These Are Our Top 5 Condos in Bukit Timah & Beauty World

The Beauty World end of District 21 is the kind of address buyers pay up for without quite being able to price it: freehold and 999-year land, a dense cluster of brand-name primary schools, and three Downtown Line stations — Beauty World, King Albert Park, and Cashew — strung a few minutes apart. It is also the part of the district where the choice between projects is expensive to get wrong, because the land tenure and the school catchment are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the price. So we did what the Resale Project Scorecard (RPS) is built for: ranked every resale condo in the district on the same evidence, and let the data pick the top five.

The RPS scores each project from 126,000-plus URA REALIS transactions across seven factors — primary-school catchment, capital appreciation, rental yield, MRT access, future-transformation upside, project size, and tenure — each marked out of 10, rolled into one score and a letter grade from S to D. Methodology published, no spin. Of the 76 ranked projects in District 21, eleven earn the top S grade. These five — all in the Upper Bukit Timah / Beauty World belt — score highest.

1. Daintree Residence — 8.21, grade S

Daintree tops the district on the combination buyers actually want here: a fresh lease, a top-school catchment, and a doorstep that still works as an income play. The scorecard logs Bukit Timah Primary at 0.38km and exceptional capital appreciation — an average annual +4.39%, top quartile of its 2022-era cohort (88th percentile) — alongside a strong 3.98% rental yield, the best income return of the five. At 327 units on a 99-year lease with about 90 years left, it carries no near-term decay worry. Its one soft mark is future-transformation upside: the Beauty World integrated transport hub sits 0.64km away, close but not close enough for the RPS to score meaningful catalyst uplift. For a near-new project in this catchment, that is a minor quibble against an otherwise complete profile.

2. Maple Woods — 7.98, grade S

Maple Woods is the freehold school play, and the scorecard rewards it for exactly that. It sits 110m from Methodist Girls' School (Primary) — about as close to a brand-name school as a condo gets — posts top-quartile appreciation (+4.05%, 74th percentile of its 1997 cohort), and has direct walk-in access to King Albert Park MRT at 280m. At 697 units it is the largest of the five, which the RPS flags as the liquidity sweet spot for resale turnover, and freehold tenure removes any lease-decay question. The honest trade-off the scorecard surfaces is income: rental yield is a weak 2.31%. This is a hold-for-the-catchment, freehold buy, not a yield play.

3. Forett at Bukit Timah — 7.91, grade S

Forett is the newest large project on the stretch (TOP 2024) and the freehold pick for buyers who want a fresh building rather than a fresh lease. The scorecard logs Bukit Timah Primary at 0.30km, top-quartile appreciation for its young cohort (+3.23%, 80th percentile), and an above-average 3.48% yield — the rare freehold here that earns its keep on income as well as tenure. At 633 units it has the scale for facilities and an active resale market. The caveats are modest: MRT is a 0.83km walk to Beauty World — walkable, not doorstep — and, like everything on this stretch, limited catalyst exposure. For newness plus freehold in a top catchment, it is the most balanced of the recent vintages.

4. Southaven II — 7.81, grade S

Southaven II is the value-tenure entry: 999-year lease, which the RPS treats as effectively freehold for valuation, at a lower quantum than the pure-freehold blocks. It records strong appreciation (+4.20%, 83rd percentile of its 1999 cohort) and a 0.60km walk to Beauty World MRT. The scorecard is candid about its two soft spots: school optionality is narrow (one primary, Pei Hwa Presbyterian, within 1km) and rental yield is a weak 2.46%. This is the pick for a buyer who wants near-freehold durability and the Beauty World address without paying the full freehold premium, and who is buying to hold rather than to rent out.

5. The Nexus — 7.76, grade S

The Nexus rounds out the five and is the standout on schools and tenure together: freehold, with four primary schools within 1km — the densest catchment of the group — nearest Methodist Girls' (Primary) at 0.33km, and direct access to King Albert Park MRT at 380m. Appreciation is strong (+4.55%, 84th percentile of its 2006 cohort). The recurring weaknesses are the district's, not the project's: a below-average 2.58% yield and little future-catalyst exposure. At 242 units it is the most boutique of the five — fewer facilities, thinner resale flow — but for a family buying around the school run on freehold land, the catchment density is hard to match.

What they share — and what to watch

Run the five side by side and the district's signature comes through.

Two things bind the list. Every one of them scores on schools — this is one of the deepest primary-school catchments in Singapore, anchored by Methodist Girls', Bukit Timah Primary, and Pei Hwa Presbyterian — and four of the five are freehold or 999-year, so lease decay barely registers. The recurring weakness is the mirror image of that maturity: future-transformation upside is thin across the board. The Beauty World stretch is already built out and well-connected, so the RPS finds little of the catalyst-driven uplift you see around new CRL interchanges or the Greater Southern Waterfront. The lone live catalyst — the Beauty World integrated transport hub — sits just far enough from each project that the model scores its impact as modest.

The second pattern is income: with the exception of Daintree and Forett, yields here are weak (2.2–2.6%). That is the freehold-catchment tax — you pay for durable land and a top school, and the rent does not keep pace with the price. The honourable mentions just outside the five make the same case: Verdale (7.72, S) pairs a fresh 99-year lease with a 3.67% yield, and The Blossomvale (7.70, S) sits 140m from King Albert Park MRT on a 999-year lease.

The decision inside this list is not "which is best" — all five are S-grade — but which trade-off you are buying. A fresh lease with the best income (Daintree), freehold next to a brand-name school (Maple Woods, The Nexus), freehold and new (Forett), or near-freehold value (Southaven II). Price the lease, the yield, and the specific school you need against your own horizon, and let the scorecard — not the showflat — frame the shortlist.

See the full ranking and every project's scorecard at tribesg.com/rps.

Sources: TRIBE Resale Project Scorecard (126,000+ URA REALIS transactions; scores and reasons as at June 2026). Scores and grades are model outputs, not investment advice.

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.