GRIP: 06FEB2026 Singapore Real Estate Pulse: Prime Land Bids and Housing Supply Take Center Stage

Market activity in the Lion City remains focused on strategic land acquisitions and public housing expansion as the sector consolidates into a stabilization phase. The story today is one of discipline rather than drama: selective aggression on prime land, calibrated public housing supply in coveted locations, and a capital market that has moved off the lows of prior years without tipping into excess. Singapore’s property market has entered February 2026 with steady momentum, shaped by competitive interest in government land, a visible pipeline of public housing in high-demand areas, and shifting dynamics within the brokerage community. The key threads to watch now are what developers are willing to pay for rare waterfront and city-fringe plots, how HDB sequences its launches in new flagship estates, and how professional standards in the agency world evolve under the spotlight of litigation and reputational risk. A recent Government Land Sales tender at Tanjong Rhu Road has become a bellwether for sentiment toward prime city-fringe waterfront sites. Multiple bids for the plot signal that developers are still prepared to deploy substantial capital where location, connectivity and lifestyle appeal converge, even as overall sentiment is more tempered than in previous upcycles. Tanjong Rhu’s positioning near the city, with established waterfront credentials and strong transport links, continues to make it one of the clearest expressions of confidence in the medium-term resilience of Singapore’s luxury-adjacent residential demand. On the public housing front, the Greater Southern Waterfront is emerging as the new focal point of national housing policy, with Berlayar estate at the former Keppel Club site set to deliver thousands of HDB units over time instead of being left to entirely private development. The first tranche at Berlayar, coming to market ahead of subsequent launches through 2026, effectively seeds a new generation of city-fringe public housing with sea views and immediate access to employment clusters. In parallel, the planned BTO project at Upper Thomson (Bishan), with around 1,600 units and strong MRT connectivity, is widely expected to feature a significant proportion of Prime and Plus flats under the newer classification framework. This Prime/Plus system has become one of the most consequential shifts in housing policy in recent years, quietly reshaping the idea of “prime” from a simple mature-versus-non-mature label into a more granular mix of subsidies and restrictions. Buyers get deeper support in these coveted locations but accept longer minimum occupation periods and tighter resale conditions, including limits on renting out the entire unit. The net effect: desirable, centrally located public housing remains accessible to genuine owner-occupiers, while the “lottery effect” that historically accompanied certain launches is systematically dialled down. Beneath these structural moves, the brokerage industry is undergoing its own recalibration. Team movements between major agencies reflect how aggressively firms are competing on brand, technology and culture to attract top performers. At the same time, lawsuits alleging negligent misrepresentation and related missteps have put professional standards under sharper scrutiny, reinforcing that reputational capital can be eroded far faster than market share can be built. In a high-ticket, heavily intermediated sector, the quality of advice and disclosure is becoming as important a differentiator as project access or marketing prowess. Macro-wise, the market looks more like a plateau than a peak or a trough. HDB resale prices have continued to edge higher, but at a more measured pace, with transaction volumes holding in a healthy mid-range rather than spiking or collapsing. In the private residential sector, demand is clustering in projects that offer either clear locational advantages or compelling value, while fringe and mass-market launches are forced to compete more on pricing discipline and product differentiation. Lower interest rates versus the 2023–2024 period have provided some breathing room, but buyers are still visibly sensitive to absolute quantum and monthly outlays. On the investment sales front, 2025 marked a decisive recovery from prior-year softness, with volumes climbing meaningfully on the back of several large institutional trades and portfolio deals. While aggregate figures remain shy of the all-time records seen in earlier cycles, the direction of travel is unambiguously positive, and Singapore has reasserted itself as one of the more resilient and liquid markets in Asia-Pacific. The tone from regional research desks is that capital is rotating back into income-backed assets in core markets, and Singapore sits squarely in that crosshair. For today’s grip, the key takeaway is that Singapore real estate is in an assertive but not overheated phase. Developer bids for sites like Tanjong Rhu show that irreplaceable locations still command premium conviction, while HDB’s ramp-up at Berlayar and Upper Thomson demonstrates a deliberate choice to hard-wire affordability and access into some of the most desirable parts of the island. Against this backdrop, agency-level shifts and legal disputes remind everyone that trust and transparency are now central to competitive advantage. This is a market defined less by speculative spikes and more by careful calibration: of land pricing, policy design and capital deployment, with each new tender and launch offering a real-time read on how much risk the ecosystem is willing to absorb.