Two flats topped Tampines' 5-room record in one month

A 5-room flat at Centrale 8 at Tampines sold for $1.12 million in August, the highest price recorded for a 5-room flat in the town. The sale in second place cleared the old record too, in the same month.

The record sale appears in HDB’s resale register for August: a 1,173 sq ft unit on the 13th to 15th storey band of Block 519B Tampines Central 8, sold at about $955 psf with 86 years and 10 months left on the lease. Centrale 8 at Tampines is a Design, Build and Sell Scheme (DBSS) project, which means it was built and sold by a private developer but its flats are HDB flats, resold under the usual HDB rules.

What makes the month unusual is the runner-up. A 1,249 sq ft 5-room flat at Block 627B Tampines Street 61, part of the recently completed Tampines GreenVerge, was registered at $1.08 million in the same month, among the first resales recorded at that block since it cleared its five-year minimum occupation period (MOP). Either sale on its own would have beaten the previous Tampines 5-room high of $1,068,888, set in July at The Premiere @ Tampines. Instead the ceiling moved twice in one batch of records.

The top of this market wears one label

Tampines’ five highest 5-room resale prices have all been set within the last 12 months, and four of the five are DBSS flats from just two projects: Centrale 8 and The Premiere @ Tampines, neighbours on either side of the town centre.

Tampines’ five priciest 5-room resales all closed within the last 12 months, and four of the five are DBSS flats. Source: HDB resale transactions, data.gov.sg

Centrale 8 has been building toward this for a while. Its blocks have recorded nine 5-room sales at $1 million or more since August 2023, and the block that set the new record also held the project’s previous high of $1.05 million, from May 2025. This is a small market moving on few transactions: the project’s three 5-room blocks in the register have logged 59 resales in total since 2017.

The scheme behind these flats no longer exists. HDB shelved DBSS in 2011 after 13 projects, so the supply of this housing type is fixed forever. Tampines holds three of the 13: Centrale 8, The Premiere and Parc Lumiere in Simei. Buyers who want a relatively young flat with condo-style layouts beside Tampines’ MRT interchange and malls are bidding for units that will never be built again, and the pricing shows it.

Over the past 12 months, the median DBSS 5-room resale in Tampines cost $179,000 more than the median for every other 5-room flat in the town. Source: HDB resale transactions, data.gov.sg

Over the 12 months to August, the 34 DBSS 5-room resales in Tampines carried a median price of $979,000. The other 505 5-room resales in the town had a median of $800,000. That is a $179,000 gap between two groups of flats governed by the same HDB rulebook.

The rest of Tampines is not at these prices

The record sits $310,000 above the town’s 12-month 5-room median of $810,000, or about 38% higher. Away from the DBSS clusters, August’s priciest 5-room sale was $975,000 at Tampines North Drive 1. A record headline from one project says very little about what a typical Tampines flat is worth.

The GreenVerge sale points at where the pressure comes next. The project’s blocks along Tampines Street 61 are reaching MOP in waves: Blocks 618 to 621 began reselling in March, and Blocks 627A and 627B posted their first transactions in August. These are young flats with more than 94 years of lease left, and their 5-room sales have already ranged from about $820,000 to the new $1.08 million high. More of them will list over the coming year, which gives buyers alternatives and gives the record less room to run alone.

What this means for you

• Selling a 5-room flat elsewhere in Tampines? Price off your own block’s recent sales, not this headline. The town’s 12-month median is $810,000, and the record is a DBSS story more than a Tampines story.
• The DBSS premium is real but already in the price. The median gap of $179,000 buys location, lease and a housing type with no future supply; it is not a discount waiting to be discovered.
• Buyers who want a young lease near good transport without DBSS pricing have a growing pool to work with: Tampines GreenVerge’s first resales are arriving now, with 4-room sales so far between $715,000 and $868,000 and most 5-room sales under $1 million.
• The monthly HDB register is where the ground truth on your block lives. Both record-beating sales surfaced there in a single batch; checking it beats pricing off a neighbour’s story.