Five bids for Orchard Boulevard.

James Lim · CEA Reg. R063631F · PropNex Realty Pte Ltd

The tender for the Orchard Boulevard Government Land Sales site closed at noon on 29 October with five envelopes inside. A joint venture between Hong Leong Holdings and TID offered $181,861,924 for the 99-year plot at the corner of Orchard Road and Tomlinson Road, which works out to $1,755 psf per plot ratio for a site that can hold about 110 homes. The field was exactly what the market expected: analysts polled by EdgeProp had pencilled in four to five bids and a top offer between $1,650 and $2,050 psf ppr. The winning number sits 8.5% above the $1,617 psf ppr that UOL Group and Singapore Land paid in February 2024 for the plot next door, now the 301-unit UpperHouse at Orchard Boulevard, which launched in July 2025 at an average of $3,350 psf and is 82.7% sold. URA has not awarded the site; it says a decision will follow once the bids have been evaluated. Until then, the second piece of Orchard land sold by the state since 2018 has a price, and that price says a good deal about where prime launches go next.

What happened at the Orchard Boulevard tender?

URA launched the site on 13 August 2026 alongside Marina Gardens Lane, the two of them the first private residential plots on the 2H 2026 Confirmed List, a list that carries 4,745 homes and sits more than 50% above the ten-year average. Where Marina Gardens Lane drew a single bid two weeks earlier, Orchard Boulevard drew five. Hong Leong Holdings and TID, bidding through Intrepid Investments and TID Residential, topped the field at $181.86 million, 8.3% clear of Global Resource Construction, the construction arm of SingHaiyi, at $167.85 million or $1,620 psf ppr. A BBR Holdings consortium came third at $1,551, Wing Tai fourth at $1,471, and a Macly and Roxy-Pacific grouping fifth at $1,350, a bid the winner topped by 30%. The spread between first and last is wide for a plot this small, and it tells you the bidders did not agree on what a 110-unit tower on the boulevard can sell for.

The winners are not strangers to this corridor or to each other. TID is the joint venture Hong Leong Group has run with Mitsui Fudosan, one of Japan’s largest developers, since 1972, and the same two vehicles, Intrepid Investments and TID Residential, bid for the Dunearn Road site at Turf City in June 2025, finishing fifth of nine at $1,280 psf ppr. A Hong Leong grouping was also the runner-up at Marina Gardens Lane in 2023 and the rejected sole bidder at Marina Gardens Crescent in 2024, and Hong Leong and GuocoLand took Berlayar Drive with a sole bid in August. This is a group that has been shopping for prime land for three years and paying only where it sees a clear exit. On Orchard Boulevard it paid 8.3% more than anyone else to get one.

How does $1,755 psf ppr compare with Orchard’s land history?

It is the fourth-highest price on record for a purely residential state site, behind only Cuscaden Road, Peck Hay Road and Bukit Timah Road (the 2018 Holland Road plot that became One Holland Village fetched $1,888 psf ppr, but that was a mixed-use site with a large commercial component), and it lands in the middle of a Core Central Region ladder that has been climbing since the 2024 trough. The record is still Cuscaden Road, a few hundred metres west, where an SC Global, Far East Consortium and New World Development tie-up paid $2,377 psf ppr against nine bids in April 2018, before the 2018 cooling measures and long before foreigners were charged 60% ABSD. The Orchard Boulevard plot in February 2024 showed what those measures did: four bids, a top of $1,617, and The Business Times calling it lower than expected. Since then the prime market has found its feet. Bukit Timah Road beside Newton drew eight bids and $1,820 psf ppr in November 2025, Peck Hay Road drew $1,865 from CDL and Hong Realty in June 2026, and now Orchard Boulevard has gone for $1,755, 8.5% above its 2024 neighbour. Developers are paying more for prime land than they did two years ago, with foreigners still largely out of the market, because UpperHouse proved Singaporeans and permanent residents will pay $3,350 psf for a new 99-year home on this boulevard.

What will the new Orchard Boulevard project launch at?

Nothing is announced, and a showflat is unlikely before 2028, so this is arithmetic rather than a price list. The two prime launches on recent state land sold at 2.1 and 2.2 times their land rate: UpperHouse at $3,350 psf on $1,617 land, Dunearn House at about $3,140 psf on $1,410 land. Apply that band to $1,755 and you get roughly $3,600 to $3,900 psf. That is our approximation, not the developers’ pricing, and three things could move it. A 110-unit tower on a plot this size will lean towards larger apartments, which usually carry a lower psf than a mix heavy with two-bedders. The site is zoned residential only, so there is no retail strip to subsidise the land. And UpperHouse itself is still selling: its caveats have averaged $3,405 psf to 28 October and $3,525 psf over the past 12 months, with four-bedders changing hands at $3,557 to $3,877 psf since July, so the market has already shown it will pay close to the bottom of that range for a 99-year home on the boulevard with keys in 2029.

What does the tender mean for UpperHouse?

UpperHouse is the project with the most at stake, and the news is mostly good for it. UOL and Singapore Land bought their land at $1,617 psf ppr and launched at $3,350; their only state-land neighbour has now been priced 8.5% higher, which puts a floor under the 52 or so units they still hold at an average of $3,405 psf and gives their early buyers a comparable that cannot easily undercut them. The next launch on the boulevard will also arrive late. If the 2024 plot took 17 months from award to showflat, the 2026 plot is a 2028 story at the earliest, with completion in the early 2030s, so UpperHouse will be the only new 99-year stock on Orchard Boulevard with keys in hand for several years. The one caution is timing. Most UpperHouse buyers bought after the Seller’s Stamp Duty holding period went to four years on 4 July 2025, so the earliest SSD-free exit for a launch-weekend buyer is mid-2029, close to TOP and possibly just as the new project’s showflat opens. A sub-sale into that window will be priced against a brand-new neighbour, which is the moment the 8.5% land premium next door starts to matter.

What does it mean for Orchard Boulevard and the Tanglin pocket?

Two things. The first is supply, and there is not much of it. Add the roughly 110 homes on this site to UpperHouse’s 301 and the boulevard gets about 410 new 99-year homes this cycle, against a freehold stock next door that is already built and sold: Boulevard 88 completed in 2023, Park Nova in 2024, Cuscaden Reserve in 2023. URA’s own positioning for Orchard is a “must-visit lifestyle destination” with four sub-precincts, and the Tanglin end, where this site sits, is the one planned as a mixed-use neighbourhood with arts and artisanal uses rather than more malls. A boutique tower at the corner of Orchard Road and Tomlinson Road, a short walk from Orchard Boulevard station on the Thomson-East Coast Line and one stop from the Orchard interchange, is the kind of product that pocket has been short of.

The second is the market the project will launch into. URA’s third-quarter data put Core Central Region prices up 0.3% in the quarter against 2.3% in the Outside Central Region, CCR vacancy at 8.4%, the highest of the three regions, and CCR non-landed rents down 0.3%. Foreign buyers have paid 60% ABSD since April 2023, and the 2024 tender showed what that did to developer appetite. What the 2026 tender shows is that appetite has returned without them: five bidders priced a project for Singaporean and permanent-resident buyers at $3,600 psf and up, because UpperHouse sold 162 units on its first day to exactly that crowd. For owners on the boulevard that is the useful signal. Prime land is being bought again on local demand, which is a steadier base than the one that set the 2018 record.

Who should care, and what to do

Related: the other 2H 2026 site, Marina Gardens Lane, drew one bid at $1,243 →

Related: the land-cost floor under every new launch price →

Related: CCR versus OCR in 2026, where the money is going →

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