Toa Payoh Hillside’s four-room flats drew 7.0 first-timer family applicants per flat in November’s Build-To-Order (BTO) exercise, the highest first-timer rate for three-room and bigger flats among the seven projects on offer. HDB’s count is as at 11.59pm on 11 November.
Second-timer families face a much steeper line for the same Prime flats. Their rate for a Toa Payoh Hillside four-room is 45.4, because Plus and Prime projects set aside at least 90 per cent of three-room and bigger flats for first-timers, leaving second-timers to compete for the rest.
The medians moved up from June
The median first-timer family rate for three-room and bigger flats is 2.7 this time, up from 1.4 in the June 2026 exercise. For second-timer families the median is 18.9, against 14.3 in June. Half of all application categories sit above the median and half below, and HDB steers applicants towards those under it.
First-timer family rates for four-room flats, from lowest to highest:
- Sembawang Anchor (Standard), Sembawang: 0.7
- Merpati Meadow (Plus), Geylang: 2.4
- Chencharu Acres (Standard), Yishun: 2.7
- Bayshore Sails and Bayshore Oasis (Plus), Bedok, pooled: 3.2
- Plantation Dew (Standard), Tengah: 5.5
- Toa Payoh Hillside (Prime), Toa Payoh: 7.0
Sembawang Anchor is the only project where first-timer families number fewer than the three-room and bigger flats set aside for them. Its four-room drew 489 applicants in all for 464 flats. Counted against the flats reserved for first-timers, that works out to 0.7 first-timer families per flat. Its 417 five-room flats sit at 0.4 and its three-room at 1.1. The project’s flats come with a waiting time of under three years.
The single steepest category in the exercise is the three-room at Bayshore Sails for second-timer families, at 57.4, with 752 applicants for 90 flats. The pooled Bayshore four-room drew 5,448 applicants for 1,165 flats, a first-timer rate of 3.2 and a second-timer rate of 18.1. Tengah’s Plantation Dew five-room and 3Gen flats sit at 4.0 for first-timers.
Two-room Flexi and Community Care Apartments
Among two-room Flexi flats, the median rate is 4.3 for seniors, 8.8 for first-timer singles, 0.5 for first-timer families and 0.7 for second-timer families. In June the same medians were 2.6, 7.8, 0.2 and 0.4.
Plantation Dew stands out here: 19.2 for first-timer singles and 6.8 for seniors, from 1,695 applicants for 178 flats. Singles had the most room at Sembawang Anchor, at 3.7. First-timer families were under one applicant per flat everywhere except Plantation Dew, where the rate is 1.5.
Toa Payoh Hillside’s 256 Community Care Apartments, the only ones in this launch and reserved for seniors aged 55 and above, drew 525 applicants, a rate of 2.1.
What a rate of 7.0 does not mean
An application rate is not the odds of getting a flat. HDB’s counts include people who applied in earlier launches and are still waiting to book, who make up a fifth of applications on average. Rates are rounded to one decimal place and worked out against the share of flats set aside for each household type, not the whole block.
HDB also shortlists more applicants than there are flats, potentially up to 200 per cent of the supply once quotas are applied. Everyone shortlisted receives a queue number, and those further back still stand a chance of booking if applicants ahead of them drop out.
HDB’s flat supply and applications page has the full breakdown by project, flat type and household type.
