Singapore’s east coast has spent two decades as the steady, unglamorous part of the island’s housing market. That is changing.
The trigger is rail.
Two new stations open on the eastern corridor in the second half of 2026, and a plan the Land Transport Authority, or LTA, announced on 25 July 2025 would turn an existing station there into a two-line interchange by the mid-2030s. Around that rail, the state is releasing land, and developers are bidding hard for it.
A short orientation first, because this market runs on local shorthand. Homes in Singapore are located by postal district, and the eastern stretch covering Bedok, Tanah Merah, and the Upper East Coast is District 16.
Prices are quoted per square foot, or psf, of floor area rather than per unit or per square metre. Land is quoted per square foot per plot ratio, or psf ppr, which is what a developer paid for each square foot it is permitted to build.
Most development land reaches the market through the Government Land Sales programme, or GLS, in which the Urban Redevelopment Authority, or URA, tenders a parcel with its permitted size fixed in advance. Once a home changes hands, the buyer lodges a caveat, a legal filing that records the price actually paid, which is what makes the Singapore transaction record unusually open.
The rail comes first, in a specific order
When we read a rail promise for buyers, we separate the stations with opening dates from the ones on a decade-long horizon, because only the dated ones change how a household travels now. In the east, both kinds are in play.
The dated part is Stage 5 of the Thomson-East Coast Line, which opens Bedok South (TE30) and Sungei Bedok (TE31) in the second half of 2026. Sungei Bedok is also an interchange with the Downtown Line (DT37), and Bayshore (TE29), further along the coast, is already open.
The long-horizon part is bigger. On 25 July 2025 the LTA announced an extension of the Thomson-East Coast Line from Sungei Bedok to Changi Terminal 5 and on to Changi Airport.
Under that plan, the existing Changi Airport branch of the East-West Line, which today runs through Expo to the airport, converts to the Thomson-East Coast Line. That makes Tanah Merah an interchange between the two lines, on a timeline placed in the mid-2030s in step with Terminal 5, whose ground was broken on 14 May 2025.
Tanah Merah has been preparing for years. Modification works at the station, including new viaducts, an added platform, and an expanded concourse, have run since 2016 and were due to complete by the end of 2025.
The station already earns its keep. The East-West Line runs west from Tanah Merah to Bedok, Paya Lebar, City Hall, and Raffles Place with no change of train, and the airport branch runs east to Expo and Changi Airport.
Bayshore, around 10,000 homes on 60 hectares
The largest piece of new housing in the corridor is Bayshore, roughly 60 hectares beside East Coast Park that URA is planning as a car-lite estate of around 10,000 homes, a majority of them public housing, built out to the mid-2030s. Bayshore MRT is already open.
The public half started first. Bayshore Palms and Bayshore Vista, more than 1,400 flats between them, were launched in the October 2024 exercise of the Build-To-Order scheme, or BTO, under which the Housing and Development Board builds flats against demand registered in advance.
Then the private plots. The first, on Bayshore Road, drew eight bids when its tender closed in March 2025 and is now Vela Bay, about 515 units, launched in April 2026 and selling.
The second shows how the market reads the corridor. A commercial-and-residential parcel on Bayshore Drive, integrated with the new Bedok South MRT station, a bus interchange, and retail, went to tender on 30 March 2026 and drew a top bid of S$2.128 billion for up to 1,280 homes.
What the land market paid at Tanah Merah
The most contested land sale of 2025 happened a little inland, at Tanah Merah. URA put the last residential plot beside Tanah Merah MRT station (EW4) out to tender under the second-half 2025 GLS programme.
It closed on 27 November 2025 with 10 bids, the most contested GLS residential tender of the year, and was awarded on 2 December 2025. The winner was Bellis Residential, a vehicle of Allgreen Properties, at S$464.8 million.
Hoi Hup Realty came second at S$462.8 million. The margin was 0.4 per cent.
When we convert a tender result into something comparable, we divide by the permitted floor area instead of quoting the headline sum, because parcels differ in what they allow. On a maximum gross floor area of 32,470 sqm, S$464.8 million works out to about $1,330 psf ppr, against $1,324 psf ppr for the under-bidder.
The parcel is 20,293.6 sqm, about 218,507 sq ft, at a plot ratio of 1.6, and it is zoned fully residential with no commercial component. URA estimates a yield of around 380 homes on a 99-year lease running from the award.
