2,697 New Homes This Half — and Nearly Half of Them Are One Project

Singapore's second half of 2026 brings nine residential launches totalling 3,617 units, of which 2,697 are still ahead of us from September onwards. That sounds like a buyer's market of choice. It isn't, quite. One project — Thomson Reserve, at 1,268 units — is 47% of everything still to come, and 35% of the entire half. Strip it out and the remaining five launches average 286 units apiece. This is a barbell pipeline: one mega-development, a handful of mid-sized projects, and a boutique tail. Which end you buy from matters more than most launch coverage admits. Methodology published. No spin.

The pipeline, in full

Nine residential projects across the half. Three industrial launches in the same period — Generations @ Tannery, SpaceNova and Pioneer Road — are excluded here; they are factories, not homes, and folding them into a "new homes" headline flatters the count.

The three largest — Thomson Reserve, Lucerne Grand and the Woodlands executive condominium — account for 2,337 units, or 64.6% of the half. The four smallest together make up just 470 units, 13% of the supply but 44% of the project count. Nine launches, in other words, is nine headlines and rather fewer genuine options.

The size band nobody talks about

Here is something our own data says that developers' brochures do not. Across the 105 projects scored on the New Project Scorecard, the Project Size factor does not simply reward bigness. It is humped — it peaks in the middle and falls away at both ends:

The sweet spot is roughly 550 to 800 units, and the reasons are practical on both sides.

Go too small and you lose liquidity. A 41-unit or 84-unit development produces a handful of transactions a year, which means there is barely a price to point at when you sell — few recent caveats, a wide gap between what buyers offer and sellers want, and a bank valuer working from thin comparables. Boutique projects can be lovely to live in; they are simply harder to exit at a price you can defend. Sophia Meadow, at 41 units, scores 3 out of 10 on size, and that is a large part of why it grades a C (5.1) despite an excellent school factor of 9.03.

Go too large and a different problem appears: at resale you compete with your own neighbours. A 1,268-unit project puts a permanent supply of near-identical units on the market alongside yours, every year, forever. That is why Thomson Reserve scores 7 on size — lower than a 600-unit project would — and why the biggest launches of recent years (Parktown Residence at 1,193 units, Grand Dunman at 1,008) sit at 8 rather than 10.

Of this half's nine launches, exactly one lands in the 550–800 band: Lucerne Grand, at 570 units. That is not a recommendation — size is one factor of five, and a great location beats a well-sized project in a bad one. But it is a lens almost nobody applies to a launch list.

Four of them are already scored

The scorecard has already graded four projects in this pipeline, which is worth knowing before you attend a single showflat.

Thomson Reserve grades A (7.6). A 99-year leasehold on the former Thomson View en bloc site at Bright Hill Drive, by UOL, Singapore Land Group and CapitaLand Development, it sits 0.22km from Upper Thomson MRT on the Thomson-East Coast Line — genuinely at the station. It carries a school factor of 8.64, capital appreciation of 7.99, and modelled growth of 4.35% a year, comfortably clear of a 3% bar. Its scale is the honest caveat, not its quality.

Dunearn House grades A (7.6) on modelled growth of 4.69%, and Lentor Gardens Residences grades A (7.4) on 4.43%. We reviewed both in detail this month — see Dunearn House and Lentor Gardens Residences.

Sophia Meadow grades C (5.1), with modelled growth of just 2.06% — under the 3% bar — and a 2.71% yield. A superb address for schools and the city, but the arithmetic is thin.

Two details worth verifying

The launch listings circulating for this pipeline carry a couple of claims that do not survive checking, and both concern the same project.

Amberwood at Holland is a 99-year leasehold, not freehold. It sits on a Government Land Sales site at Holland Link, developed by Sim Lian — and GLS residential sites are leasehold by definition. Several listings describe it as freehold. They are wrong, and on a District 10 purchase that distinction is worth a great deal of money.

Its nearest station is King Albert Park, not Holland Village. The development is roughly 680 metres, or about eight minutes' walk, from King Albert Park MRT on the Downtown Line. Some material markets it on Holland Village proximity. Check the walk yourself on OneMap before you price it in.

Separately, the Woodlands Drive 17 executive condominium is still officially name-to-be-confirmed; treat any branded name you see for it as provisional.

How to judge a launch before prices are out

Most of this pipeline has no price list yet, which is exactly when buyers form opinions and exactly when they have least to go on. The useful discipline is to work forward from the land.

A developer's land cost, expressed as dollars per square foot per plot ratio, sets a floor. Add construction, financing, marketing and a margin — historically in the region of 55% to 70% on top of the land rate for a mid-market project — and you arrive at a breakeven, then a plausible launch price.

The worked example is already on record. Dunearn House's consortium paid S$1,410 psf ppr for its Turf City parcel in June 2025. It opened in July 2026 with two-bedders from S$2,799 psf — a ratio of about 1.99× the land rate. Apply that same discipline to any site whose land price you know, and you have a defensible expectation before an agent quotes you one. Where the eventual launch price lands well above it, ask what specifically justifies the gap.

What to actually do with this

Nine launches spread from District 4 to District 25 are not nine competing options — they are nine different markets. Keppel Bay island living, a Woodlands executive condominium and a 1,268-unit Upper Thomson mega-development share a calendar and nothing else. For any given household, one or two of these are relevant and the other seven are noise.

So narrow before you browse. Fix the budget, the region and the bedroom count first; then look at how the shortlist scores on the five factors; then, and only then, book the showflat. The half's real story is not abundance. It is concentration at one end and illiquidity at the other, with a thin middle — and the buyers who do best in a pipeline shaped like this are the ones who know which end they are standing at. See the full scorecard and run your own numbers at tribesg.com/nps.

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Sources: Pipeline composition, unit counts, districts and launch windows per Huttons Data Analytics, "Upcoming Launches 2H 2026" (as at 15 July 2026), cross-checked against HDB, URA and OneMap. NPS quality grades, factor scores and modelled growth for Thomson Reserve (A, 7.6), Dunearn House (A, 7.6), Lentor Gardens Residences (A, 7.4) and Sophia Meadow (C, 5.1) per the TRIBE New Project Scorecard (URA Data Service transacted PSF; figures as at July 2026). The Project Size distribution is computed across all 105 projects currently scored on the NPS. Thomson Reserve project facts — 1,268 units, 99-year leasehold, Bright Hill Drive, the former Thomson View collective sale site, UOL Group with Singapore Land Group and CapitaLand Development, 0.22km to Upper Thomson MRT, preview targeted October 2026 — per developer and agency listings. Amberwood at Holland — 212 units, 99-year leasehold Government Land Sales site at Holland Link by Sim Lian, approximately 680m to King Albert Park MRT on the Downtown Line, low-rise, preview targeted mid-September 2026 — per developer and agency listings; the leasehold tenure follows from the GLS site status. Dunearn House land rate (S$491.45m, S$1,410 psf ppr, June 2025 tender) and its from-price of S$2,799 psf per The Business Times and EdgeProp, as reported in our Dunearn House review. Unit counts for unlaunched projects are developer or agency estimates and may change. Scores are model outputs, not financial advice.

Silas Tan is a District Director at Huttons Asia and co-founder of TRIBE. He built the New Project Scorecard (NPS) and Resale Project Scorecard (RPS) on URA transacted data. This article is for informational purposes and does not constitute financial or investment advice. CEA Registration R000303I.