One quirk of the current recovery in Singapore's residential property market is the rising popularity of small-sized apartments, better known as "shoebox" units. Since early 2009, when the current home market up-cycle began, private property developers have sold a number of projects consisting mainly of "shoebox" units. These include The Alexis, which kicked off the "shoebox" trend and Suites@Guillemard,...
Small-sized Apartments
Analysts have said buyers of shoe-box apartments may have difficulties selling them in future, even though their current rental returns of about five per cent make such apartments popular with small-time investors. Although they are small in size, they are priced at about S$600,000. Analysts added that at this price, buyers are still able to afford them. In one of his recent blog posts, National...
National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan has urged potential homeowners to weigh the benefits and risks of buying so-called "shoe-box" apartments. These are housing units which measure 500 square feet or less. In his latest blog entry, Mr Khaw said the government is watching the development of these units. Last year, about 1,900 of such apartments were sold, compared to 300 units in 2008. In...
Small apartment or condominium units - including the smaller "shoeboxes" - have captured the attention of the residential property market here in recent years with their popularity among buyers and the high per-square-foot prices that they are able to command. This trend towards small units is also occurring in major cities such as London, Tokyo and Hong Kong. It is part of an evolutionary process where...
The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) is encouraging developers of shoebox units to increase the size of their units, up from 28 sq m to 35 sq m, according to a report in The Business Times. Many analysts said that promoting bigger shoebox units may likely help to cool the property market since the micro apartments have been blamed for fuelling increases in psf prices at property launches. A...
Buyers with Housing Development Board (HDB) addresses lodged 1,016 caveats for private apartments below 500 sq ft in 2010, approximately 17 times the 59 units acquired by HDB dwellers in 2006, according to an analysis of Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) Realis caveats data. These small units comprised 9.1 percent of the total number of non-landed private homes acquired by buyers with HDB addresses in...
The term "shoebox" apartment is generally defined as a studio or a one-bedroom apartment that has less than 500 sq ft of strata area. The area includes, say, about 15 per cent allocated to balconies, planters, bay windows, aircon ledges and, in some cases, even bomb shelters. Therefore a 380-sq-ft one-bedroom unit might have a real usable space of about 330 sq ft in the living/dining room, kitchen and...
Gone are the days where size matters for home seekers. Smaller apartments are making their presence. In the public housing sector, 3-room and studio flats have been re-introduced in new Build-to-Order HDB projects, while new private residential offerings seem to be increasingly smaller, yet popular. Colloquially referred to as "Mickey Mouse" or "shoebox" apartments, there has been an increased demand for...
In the early 1990s, I lived in a bedsit - a bedroom, sitting room and kitchen rolled into one. About 120 sq ft worth of space containing just seven items: A single bed, a two-door wardrobe, a table measuring 1m by 0.5m, a chair, an electric hob with two hotplates, a three-foot tall refrigerator and a sink with some counter-top space that supported the cooker hob. Bathrooms and toilets were in the common...
Sales of small apartments, also known as shoebox apartments or mickey mouse flats, skyrocketed last year. And demand continues to be robust this year. A total of 696 flats of 500 sq ft or smaller and another 1,285 of between 500 and 800 sq ft were sold last year. Buyer interest has remained strong this year with 533 units of 800 sq ft or less sold in the first four months. Such apartment sizes comprise...