HDB Stopped Building Every Flat Model That Beats the Market

On Tuesday a five-room flat at Pinnacle@Duxton sold for $1.701 million, beating the project's own record by $71,000 (EdgeProp). Most of the coverage reached for the usual explanations: the address, the view, the skybridge. The line on the transaction record that actually predicts a price like that is the least discussed field in the whole file — flat model, which on that unit reads Type S2.

Flat model is the design the flat was built to. It is printed on every resale listing, it is in every HDB transaction record, and almost nobody prices it. Run the numbers and it turns out to be worth more than the floor you live on — and the models that carry the biggest premium have one thing in common.

How this was measured

Every HDB resale transaction registered from January 2024 to September 2026: 71,998 sales, from HDB's own transaction file (data.gov.sg).

Comparing a Maisonette in Bishan against a Model A in Yishun tells you about Bishan, not about maisonettes. So the comparison is made inside 3,818 cells of town × flat type × month — a four-room sold in Tampines in March 2026 is only ever compared against other four-rooms sold in Tampines in March 2026. Within those cells the model also controls for storey, remaining lease (which absorbs vintage) and floor area, since price is measured per square metre. What is left is the model effect, expressed against Model A, the most common design in the market at 39.9% of all sales.

The ranking

Every estimate above 2% is separated from zero by many times its own margin of error; the four at the top carry margins of error between 0.6 and 2.3 percentage points.

On 2026's median four-room resale price of $628,000, the DBSS premium is worth $105,000. On the median five-room at $740,000, a maisonette's is worth $103,000. These are not rounding errors on a listing. They are the difference between two flats that look identical in a search filter.

Everything at the top is out of production

Read the top four again and the pattern is not about design quality. It is about supply.

The four highest-premium models are 4.0% of the resale market between them, and not one of them has been built this decade. The Design, Build and Sell Scheme appears at thirteen addresses in the resale record and was discontinued in 2011; the newest maisonette in the whole resale record has a lease commencing in 2000, and the newest Model A-Maisonette in 1985; Type S1 and S2 exist at exactly one address in Singapore.

Nothing about a maisonette's internal staircase has improved since 1995. What has changed is that the pool of them is fixed and shrinking, in a market where the replacement product is a Model A. Scarcity is the premium, and scarcity is the one property attribute that cannot be built back.

What "Premium Apartment" is actually worth

2.5%.

It is the only entry on the list whose name makes a claim, it is a model HDB still builds — a lease commencing as recently as 2022 appears in the file — and it is 9.9% of all resale sales. Against Model A, in the same town, same flat type, same month, same floor, same lease, it is worth about $16,000 on a median four-room.

That is not nothing. It is also a tenth of what a discontinued model carries, and it is roughly what three or four storeys of height are worth. For a buyer choosing between two flats on a shortlist, the word in the listing is close to noise; for a seller pricing off it, it is a weak argument.

Two results in the other direction are worth naming. Improved and Standard, the two oldest generic designs, trade at a slight discount — about 1.3% below Model A. New Generation, older still, trades 2.9% above it. Once you hold remaining lease constant, the 1970s and 1980s layouts are not being punished for their age. Some of them are being paid for their space.

The record flat sits at the top of the table

Pinnacle@Duxton's five-rooms are Type S2; its four-rooms are Type S1. Across the entire resale record those model names appear at one street — Cantonment Road — and nowhere else. The Tuesday sale was a 107 sqm Type S2 on the 28th to 30th storey with 83 years and 5 months of lease left.

The honest caveat is that a model found in a single project is not really a model effect at all. It is Pinnacle@Duxton — the location, the skybridge, the architecture and the scarcity, bundled under a label. The +26.7% is real in the data and should be read as a project premium, not as evidence that "Type S" means something transferable.

DBSS is the more useful case, because it exists in eleven towns. And there the raw numbers overstate things badly:

A 47% gap is not what DBSS is worth. DBSS blocks are newer than the town's average stock, which is most of it, and they were built on the better infill sites. Strip out the lease and the floor and the unit size and the month, and 16.7% is what survives. That is the number to price off.

What this does not say

The model effect is measured net of town, flat type, month, storey, remaining lease and floor area. It is not measured net of everything. Three things sit inside these estimates and cannot be separated out with a public transaction file: where in the town the block stands, the finish the flat was built with, and what the last owner spent on renovation. DBSS flats were sold with fittings an ordinary BTO did not include, and they sit on centrally located parcels within their towns. Some of the 16.7% is that, not the three letters.

What the file does establish is the ordering, and the ordering is consistent: the further a model is from being built again, the more it trades for. If you own one of the 4%, that is your position. If you are buying, the premium you are being asked to pay for a Maisonette or a DBSS is defensible at roughly the numbers above — and the one you are being asked to pay for the word Premium is not.

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Computed from 71,998 HDB resale transactions registered between January 2024 and September 2026, published by HDB on data.gov.sg. Premiums are estimated against Model A within town × flat type × month cells, controlling for storey, remaining lease and floor area, on price per square metre. Related: what a storey is worth and rightsizing out of an executive maisonette. Methodology published. No spin.