Master Plan 2025: Singapore’s Next 80,000 Homes - and Why Heritage Developers Should Pay Attention

A few minutes after nine on Wednesday, 25 June, the automatic doors at URA Centre slid open and two very different lines converged. On one side: project managers in steel-capped boots, carrying rolled-up drawings and a tape-measure that swung like a pendulum. On the other: grandparents with canvas totes, children in tow, curious about the neighbourhoods their families might one day call home. Everyone was here for the same reveal: Draft Master Plan 2025 (DMP 2025), a twelve-year roadmap that promises about 80 000 new public- and private-sector homes sprinkled across the island – nearly double the 42 000 units the 2019 plan talked about. But the URA wasn’t done. Barely twelve hours earlier it had quietly placed three residential sites – Dorset Road, Upper Thomson (Parcel A) and Telok Blangah Road – on the Government Land Sales (GLS) tender list. The room, now full of hand-held calculators and whispered cost estimates – hummed with possibility.

What DMP 2025 really says

Two numbers that matter to every Singapore household

• 80 000 homes. That’s roughly one year’s worth of national housing demand already mapped out on paper.

• 4 new estates. Dover, Defu, Newton and Paterson aren’t far-flung suburbs; they sit inside established districts with MRT tracks already humming beneath them.

  
  

Why the shift inward? According to URA’s own poll of about 220 000 residents during two years of pop-up exhibitions and online forums, people value “shorter commutes, stronger neighbourhood identity and easy green access” over sheer novelty. The planners listened.

A greener skeleton for a denser city

Vertical zoning – a stack that puts shops on the ground, light-industrial labs in the middle and homes plus sky gardens above – steals the limelight in many of the exhibition panels. Every household, URA promises, should be able to walk to a park in ten minutes or less.

Heritage as hardware, not nostalgia

Alongside expansion, the plan circles 20 “candidate conservation sites” – everything from 1950s school blocks in Pasir Panjang to pre-war villas tucked behind bamboo hedges on Monk’s Hill (Newton estate). URA’s wording is revealing: the buildings are “seed assets” that give new districts an immediate sense of place. Adaptive reuse isn’t a fringe hobby; it’s written into the growth code.

The three GLS plots everyone is pricing

URA’s 24 June media release set tender clocks ticking; Straits Times confirmed closing dates of 9 October (Dorset Road) and 23 October (Upper Thomson & Telok Blangah). Each site runs on a 99-year lease and lands in markets where private-home price growth slowed to 0.8 % in Q1 2025, the gentlest clip since 2020. In other words: the bidding climate may stay rational.

Site	Plot size	Allowable GFA	Indicative units	Tender close
Dorset Road	1.03 ha	36 397 m²	~425	9 Oct 2025
Upper Thomson (A)	2.44 ha	53 729 m²	~595	23 Oct 2025
Telok Blangah Road	3.60 ha	59 556 m²	~745	23 Oct 2025

Two quick market facts frame those numbers:

• Price momentum has calmed. The URA private-home price index rose just 0.8 % in Q1 2025, down from 2.3 % in the previous quarter.

• Supply is already thickening. The confirmed GLS list for 1H 2025 carries 5 030 units; the coming batches will push annual supply past 10 000, the highest since 2013.

  
  

Put simply, land-bid fever may cool; design quality and ESG scores could become the tiebreakers.

Dorset Road speaks to city-fringe upgraders – the last comparable project, Piccadilly Grand, sold at a breakeven of S$1 129 psf ppr in 2021 and is fully spoken for. Brokers now peg Dorset’s land-cost ceiling at S$1,050–1,300 psf ppr, depending on how many bidders chase the heritage angle.

Upper Thomson (A), by contrast, is framed by green lungs: it borders the Central Catchment and sits right on top of an MRT station. Yet Parcel B next door went un-bid in 2024, a reminder that the market still penalises over-optimism.

Telok Blangah Road is the “first private-housing debut” for the upcoming Greater Southern Waterfront in 25 years. Analysts think eager first-movers could push land bids beyond S$1 200 psf ppr – but the appetite remains guesswork.

New goal-posts developers can’t ignore

Carbon credits move from “nice” to “need”: On 20 June, Singapore’s National Climate Change Secretariat released draft guidelines for voluntary carbon credits and asked the public to respond by 20 July. Credits must now comply with IC-VCM “Core Carbon Principles”; companies will have to disclose volumes, project origins and independent ratings. The sub-text is clear: future GLS bids that fail to show a real path to net-zero risks losing points.

Investors still pay for future-proof buildings: CapitaLand Ascendas REIT’s S$700 million deal for a data-centre and life-science hub in late May cleared at a sub-4 % exit yield. Money is hunting assets that can weather tech change and carbon rules. If a GLS project maps those same themes, exit pricing looks healthy.

The Malaysian echo: Across the Causeway, Sime Darby Property’s SJCC East One sold 80 % of its RM 613 million first phase within hours on 25 June. Market confidence in well-connected, mixed-use districts is regional, not just domestic, good news for investors who straddle both markets.

What this means for Mymland

For a developer that specialises in heritage-led, low-carbon projects, the new landscape in Singapore reads almost like a made-to-measure brief. Newton’s conservation villas invite an Emerald 99–style retrofit that keeps historic façades while adding much-needed mid-rise housing behind them. Dorset Road offers a compact, city-fringe plot where a culture-rich scheme could appeal to HDB upgraders without outrunning price ceilings—land costs around S$1 150 psf ppr should leave room for quality finishes. Over at Telok Blangah, pairing waterfront homes with digital-infrastructure partners could replicate the company’s Japanese coastal successes. Crucially, Singapore’s draft carbon-credit rules reward developers who publish transparent offset plans early; embedding an IC-VCM-aligned ledger in any GLS submission would let Mymland compete on more than price when bids open this October.

Next 100 days tactical checklist

• By 20 July: File a joint letter supporting the draft-credit framework; propose public disclosure of offset ledgers by GLS winners.

• By 22 September: Feed heritage-first design suggestions for Newton and Dorset into URA’s consultation portal.

• Early September: Finalise consortium splits, debt sizing and carbon-pricing assumptions.

• 9 Oct / 23 Oct: Hand in sealed bids; brief equity partners on timeline to provisional award (~8 weeks post-tender).

  
  

One-minute takeaway

Singapore’s Draft Master Plan 2025 (DMP 2025) and last-week’s launch of three Government Land-Sales (GLS) tenders reset the city-state’s real-estate chessboard. Together they unlock ≈80 000 new homes, four fresh mixed-use estates, and three city-fringe plots that close for bids in October. For a heritage-focused developer like Mymland, the Newton and Dorset Road precincts stand out: they mix conserved architecture with walk-to-MRT access, exactly the sweet spot of the Emerald 99 playbook. Add Singapore’s new draft rules on voluntary carbon credits and you have a perfect moment to weave sustainability into every tender. The long read below walks through the numbers, the neighbourhoods and, most importantly, “what this means for us.”