Punggol Topaz a hit with home buyers
by Joanne Chan
05:55 AM Jan 05, 2011
SINGAPORE - The Housing and Development Board's (HDB) latest public housing project, Punggol Topaz, is a hit with home buyers.
As at 5pm yesterday, it had received 6,846 applications for the 1,010 units available.
Applications closed at midnight.
The strong demand for new flats is proving to be a continuing headache for those in search of their first home.
Among the applicants for Punggol Topaz were risk analyst Han Heyuan, 27, and his fiancee, Kristin Chan, 26, a human resource manager, who were hoping it will be fifth time lucky for them.
The first-time buyers had been house-hunting for the past two years. Put off by high asking prices in the resale market, they set their sights on a new flat.
Among their previous four tries, they either got a very high queue number and did not get the chance to select a unit or they were informed by the HDB that the ethnic quota had been filled before they were due to choose a flat.
Said Mr Han: "We have applied twice for Build-To-Order (BTO) projects and twice for Sale of Balance Flats. And we have not been successful."
The couple told MediaCorp they have applied for a five-room flat in Punggol Topaz.
Market watchers are not surprised by the strong interest in Punggol Topaz due to its good location - it is a short walk from the Punggol MRT Station and Punggol Reservoir.
The prices of the units were also appealing, said ERA Asia Pacific associate director Eugene Lim.
For example, a four-room unit in Punggol Topaz costs $329,000, while a similar sized resale flat in the area can fetch up to $432,000.
Mr Lim said: "The pricing of the flats are about 20 to 25 per cent cheaper than resale flats in the area. And the resale flats are already 10 years old. So this makes the new flats attractive to first-time buyers."
The HDB has said it plans to offer up to 22,000 new Build-To-Order flats this year, subject to demand.
Of these, half are slated to be offered in the first half of this year in towns such as Bukit Panjang, Jurong West, Punggol, Sengkang and Yishun.
