In my first Draft Master Plan 2025 post, I covered the OCR in depth — if you haven't read that one yet, it's worth starting there. But not everyone is looking at the OCR. Some of you have already invested there and are now looking to upgrade closer to town. Others are investors more familiar with the Orchard and city fringe areas. This post is for you.
There's a stigma that's followed the CCR for years: "nobody wants to stay there, you'll struggle to sell." And there's a mirror-image dilemma in the RCR: prices there have crept so close to CCR pricing that buyers wonder if they should just stretch into Orchard instead. Both of these are worth examining honestly against the actual master plan data, rather than accepting them as fixed truths.
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Dover / Medway: From Sleepy SIT Estate to White Site
Dover's history is a useful case study in how these transformations actually unfold. In 2003, it was an open area of HDB flats and a school. By 2014, the school site had become "subject to detailed planning." By 2019, it had turned white — meaning it can be zoned for essentially anything: residential, office, retail, or mixed development. The most recent master plan update has now demarcated this site as residential.
Zoom out, and you'll see the broader SIT (Singapore Improvement Trust) zoning around it has also shifted to "subject to detailed planning," with a notably high plot ratio of 4.3 — well above most existing condos in the area. My own read, based on that plot ratio, is that this is more likely to become HDB blocks than private condos, particularly given the government's tendency to justify a new MRT station (in this case, Dover/Medway's connectivity) with increased residential density nearby.
There's also a plot directly opposite Lentor's most recent launch, which sold at close to $2,400–2,500 psf. Normalise that to current harmonised pricing and you're looking at roughly $2,700 psf. If a residential-with-commercial plot opposite that development eventually launches at a 5–10% premium — which wouldn't be unusual for a walk-to-MRT mixed development — that puts realistic future pricing in the $2,900–3,000 psf range. This is currently a quiet, sleepy stretch, but the zoning changes suggest that won't remain the case.
Newton: From "Will the Food Centre Move Out?" to High-Rise Corridor
Newton has been the subject of relocation rumours for years — I remember hearing them myself, growing up. Looking at the master plan history, the area around Anglo-Chinese Junior was zoned residential for a long stretch, moving to "subject to detailed planning" by 2008 and staying that way through 2019. But two plots near Newton were already quietly rezoned residential-with-commercial back in 2019 — a signal, in hindsight, of what was coming.
The Draft Master Plan 2025 confirms it: the former school site is now zoned residential at a 3.5 plot ratio, and the broader Newton food centre area has shifted to plot ratios of 2.8–3.5, meaning buildings roughly 20 storeys taller than the current low-rise stock nearby. If you're looking to buy into the CCR in the next few months, this matters — Newton sits at one of the more expensive legs of the CCR, and this density change will visibly reshape the skyline around it.
Turf City: The Government Land Sale Everyone's Watching
Turf City — the old racehorse and horse-riding club grounds near Holland — has followed a slower but very deliberate rezoning path. The Holland Plain area was demarcated back in 2019, and the most recent master plan has added plot ratio to it, which typically signals land sales are imminent. Two plots are currently up for Government Land Sale, with tender closing soon — meaning new launches in this pocket within the next 12 to 18 months.
A recent GLS plot here, at a 2.4 plot ratio, is expected to transact in the $2,000–3,000 psf range. What's notable in the plan is the split between plot ratios: areas at 4.0 plot ratio (likely HDB, positioned to buffer highway noise) versus 2.5 plot ratio (likely condos, positioned closer to the upcoming Turf City MRT station and the existing Sixth Avenue MRT). This is a consistent pattern across master plans — HDB land isn't sold to foreigners, so government planning tends to place condo plots in the more desirable locations to maximise land sale value.
The Bigger Shift: Freehold Isn't the Automatic Winner Anymore
Historically, CCR was dominated by freehold developments, and conventional wisdom — often inherited from our parents' generation — said freehold always beats leasehold, even at a premium. That premium used to be modest: $50–100 psf. Today, it's routinely $300–600 psf, sometimes touching $800 psf. Compare Robertson Opus (leasehold) to RiverGreen (leasehold) as an example of how tight new-launch CCR pricing has become regardless of tenure — the freehold premium increasingly shows up in older stock instead, where you're paying 3,000–4,000 psf for a dated development with a large, inefficient floor plate.
Since Singapore effectively stopped selling freehold land, freehold CCR stock is a shrinking, ageing pool relative to the wave of fresh 99-year leasehold supply now coming onstream. With Turf City, Holland Plain, and Newton all coming onstream as fresh 99-year leasehold supply, buyers who've been mentally ruling out CCR because of the old freehold-only, ultra-premium framing may want to revisit that assumption.
What This Means for You as a Buyer
I still fall back on my three golden principles here: start saving and investing early, since leverage only shrinks with age; constantly upsize your asset base rather than treating your first purchase as final; and keep an 18–24 month buffer, or roughly 20% of your capital, so a downturn never forces a distressed sale.
On budget specifically: with $2.3–2.5 million, an RCR three-bedroom is likely your strongest pick. With $3 million, entry-level CCR three-bedrooms come into range, alongside RCR alternatives. And rather than chasing the most oversubscribed launch — which more often than not means paying the developer's highest price — I'd point you toward undervalued post-launch opportunities instead. The lesson from 2019's Sengkang launches is a good illustration: buyers who chased the shopping-mall-adjacent launch at a premium ended up making roughly half the profit, four to six years later, of buyers who bought the "ulu" 1km-from-MRT alternative at a more grounded price.
If you're weighing an RCR or CCR purchase against this master plan update, every buyer's numbers and risk appetite are different — happy to walk through what actually fits your situation.
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