The 3 Condos We Won't Recommend in Yishun & Sembawang

District 27 is a strong condo district on paper: across the 37 projects we score, the mean RPS is 6.67 out of 10 — well above the Singapore-wide mean of 5.94 — and 12 projects hold an S grade. But the bottom of the D27 table is misleading, because five of the district's eight lowest scorers aren't in Yishun or Sembawang at all. They sit on the Sembawang Road corridor that URA classifies as Mandai.

Filter by actual location and a different bottom three emerges — all of them, as it happens, in Sembawang. The lowest-scoring project actually inside Yishun town is a B grade. Here are the three we won't recommend, with the exact sub-scores that put them there.

How we ranked this

The Resale Project Scorecard (RPS) grades 2,369 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.

One filtering note, and in D27 it does real work: postal districts don't map cleanly to towns. The five lowest D27 scorers after our three picks — Platina Gardens (3.40), Sembawang Cottage (3.55), Goodlink Park (4.10), Euphony Gardens (4.55) and Northwood (4.97) — all sit along Sembawang Road or Jalan Mata Ayer, in what EdgeProp and the URA Master Plan classify as the Mandai planning area. They are not in Yishun or Sembawang town, so they're excluded. What remains is ranked below.

1. Kandis Residence — RPS 4.04, Grade D

A 130-unit, 99-year leasehold project on Jalan Kandis, off Sembawang Road near Sembawang Park, completed in 2021. It is the newest project on this list and the lowest scorer actually in either town. The scorecard's own summary: "Weak project — significant gaps in multiple factors. Key weaknesses: MRT access, schools."

• MRT: 2/10. 1.70km from Canberra MRT (NS12) — "weaker MRT access, likely requires bus or car for most trips."
• Schools: 1/10. "No primary schools within 1km — school access is limited, particularly for parents prioritising Primary 1 registration." Unlike Sun Plaza below, this is a measured result, not a data gap.
• Secondary market: 4/10. "Avg Ann. of +1.69% — below-median performance vs same-vintage peers (35th percentile of 2021-era cohort)."
• Future transformation: 3/10. The Sembawang Shipyard waterfront redevelopment is just 0.69km away — the closest of any project in this article — but the scorecard judges it "far enough that the impact on this project is modest."
• Project size: 5/10. 130 units — "boutique development. Lower transaction frequency and limited shared facilities."

Its genuine strengths: a rental yield of 4.27% (8/10, "strong income return") and a young lease with about 89 years remaining (8/10). The income side works; the things that drive resale exits — transit, schools, liquidity — don't.

2. Sun Plaza — RPS 4.31, Grade D

The 76 residential units above the Sun Plaza mall, directly at Sembawang MRT, completed in 2000. This is the inverse of Kandis Residence: a perfect transit score attached to almost everything else scoring poorly.

• MRT: 10/10. 110m from Sembawang MRT (NS11) — "direct, walk-in MRT access."
• Secondary market: 4/10. "Avg Ann. of +3.06% — below-median performance vs same-vintage peers (32th percentile of 2000-era cohort)." Doorstep MRT access has not translated into cohort-beating appreciation across two decades.
• Project size: 3/10. 76 units — "very small project; niche product with thin resale market."
• Tenure: 5/10. 99-year lease with about 69 years remaining — the shortest lease balance of the three.
• Future transformation: 2/10. The Sembawang Shipyard redevelopment sits 1.91km away, "beyond meaningful proximity bands."

One score needs a flag: schools is 1/10 because "school proximity could not be measured — address geocoding incomplete for this development." That's a placeholder, not a measurement — we stress-test it below. Rental yield is a solid 3.90% (7/10).

3. The Sensoria — RPS 4.75, Grade C

A 73-unit freehold project on Jalan Ulu Sembawang, completed in 2007. It carries the weakest measured capital appreciation of the three.

• Secondary market: 2/10. "Avg Ann. of +2.16% — below-median performance vs same-vintage peers (20th percentile of 2007-era cohort)."
• Project size: 3/10. 73 units — again, "niche product with thin resale market."
• Future transformation: 2/10. The shipyard redevelopment is 2.67km away — the furthest of the three from the area's headline catalyst.

To be fair, more of its scorecard works than the other two: freehold tenure (10/10), two primary schools within 1km with Sembawang Primary at 0.98km (7/10), Canberra MRT at 0.86km — "walkable but not doorstep" (6/10) — and a 3.36% yield (5/10). The C grade rather than a D reflects exactly that. But the factor with the heaviest weight in the model, secondary market performance, is the factor where it ranks in the bottom fifth of its own vintage.

The scores, side by side

Three traits repeat. All three are small — 130 units or fewer, against the 600-plus-unit projects that dominate the top of the district table. All three lag their own TOP-era cohorts on appreciation — 35th, 32nd and 20th percentile respectively. And all three score 3/10 or lower on future transformation: even though the Sembawang Shipyard waterfront redevelopment is the area's headline catalyst, the distance bands say none of them sits close enough to capture meaningful uplift.

The data caveat — and what it changes

Methodology published, no spin — so here is ours. Sun Plaza's 1/10 schools score is flagged in the data as incomplete geocoding, not a measured absence of schools. So we stress-tested it. Skypark Residences, 0.63km from the same Sembawang MRT, measures three primary schools within 1km (Sembawang Primary at 0.14km) for a 10/10. Under the published 20% schools weight:

• Granting Sun Plaza a measured 7/10 lifts it from 4.31 to about 5.51 — still in the bottom three, swapping places with The Sensoria for third.
• Granting the full 10/10 lifts it to about 6.11 — out of the bottom three entirely.

In that most generous case, the third slot passes to Lilydale (RPS 5.79, grade B) — a 318-unit EC in Yishun Avenue 6 whose weaknesses are fully measured: secondary market 3/10 ("+2.83%, 21th percentile of 2003-era cohort"), MRT 2/10 (1.71km from Yishun MRT), and future transformation 0/10 (no catalyst within 3.5km). Kandis Residence and The Sensoria stay in the bottom three under every correction we ran.

What this doesn't mean

These are not bad homes. The Sensoria is a freehold, resort-style project for owners who value exactly that. Sun Plaza puts a mall, an MRT station and a 3.90% yield at your doorstep. Kandis Residence is a five-minute walk from Sembawang Park and the coast, with a 4.27% yield and 89 years on the lease. If you're buying to live, those are real attributes the model weights lightly.

What the data does say: as resale investments, all three have trailed their own same-era peers — and their unit counts (73 to 130) keep the exit thin. It also says the weak tail of this district is geographically specific. Every project actually inside Yishun town scores at least 5.79 — grade B or better — while Sembawang holds both the bottom three and the district's top three: Parc Life EC (8.92), The Brownstone (8.91) and The Visionaire EC (8.78), all S-grade ECs of 628 to 638 units near Sembawang and Canberra MRT. Same town, opposite product type. The data rewards the large, MRT-adjacent projects and has consistently declined to reward the small ones in the quieter corners.

Check How Your Condo Scores

Every project in this article is among the 2,369 independently scored across Singapore — each graded on seven weighted factors: secondary market performance, schools, size, MRT proximity, tenure, rental yield, and future transformation.

Score your resale condo on RPS →

No registration required. No agent call to follow. Just the data.

Silas Tan is a District Director at Huttons Asia and co-founder of TRIBE. He built the Resale Project Scorecard (RPS) using 126,000+ URA REALIS transactions. This article is for informational purposes and does not constitute financial or investment advice. CEA Registration R000303I.