Four Analysts Priced the Same Siglap Plot. Their Forecasts Differ by $613,000 a Home.

URA opened the tender for a residential site on East Coast Road on 29 September, the first in Siglap in roughly a decade. Four consultancies published forecasts for the top bid within a day. They run from $1,100 to $1,650 per square foot per plot ratio — the highest is 50% above the lowest, and the two outer forecasts do not come close to overlapping.

Translated into the thing a buyer eventually pays for, that disagreement is about $613,000 of land cost on each of the 85 homes the site is expected to hold. The reason the professionals cannot agree is the same reason the site is unusual: it is tiny, and it is tiny because of a traffic rule.

The size floor sets the unit count, not the plot ratio

The site is two adjacent plots on East Coast Road totalling 5,503 sq m (59,233 sq ft), on a gross plot ratio of 1.6, giving a maximum gross floor area of 8,805 sq m — about 94,774 sq ft. A 99-year lease. On those numbers alone the plot could hold a good deal more than 85 homes.

What caps it is a tender condition: a minimum average unit size of 100 sq m, about 1,076 sq ft. Stacked Homes reports the condition was imposed because of a potential traffic issue if the site were built out with more, smaller units.

The arithmetic is direct. Divide the gross floor area by the size floor and the site tops out at 88 units.

The condition removes roughly a third of the homes the plot could otherwise carry. That is a defensible planning decision — East Coast Road is a congested stretch and the junction capacity is a real constraint — but it is worth naming for what it is. In a year when URA is pushing 9,320 Confirmed List units, more than 50% above the ten-year average, this particular prime site will deliver fewer than ninety homes, and the binding constraint is road capacity rather than land.

One plot also carries the option of long-stay serviced apartments under the SA2 scheme, and the two plots can be developed as one project or two. That optionality is genuine, and it is part of why the forecasts scatter.

Why nobody can price 85 units

Here is the full set of published forecasts.

Huttons' ceiling sits $250 below PropNex's floor. These are not four estimates of the same number with error bars; they are two different views of what the site is.

The two firms at the ends of the range say why, and they are arguing about the same fact. Realion's Justin Quek notes that "a smaller project may lack the economies of scale compared with larger developments" — fixed costs for a showflat, a sales campaign, piling, a basement carpark and a management office are spread across 85 units instead of 500. PropNex's Wong Siew Ying reads the same smallness as a premium: "The future project built on this site will likely offer larger, family-oriented homes and may appeal to right-sizers from landed housing in the area."

Both can be true, and which one dominates is a judgement, not a calculation. There is no recent 85-unit leasehold GLS result in an established eastern suburb to anchor against.

What the spread costs is easy to state. $550 psf ppr is $550 on every square foot of finished floor area. Across 94,774 sq ft that is $52.1 million. Spread over 85 homes it is $613,000 each; over the full 88 the size rule allows, $592,000 each — before a brick is laid.

The comparables point in different directions too

The nearest large GLS result is New Upper Changi Road, which drew a top bid of $1.43 billion, or $1,537 psf ppr, for roughly 1,010 units. That sits inside PropNex's range and well above Huttons'. But it is a site twelve times the size, where scale economies cut the other way — so reading it as a floor for an 85-unit plot assumes the thing the analysts are actually disputing.

On the demand side, Seaside Residences — the nearest recent leasehold benchmark — launched in 2017 at about $1,700 psf and has resold at an average of roughly $2,368 psf. That is nine years of market movement, not evidence about what an 85-unit boutique project commands today.

This tender is a price discovery exercise, and the 3 December close will produce the first real data point. If the top bid lands near $1,650, the forecasters who priced scarcity were right and buyers should expect launch pricing to reflect it. If it lands near $1,200, the scale penalty on small sites is larger than the market has been assuming, which matters for every compact GLS plot URA releases next year.

What this means if you are watching the east

Do not read the eventual bid as a verdict on Siglap values. Whatever number closes on 3 December will embed a 100 sq m size floor, a traffic constraint and a serviced-apartment option that no other site carries. It is a poor comparable for anything, including the next East Coast plot.

If you are hoping for a two-bedder here, there will not be one. A 1,076 sq ft average means the mix is three- and four-bedroom. The entry price will be set by unit size as much as by psf, which in practice puts this project above the quantum where most upgrader demand sits.

If you own nearby, the useful signal arrives in December. Four forecasts spanning 50% contain no information about your property's value. The tender result will contain some.

If you are tracking supply, note the shape of it. The headline programme is 9,320 Confirmed List units for 2026 and a pipeline of around 60,600 units completing over the next few years. The site-by-site reality includes prime plots capped at 85 homes by road capacity, which is how a large aggregate supply number and a thin supply of homes in any particular desirable street coexist.

Method

Site particulars from URA's Current URA GLS Sites listing, retrieved 1 October 2026, which gives the East Coast Road site as 0.55 ha at a gross plot ratio of 1.6. Maximum gross floor area of 8,805 sq m is the product of those two figures; the square-foot conversions use 10.7639 sq ft per sq m. The minimum average unit size of 100 sq m and the stated traffic rationale are as reported by Stacked Homes, 29 September 2026, which also reports the SA2 serviced-apartment option and the two plot areas of 26,706 and 32,527 sq ft. The 85-unit expectation is the figure carried in that reporting; 88 is this article's arithmetic ceiling from the GFA and the size floor.

Analyst forecasts, named attributions and the quoted reasoning from EdgeProp Singapore, 29 September 2026, which also carries the New Upper Changi Road result of $1.43 billion / $1,537 psf ppr for about 1,010 units and the 3 December tender close. Implied land costs are each forecast multiplied by 94,774 sq ft of gross floor area. Per-home figures divide the $52.1 million spread by 85 and by 88 units respectively. Seaside Residences launch and resale averages as reported in coverage of the site release; treat them as indicative of a 2017 leasehold project's trajectory rather than as a comparable for an 85-unit scheme.

Supply figures from URA's flash estimate release for 3rd Quarter 2026, 1 October 2026: 4,745 Confirmed List units in 2H2026, 9,320 for the full year, "more than 50% above the annual average over the past 10 years", and around 60,600 units including executive condominiums expected to complete over the next few years. The usual 85 sq m minimum average unit size for sites outside the Central Area is URA's standing condition and is included in the table above for comparison only; this site's condition is 100 sq m.