Which HDB towns have million-dollar flats? 23 of 26. Three still have none.
Twenty-three of Singapore's 26 HDB towns recorded at least one $1m resale in the last 12 months. That sounds like the whole map. It is not: a handful of central towns produced most of them, and across much of the heartland the top decile is still short of the line.
Farhan Adenan · 29 Sep 2026 · 8 min read
- 23 of Singapore's 26 HDB towns recorded at least one resale at $1,000,000 or more between October 2025 and September 2026. Choa Chu Kang, Jurong West and Sembawang recorded none.
- 1,826 of 24,436 resales crossed $1m in that window — 7.5%. The whole of 2017 produced 46.
- Toa Payoh (292), Queenstown (245) and Bukit Merah (220) account for 757 of the 1,826 — 41%.
- The typical million-dollar flat is a 4-room (781) or 5-room (651) in a block whose lease began around 2011 — not an old maisonette.
- Million-dollar HDB is 7–8% of the market, not the market. Judge a town by its top decile, not by one headline.
HDB resale transactions on data.gov.sg by registration month, January 2017 to September 2026 (241,483 resales). Nominal prices.
The straight answer: 23 towns, 7.5% of sales
Almost every town has printed one. Very few towns are there.
Twenty-three. Between October 2025 and September 2026, 23 of the 26 HDB towns in the resale record produced at least one flat that sold for $1,000,000 or more. Across all towns, 1,826 of 24,436 resales crossed the line — 7.5%, or roughly one flat in thirteen. The three towns without a single one are Choa Chu Kang, Jurong West and Sembawang.
Eight years ago this was a curiosity. The whole of 2017 produced 46 million-dollar resales, 0.22% of that year's market. The count stayed below 100 a year through 2020, then turned vertical: 259 in 2021, 469 in 2023, 1,035 in 2024 and 1,593 in 2025. The first nine months of 2026 have already produced 1,476 — 7.6% of all resales registered this year.
Source: data.gov.sg HDB resale flat prices, by registration month. Count of resales at or above $1,000,000; the percentage under each year is that year's share of all resales. 2026 covers January to September only, so its bar is a partial year, not a full-year figure.
The share is the story. From 0.22% to 7.6%, the $1m resale went from a handful of exceptional units to a regular slice of monthly volume. It is still a slice. More than nine in ten HDB resales in the last 12 months closed below $1m, and that is the market most buyers and sellers are actually in.
Town by town: a mature, central-town phenomenon
Rank the towns by count and the map draws itself.
Three towns lead by a distance. Toa Payoh recorded 292 million-dollar resales, 29% of its 994 sales. Queenstown recorded 245, 33% of its 742. Bukit Merah recorded 220, 24% of its 899. Behind them sit Kallang/Whampoa (147, 20%), Ang Mo Kio (121, 14%), Clementi (105, 21%) and Bishan (98, 24%). Those seven mature towns account for 1,228 of the 1,826 — two in every three.
Source: data.gov.sg HDB resale flat prices, registration months October 2025 to September 2026, 24,436 resales. All 26 HDB towns shown; the three marked are the top three by count. Shares are rounded to the whole percentage point.
Tampines is the town worth understanding. It recorded 95 million-dollar resales — more than Serangoon, more than Central Area — but from 1,988 resales, the largest volume of any town. That is 5%. Tampines has million-dollar flats; it is not a million-dollar town. Bedok (82, 6%) and Hougang (60, 5%) read the same way: real counts, thin shares.
Bukit Timah shows the highest share on the board, 52%, and it means little. The town recorded only 58 resales in 12 months; 30 of them crossed $1m. On a base that small, a handful of sales moves the share by several points. Central Area (56 of 174, 32%) carries the same caveat in milder form.
At the other end, Bukit Batok and Bukit Panjang recorded 9 each, from 1,359 and 775 resales. Yishun recorded 15 from 1,564. Choa Chu Kang (1,000 resales), Jurong West (1,454) and Sembawang (861) recorded none.
What a million-dollar flat actually is
Not the old jumbo maisonette of the headlines.
The picture most people carry is an ageing maisonette in an old estate. The record disagrees. The largest single group is 4-room: 781 of the 1,826, or 43%. Add 5-room (651) and the two standard family sizes make up 1,432 — nearly four in five. Executive flats contribute 383. Three-room flats contribute 5.
| Flat type | $1m+ resales | Most common models | $1m+ resales |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4-room | 781 | Model A | 611 |
| 5-room | 651 | Improved | 425 |
| Executive | 383 | Maisonette | 225 |
| Multi-generation | 6 | Premium Apartment | 154 |
| 3-room | 5 | Apartment | 145 |
| DBSS | 124 | ||
| Type S1 | 35 | ||
| Total | 1,826 | Standard | 24 |
Flat type and model as recorded by HDB. The two columns are separate tallies of the same 1,826 resales; models with smaller counts are not listed.
By model, Model A leads with 611, ahead of Improved (425). Maisonettes account for 225 — about one in eight million-dollar resales. The flat this headline now describes is, most often, a 4-room Model A in a mature central town.
The age of these flats confirms it. The median million-dollar resale sits in a block whose lease began in 2011 — a flat roughly 15 years old, not one near the end of its lease. The busiest streets point the same way: Bidadari Park Drive in Toa Payoh (114 in 12 months), Dawson Road in Queenstown (108), Ang Mo Kio Street 23 (56) and Clementi Avenue 3 (55). The threshold is now crossed by size and location together, not by rarity. A 4-room in Toa Payoh can reach it; no flat of any size in Jurong West did in the last 12 months.