Allgreen is not a newcomer. Incorporated in 1986, it is the Singapore real-estate arm of the Kuok Group, was listed on the SGX Mainboard from 1999, and was privatised and delisted in 2011.
Its recent work includes The Bukit Timah Collection in District 10, made up of Fourth Avenue Residences, Juniper Hill, and Royalgreen, and Pasir Ris 8, an eastern project integrated with Pasir Ris MRT station and built in joint venture with Kerry Properties. Pasir Ris 8 is the closest match in that record to a station-fronting eastern plot.
Where prices actually sit
When we compare eastern launches, we read the median price buyers paid and keep the caveat count beside it, because a median on three caveats and a median on 411 are not the same evidence. Here are the District 16 launches with real transactions behind them.
| Project | Tenure | Units | Median psf paid | Caveats |
| Vela Bay, Bayshore Road | 99-year from 2025 | 515 | $2,861 | 385 |
| Pinery Residences | 99-year from 2025 | 588 | $2,537 | 411 |
| Bagnall Haus, Upper East Coast | Freehold | 113 | $2,494 | 91 |
| Sceneca Residence, beside Tanah Merah MRT | 99-year from 2021 | 268 | about $2,080 at its 2023 launch | 3 recent |
URA caveats read on 15 September 2026. Caveats are filed after a sale and can take weeks to appear, so the most recent months are still filling in.
The medians for Vela Bay and Pinery Residences cover the 12 months to August 2026, and Bagnall Haus is measured across its whole launch from January 2025 to April 2026, because only six caveats fall inside the shorter window. Buyers at Vela Bay paid between $2,532 and $3,302, and at Pinery Residences between $2,340 and $2,728.
By May 2026 the developers had sold 371 of Vela Bay’s 515 units, 548 of Pinery Residences’ 588, and 104 of Bagnall Haus’s 113. Sceneca Residence, beside Tanah Merah station, sold all 268 of its units after launching in January 2023 at about $2,080 psf.
One figure surprises readers from markets where freehold commands a wide premium. Across District 16 condominium resales over the 24 months to August 2026, freehold and 99-year leasehold sit within two per cent of each other.
The new launches agree. Freehold Bagnall Haus at $2,494 psf sits slightly under leasehold Pinery Residences at $2,537 psf.
When we place a new parcel against the ones around it, we start from the resale medians of the completed projects nearby, because those are the prices the same catchment is already paying. Grandeur Park Residences, finished in 2019, is the highest at $2,019 psf on 33 caveats, followed by The Glades at $1,731, Urban Vista at $1,635, and Casa Merah, from 2006, at $1,534.
So a buyer in the east is choosing across a range running from about $1,534 psf in older stock near Tanah Merah to $2,861 psf in a new Bayshore launch. Age and distance to a station explain much of that.
The plot that fronts the station
It all arrives at one parcel. Bedok Rise Residences is the development Allgreen will build on the plot it won, named after Bedok Rise, the small landed road beside the site.
Measured from the working centre of the parcel, Tanah Merah MRT is 241 m away in a straight line, and Sceneca Square, the single-storey retail podium beside the station with shops and a supermarket, is 338 m. Neighbouring condominiums around the same station sit between 110 m and 310 m from the gantry, so this kind of proximity is the local norm here.
The rest of the map reads the way an eastern address should. Changi Business Park is 2.5 km away, Expo MRT 1.7 km, East Coast Park 3.0 km, Bedok Mall 2.1 km and one stop west by train, and Changi Airport about 4.4 km and two stops on the airport branch.
What this plot has that nothing else in the pipeline has is the station itself, on a line planned to double up. Bayshore Drive will be integrated with a new Thomson-East Coast Line station, while this parcel fronts an East-West Line station planned to become an interchange with that same line.
A preview is expected in early 2027. Registration of interest is open ahead of it through the Bedok Rise Residences Showflat page, with the location and appointment slots shared with registered buyers once the developer announces them.
For a reader outside Singapore, the transferable part is not the development itself. It is that one 218,507 sq ft plot drew 10 bids and was settled on a margin of 0.4 per cent, in a district where completed stock still changes hands near $1,534 psf.
The corridor’s next two stations open in the second half of 2026, and the interchange follows in the mid-2030s.
