The 3 Condos We Won't Recommend in Bukit Panjang & Choa Chu Kang

District 23 is a genuinely strong condo district. Across the 32 projects we score inside Bukit Panjang and Choa Chu Kang, the mean RPS is 7.02 out of 10 — well above the Singapore-wide mean of 5.99 — and 13 of them hold an S grade. So the bottom of this table needs reading carefully, because the three lowest scorers here are not the cautionary tales the rank suggests. One of the three, Espa, actually beats its own same-vintage peers on capital appreciation. What pulls them down is a mix of thin unit counts, a schools data gap, and — for the two 2025 projects — simply not having a resale history yet.

Here are the three projects with the lowest RPS that are actually in Bukit Panjang and Choa Chu Kang, with the exact sub-scores behind each grade, and an honest account of what those scores do and don't measure.

How we ranked this — and what we set aside

The Resale Project Scorecard (RPS) grades 2,350 resale condos on seven weighted factors: secondary market strength (25%), schools (20%), project size (16%), MRT proximity (13%), tenure (10%), rental yield (10%) and future transformation (6%). The secondary-market score is cohort-relative — each condo is measured against projects that reached TOP in the same two-year window, so an old project isn't penalised for being old, only for trailing its own vintage.

The filtering note matters here, because District 23 is not one town. It spans three planning areas: Bukit Panjang, Choa Chu Kang and Bukit Batok. The lowest raw scorers in D23 — The Amston (4.50), Chantilly Rise (4.54), Hilltop Grove (4.66) and the rest of the bottom cluster — sit around Hillview and Bukit Gombak, in the Bukit Batok planning area. They are not in Bukit Panjang or Choa Chu Kang, so they're excluded. What remains, ranked below, is the genuine bottom three of the two towns.

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1. Espa — RPS 4.83, Grade C

A 78-unit, 999-year-leasehold project off Cashew Road, near Pending LRT, completed in 2009. It holds the lowest RPS in either town — but the reasons are narrow. The scorecard's own summary names its strengths first: "Standout strengths: tenure, capital appreciation. Key weaknesses: project size, schools."

• Capital appreciation: 9/10. "Avg Ann. of +4.04% — top-quartile performance within its 2009-era cohort (82nd percentile)." This is the factor with the heaviest weight in the model, and Espa is in the top fifth of its vintage on it.
• Tenure: 10/10. "999-year tenure — effectively freehold from a valuation standpoint."
• Project size: 3/10. 78 units — "very small project; niche product with thin resale market."
• MRT: 3/10. 0.36km from Pending LRT (BP8) — "weaker MRT access, likely requires bus or car for most trips," since the LRT itself feeds the Bukit Panjang interchange rather than the city directly.
• Rental yield: 3/10. 2.75% — "below-average income return."
• Schools: 1/10. Flagged in the data as "school proximity could not be measured — address geocoding incomplete for this development." That is a placeholder, not a measured absence — we stress-test it below.

A freehold-equivalent project with top-quartile appreciation lands at the bottom of the table mainly because it is small, transit-light, and carries an unmeasured schools score. Hold that thought.

2. Phoenix Residences — RPS 4.99, Grade C

A 74-unit, 99-year-leasehold project off Choa Chu Kang Road by Phoenix LRT, completed in 2025. Unlike Espa, almost everything about its low score is fully measured — and one number explains most of it. Summary: "Standout strengths: tenure, MRT access. Key weaknesses: schools, project size."

• Secondary market: 4/10. "Avg Ann. of +0.00% — near-median performance within its 2025-era cohort (40th percentile)." That +0.00% is not a price drop; it's a project that TOP'd in 2025 with essentially no resale history to measure yet. The model can't reward appreciation that hasn't had time to happen.
• Project size: 3/10. 74 units — "very small project; niche product with thin resale market."
• Schools: 3/10. "2 primary schools within 1km (nearest: West View Primary at 0.96km). Moderate school access." This one is measured.
• MRT: 8/10. 360 m from Phoenix LRT (BP5), 560 m from Bukit Panjang MRT (BP6 / DT1) — "short walk to MRT, good transport convenience."
• Tenure: 9/10. ~92 years remaining — "no near-term decay concern." Rental yield is a solid 3.52% (6/10).

3. The Arden — RPS 5.23, Grade C

The 105-unit, 99-year-leasehold project next door to Phoenix Residences on Phoenix LRT, also completed in 2025. Its profile is close to its neighbour's, and so is the reason for its rank. Summary: "Standout strengths: tenure, MRT access. Key weaknesses: capital appreciation, schools."