The next towns to cross: read the top decile
One outlier is a headline. A top decile is a market.
The test we use: A town “has” million-dollar flats when its 90th-percentile resale price clears $1m — when the top tenth of the town's sales is there — not when a single unit prints. By that test, 11 towns qualify today, from Central Area ($1,479,000) down to Serangoon ($1,020,000). The other 15 are not all equally close.
Source: data.gov.sg HDB resale flat prices, registration months October 2025 to September 2026. 90th percentile of each town's resale prices. Axis begins at $700,000, not zero, to resolve the gap to $1m; the five marked towns are the closest.
Closest: Geylang ($989,000), Tampines, Bedok and Pasir Ris ($945,000 each) and Hougang ($920,000). In these towns the top decile is already within a tenth of the line. Furthest: Jurong West ($728,000), Yishun ($737,000), Choa Chu Kang ($758,000) and Sembawang ($775,000).
Yishun shows why a single print misleads. Its first $1m resale was registered in February 2022, and it logged 15 in the last 12 months. Yet its 90th-percentile resale is $737,000, the second-lowest of any town. Yishun has had million-dollar flats. It does not have a million-dollar top decile.
The order in which towns first crossed tells the same story. In our record, Central Area and Kallang/Whampoa both registered a $1m resale in January 2017 — the first month of the dataset, so they crossed earlier than we can see. Bishan followed in February 2017, Toa Payoh and Queenstown in July 2017. The heartland arrived five years later: Yishun in February 2022, Pasir Ris and Woodlands in May 2022, Tampines and Punggol in September 2022, Bedok in October 2022. Bukit Panjang crossed in September 2023. Sengkang was the last, in April 2024. Ang Mo Kio, first across in May 2020, is now fifth by count.
Who this affects
Two audiences, two different readings of the same table.
If you own and plan to upgrade
“Will my flat hit $1m?” is the wrong question
A $1m sale is a number in isolation. What decides an upgrade is the gap between what your flat fetches and the private unit you want, and whether your income and CPF can carry that gap. The gap does not close because the headline number is round.
What your salary actually buys sets out the loan side; the MOP wave map shows how many flats in your area reach the resale market alongside yours.
If you are buying
The headline has not reached the price you pay
In Choa Chu Kang, Jurong West and Sembawang there was no $1m resale at all in the last 12 months. In those three towns and Yishun, the 90th-percentile resale sits between $728,000 and $775,000. That is where the million-dollar story has not reached the price most buyers pay.
Even in Toa Payoh, 71% of resales in the window closed below $1m. The median resale there was $796,000. Read your target town's median and top decile, not the record sale that made the news.
Which HDB towns have million-dollar flats? 23 of 26 have printed one. Only 11 have a million-dollar top decile.
- The base rate: 7.5% of resales in the last 12 months, up from 0.22% in 2017. A growing slice, not the market.
- The map: mature central towns — Toa Payoh, Queenstown, Bukit Merah — and 4- and 5-room flats. Three towns have none.
- The discipline: judge a town by its 90th percentile, and an upgrade by the gap to the home you want, not by a round number.
Want to know what your block's top decile is doing?
A town figure is the start. I'll pull your block's own recent resales against the town's median and top decile, and the honest gap to the home you are aiming for. Twenty minutes.
HDB stopped building big in 1995. We mapped every block that still has them.
Where the largest HDB flats still stand, block by block.
The MOP wave map: 14,000 Tengah flats and your next buyer
Which towns face a wave of newly eligible resale supply, and when.
How to check us: every number in this piece is computed from the public HDB resale record on data.gov.sg, not from third-party estimates.
- data.gov.sg — HDB resale flat prices — the transaction record every table and chart in this article is computed from
- Housing & Development Board — HDB towns, flat types and resale policy
- POV Weekly — The MOP wave map — resale supply by town
- POV Weekly — What your salary actually buys — the loan side of an upgrade
- POV Weekly — The last big HDB homes — where the largest flats stand
Dataset — HDB resale transactions as published on data.gov.sg, by registration month, January 2017 to September 2026 (241,483 resales). Last-12-months window: October 2025 to September 2026 (24,436 resales, 1,826 at $1,000,000 or more). Nominal prices.
Methodology & honesty notes. Source: HDB resale transactions as published on data.gov.sg, by registration month. A resale counts as million-dollar at $1,000,000 or more, in nominal dollars with no inflation adjustment. The registration month lags the date the deal was struck by roughly one to three months, so recent months describe deals agreed somewhat earlier. The last-12-months window runs over registration months October 2025 to September 2026. 2026 figures cover January to September only and are not full-year totals. “Town” is the HDB town as recorded in the dataset, not the URA planning area. Shares are rounded to the whole percentage point; the 90th percentile is computed on each town's resales in the window, rounded to $1,000 in the text. “First $1m resale” is the first in our record, which begins in January 2017 — towns shown crossing in January 2017 may have crossed earlier. Towns with small resale volumes (Bukit Timah, Central Area, Marine Parade) have volatile shares. Prices are gross, before any costs. Past prices are not predictions. Nothing here is financial advice — it is a starting point for your own due diligence.
Farhan Adenan · CEA Registration R068636D · Senior Associate Division Director, Huttons Asia Pte Ltd (Estate Agent Licence L3008899K).