and Natura Loft in Bishan at $1.71 million.

This is commentary by the PropKaki Editorial Desk on reporting by Mothership. The sale details and the comments quoted belong to that reporting; the record history, the counts, the Queenstown comparison, 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 6 November 2026.