• Secondary market: 4/10. "Avg Ann. of +0.00% — below-median performance vs same-vintage peers (39th percentile of 2025-era cohort)." The same no-track-record reading as Phoenix Residences: too new to have resold.
• Schools: 3/10. "2 primary schools within 1km (nearest: West View Primary at 0.81km). Moderate school access." Measured.
• Project size: 5/10. 105 units — "boutique development. Lower transaction frequency and limited shared facilities."
• MRT: 8/10. 220 m from Phoenix LRT (BP5), 500 m from Bukit Panjang MRT (BP6 / DT1) — "short walk to MRT, good transport convenience."
• Tenure: 9/10. ~96 years remaining — "no near-term decay concern." Rental yield is 3.38% (5/10), and future transformation scores 7/10, with Choa Chu Kang West MRT (JS1) on the Jurong Region Line about 2km away.

Just outside: Nicon Gardens — RPS 5.62, Grade B

When this list was first published, Nicon Gardens was third. The 16 October 2026 MRT re-grade, which measures to the nearest exit of a heavy-rail MRT station, now places it 370 m from Bukit Panjang MRT (BP6 / DT1), with Phoenix LRT (BP5) 130 m away. Its MRT score rose from 3/10 to 9/10, lifting it to 5.62 and grade B. The rest of its profile stands: a 6.35% rental yield (10/10), appreciation of +4.39% a year (8/10, 75th percentile of its 1984 cohort), only 47 units, ~54 years of lease left (4/10), and the same unmeasured 1/10 schools placeholder as Espa.

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The scores, side by side

One trait is common to all three and does most of the work: size. At 74, 78 and 105 units, these are boutique resale markets, against the 500-plus-unit projects — Wandervale, Inz Residence, Sol Acres, Hillion Residences — that anchor the top. Small projects transact rarely, which makes price discovery slow and exits harder to time. That is the real, measured weakness the three share. The two 2025 projects add a second: no resale record yet to score.

The data caveat — and what it changes

Methodology published, independently scored — so here is ours. Espa scores 1/10 on schools because of incomplete geocoding, not a measured absence of schools (Nicon Gardens, just above the bottom three, carries the same flag). So we stress-tested it. The Phoenix/Cashew pocket is not school-poor: West View, Teck Whye and Greenridge Primaries all sit within roughly a kilometre. Under the published 20% schools weight, granting a measured but modest 5/10:

• Espa rises from 4.83 to about 5.63 — still third from the bottom, just under Chestervale (5.75, grade B).
• Nicon Gardens rises from 5.62 to about 6.42 — further clear of the bottom three.

Grant a stronger 7/10 and Espa reaches about 6.03, out of the bottom three. In other words, the lowest raw score in these towns is partly an artefact of a data gap. The two projects whose low scores survive every correction are the two newest ones, Phoenix Residences (4.99) and The Arden (5.23), both with measured 3/10 schools scores. Their weakness is structural rather than performance-based: small, boutique, and too young to have a resale record.

What this doesn't mean

None of these are bad homes. Espa is effectively freehold with top-quartile appreciation — a strong long-hold for an owner who values the tenure and doesn't need a deep resale market. Phoenix Residences and The Arden are brand-new, a short walk from Bukit Panjang MRT, with full leases — the model simply has no appreciation history to credit them with yet. Nicon Gardens, just outside the three, throws off a 6.35% gross yield, though its ~54-year lease is a real constraint a buyer must price in.

What the data does say is narrower than the headline: in Bukit Panjang and Choa Chu Kang, the lowest RPS scores are driven by thin unit counts, a schools data gap, and a lack of resale track record — not by measured price weakness. That is a very different bottom three from the one in districts where the low scorers have genuinely trailed their peers. The same two towns hold thirteen S-grade projects, led by Wandervale (9.35), The Rainforest (8.65) and Inz Residence (8.49) near Keat Hong, Choa Chu Kang and South View, with Sol Acres (8.40), the largest at 1,327 units, close behind. The data rewards scale, transit and a track record, and these three simply have less of one or more of those.

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Silas Tan is a District Director at Huttons Asia and co-founder of TRIBE. He built the Resale Project Scorecard (RPS) using 236,000+ URA REALIS transactions. This article is for informational purposes and does not constitute financial or investment advice. RPS scores and grades as at 16 October 2026. CEA Registration R000303I.