Matched on Lease, November's BTO Flats Are 31% to 45% Below Resale

HDB's November Build-To-Order exercise closes on 11 November, and the comparison most applicants will reach for is the wrong one. Across the six projects that have a resale market in the same town, four-room flats are priced between 30.6% and 44.6% below a resale flat with a comparable remaining lease. Use the town's median resale price instead, which is the number almost every buyer can find in a minute, and the Bedok gap reads 9.3%.

We recomputed the comparison from 13,829 registered resale transactions between May and October 2026. The error is not spread evenly. Where a town's resale stock is young it is under a point. In Bedok and Geylang, where more than half the four-room resale pool has under 80 years of lease left, it runs to 21.7 and 17.1 points.

The applicant's question

Seven projects, 7,964 flats, six towns, and an eight-day window that shuts on 11 November. This is the first exercise since the household income ceilings rose to $16,000 for families and $8,000 for singles, so a larger group is choosing for the first time between balloting and buying resale.

The question underneath that choice is arithmetic. A four-room flat at Bayshore Oasis in Bedok starts at $559,000 before grants. A four-room resale flat in Bedok has a median price of $737,500. That looks like a $178,500 saving for a 38-month wait, and plenty of applicants will decide it is not worth it.

The answer in plain language

It is not a $178,500 saving. It is closer to $410,000.

The Bedok town median is built mostly from flats that are nothing like the one being balloted for. Half of Bedok's four-room resale sales have under 80 years of lease remaining. The BTO flat comes with 99. Compare the BTO price against Bedok resale flats that still have 90 years or more and the median is $969,000, not $737,500, and the discount goes from 9.3% to 31.0%.

HDB publishes its own comparison, and it agrees with the matched number. Annex A of the launch puts nearby Bedok four-room resale transactions at $905,000 to $985,000. The town median sits $167,500 below the bottom of HDB's own range.

The strongest supporting numbers

Four-room flats are the one type common to all seven projects, so they are the comparison axis. Prices exclude grants and are HDB's indicative ranges; the final price is set at flat selection and depends on floor and facing.

One check before going further. Subtracting HDB's illustrative Enhanced CPF Housing Grant for a four-room flat, $80,000 at a Standard project and $55,000 at a Plus or Prime one, reproduces every after-grant starting price HDB published: $232,000 at Sembawang Anchor, $273,000 at Chencharu Acres, $504,000 at Bayshore Oasis, $503,000 at Toa Payoh Hillside. We are reading the same table HDB is.

Why the town median misleads

A town median mixes every vintage of flat in the town. That is fine for tracking a market and useless for pricing a 99-year lease, because the single largest difference between a new flat and an old one is how much lease is left.

The table below shows why the size of the error varies so much. Figures are four-room resales of 88 to 97 square metres, May to October 2026.

Toa Payoh's four-room resale market is mostly Bidadari and Alkaff Crescent, built in the last decade, so its median is already a young-lease number and the correction is $13,000. Bedok's is mostly 1970s and 1980s stock, and the correction is $231,500.

Tengah is the extreme case. It has no resale market at all: zero four-room resale transactions, and zero of any flat type, in the entire 244,312-row register since January 2017. An applicant for Plantation Dew has no in-town resale alternative to weigh, which is why HDB's nearby-resale column for Tengah necessarily draws on adjoining towns.

The lease-matched comparison

Against the town median, the discount on a four-room flat ranges from 8.8% to 39.1% and looks like a judgement about location. Against a lease-matched resale flat it ranges from 30.6% to 44.6% and looks like a policy.

The matched figures also pass an external test. In four of the five towns with a resale market, our independently computed 90-year-plus median falls inside the nearby-resale range HDB published in Annex A. The town median falls inside it in only three, and where it fails it fails low, by $167,500 in Bedok and $86,000 in Geylang.

The one place our matched number lands outside HDB's range is Sembawang, where $668,000 sits $33,000 above the top of $635,000. HDB compares flats near the site; we compare flats across the town, and Sembawang's youngest-lease blocks are not the ones next to Sembawang Anchor. The direction of that miss argues for a smaller Sembawang discount than we report, not a larger one.

What this does not prove

It does not prove the BTO flat is the better buy. A price gap is not a decision, and three costs sit against it.

The wait is the first. Sembawang Anchor's 1,310 Shorter Waiting Time flats complete in under three years; the other six projects run to under four, with Toa Payoh Hillside at 45 months. Whatever a household pays for housing in the meantime is a real cost that this comparison does not carry, and it is specific to each family.

The restrictions are the second. The three Plus projects and the Prime project carry a 10-year minimum occupation period rather than five, plus subsidy recovery on resale: 8% at Merpati Meadow, 9% at both Bayshore projects and 11% at Toa Payoh Hillside, charged on the resale price or valuation, whichever is higher.

At today's lease-matched prices that is roughly $87,210 at Bayshore, $86,000 at Merpati Meadow and $118,580 at Toa Payoh Hillside. It is owed on a sale a decade or more away, not today.

Grants are the third. The Enhanced CPF Housing Grant of up to $120,000 applies to new and resale flats alike, and every figure above is before all grants on both sides.

But a first-timer family buying resale may also qualify for the CPF Housing Grant and the Proximity Housing Grant, neither of which applies to a new flat. Those narrow the gap by an amount that depends on income and eligibility. The HDB Flat Eligibility letter is the only place to read your own number.

Then four limits on the data. Each matched pool is one or two estates rather than a whole town: Geylang rests on 13 sales in four blocks on Circuit Road and should not be leaned on, Bedok's 74 are almost all at Bedok South Horizon, Toa Payoh's 135 at Bidadari and Alkaff Crescent.

Storey is not controlled, and a BTO range spans low and high floors while a resale median does not. Plus and Prime four-room flats are 89 to 90 square metres against 93 at the Standard projects. And resale medians describe flats that sold, not flats on offer.

What this means for a November applicant

If you are weighing Bayshore, Merpati Meadow or Toa Payoh Hillside, the headline price looks close to resale and is not. All three sit in towns with the oldest resale stock, which is exactly where the median misleads most. The gap on offer is between 30.6% and 40.9%, not between 8.8% and 23.8%.

If you are weighing Sembawang Anchor or Chencharu Acres, the town median is roughly right and the discount is large either way. The real question there is the wait, not the price.

And if the matched comparison still leaves you short, the binding constraint is usually the loan, not the price. HDB housing loans are capped at 75% loan-to-value, and the income ceiling that just rose to $16,000 widens eligibility without changing what an income can service.

Your next step

Before you submit, put the project you are considering beside a resale flat with a similar remaining lease rather than beside the town median. Our New Sale vs Resale comparison does that arithmetic, and our Resale Price Check prices a specific flat from sales in its own block and lease band. If you would rather we ran it with you before 11 November, send us the project, flat type and your household income.

Sample: 13,829 registered HDB resale transactions, May to October 2026, from data.gov.sg; the matched comparison uses four-room sales of 88 to 97 square metres with 90 or more years of lease remaining, 13 to 135 sales per town. BTO prices, classifications, waiting times, subsidy recovery rates and nearby-resale ranges are HDB's own, from the launch announcement and Annex A of 4 November 2026. BTO prices exclude all grants and are indicative ranges set finally at flat selection; midpoints are ours. Resale figures are transacted prices and exclude agent commission, legal fees, buyer's stamp duty, renovation and any cash over valuation. Storey and exact location are not controlled. General information, not financial advice.