Insights Editor | Attribuild Insights

May 17, 2021May 24, 2021

WFH in the Prime Districts

Which condominiums in the city centre Districts 9,10,11 have good provisions of study rooms to create that productive home office or classroom?

It’s May 2021 and Singapore is back to WFH as default mode of work due to a resurgence of community cases from a variant Covid strain. Singapore banks has also announced late in 2020 that flexi-work will become a permanent feature . DBS, has given its 29,000 strong workforce the option to work remotely up to 40 percent of the time, while UOB has given its 26,000 staff the option to work remotely 2 days a week. Looks like banks are now joining tech firms who have previously announced flexible work arrangements.

The straightforward impact of these announcement by the corporates would simply be that the home office could become a permanent feature is homes of white collar workers.

Part V of this series will have us uncover condos in the prime district 9,10,11 (possibly areas where many bankers want to find a home) with good scoring Study Rooms across 1,2,3 bedroom types from completed projects across Singapore. We omitted the 4 bedders as they would probably have enough rooms and floor area for a more versatile WFH setup.

January 19, 2021January 19, 2021

To bay or not to bay

Are bay windows a useful feature? Why do some condominiums have these and some don’t? How to analyse units for bay window provisions?

Corner bay window at The Interlace: Photo from Qanvast:Authors Interior& Styling

A bay window is a form on cantilevered window that are raised from the floor and projects out to the facade. This projection often becomes a seating alcove or a display or storage ledge.

There is a certain vintage of condominiums in Singapore that feature a lot of bay windows in the unit design. Why is that so and are they a good feature in a unit or not? We dug into some data to find out.

December 29, 2020January 4, 2021

All You Need to Know About the Unit Designs at Parc Central Residences – the First New EC in the East since 2012.

This is a PAID PARTNERSHIP WITH Hoi Hup Sunway JV PTE LTD, the developers of Parc Central RESIDENCES

Parc Central’s Arrival Hall. Artist Impession from HoiHup Sunway JV.

Parc Central Residences is the first Executive Condominium to come to the eastern parts of our shores in more than 8 years. So how does the latest EC in the East fare in their unit design? We put the developer’s plans into our system and generated some insights.

Parc Central Residences

Parc Central Residences is an EC development jointly developed by Hoi Hup Realty and Sunway located in Tampines. For the un-initiated, EC, or Executive Condominium, is a hybrid private – public form of condominium developed by private developers but comes with certain restrictions set by HDB. To be eligible to buy an EC, you must satisfy certain conditions. See here for details of these conditions.

In addition, you can apply for CPF housing grants when purchasing ECs and there is no ABSD upfront unlike buying private condominium units if you already own a HDB flat. However, there is a MOP (Minimum Occupation Period) before you can sell your EC units.

Aside from that, most ECs nowadays looks exactly like a private condominium complete with facilities and amenities.

The Lake inside Parc Central. Artist Impression by Hoi Hup Sunway JV.

In this Insights article, we will look at how Parc Central Residences units fare. But before we dive into details of the unit plans of Parc Central Residences, let’s look at the larger context of the development.

November 4, 2020November 3, 2020

The real East Coast WFH Plan

Which condominiums in Districts 14,15,16 have good provisions of study rooms to create that productive home office or classroom?

What is commonly referred to as the East Coast of Singapore would cover maybe District 14,15,16(Geylang, Eunos to Katong Joo Chiat to Bedok and Marine Parade ), quite different from the electoral GRC boundaries.

Part IV of this series will have us uncover condos in the “real” East Coast with good scoring Study Rooms across 1,2,3 bedroom types from completed projects across Singapore. We omitted the 4 bedders as they would probably have enough rooms and floor area for a more versatile WFH setup.

We have set certain criteria for the units to feature in these reports: Firstly, these study rooms must achieve the highest score and have more than 20 numbers of the same unit type. This will increase the chances for them to be available in the market should you be looking for one to cope with the “new WFH normal”.

October 28, 2020November 4, 2020

Are you paying too much to house your AC?

Typical AC ledge design in Singapore condominiums

Hot hot hot

With tropical Singapore’s temperature hovering between 25 to 35 degrees Celsius throughout the year, and relative humidity ranging 70-80% most of the time, air conditioners have become ubiquitous is Singapore homes to provide the level of comfort that we have grown accustomed to. And when more of us start to work from home, we realise that air conditioning has almost become a necessity rather than a luxury.

Air conditioning was a most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics.
Lee Kuan Yew

Residential Air Conditioning

The common AC system used in Singapore residential apartments is the Split-Unit systems, which comprises of two key components: Fan Coil Units (FCU) in the interiors and an Outdoor unit consisting of the compressors and condensers, connected by refrigerant flowing in cooling tubes and copper coils.

October 19, 2020October 19, 2020

The East Coast WFH Plan

Which condominiums in Districts 17,18,19 (Changi, Loyang, Pasir Ris Simei, Tampines, Hougang, Punggol, Sengkang ) have good provisions of study rooms to create that productive home office or classroom?

The Work From Home phenomenon may be here to stay. At the time of writing this article, Covid cases has come down in Singapore but our neighbour Malaysia imposed a CMCO (conditional movement controlled order) in KL and Selangor and Europe has reported a resurgence of cases.

Here in Singapore, the government is still encouraging WFH as a preferred work arrangement where possible and requiring employers to limit the number of employees at the workplace at any point in time.

In the first part of this series, we filtered out 1, 2 and 3 bedder units in new condos (T.O.P. 2020 and beyond) that has a good size study room provision.

Part II of this series continues our search for units with good scoring Study Rooms in completed projects across Singapore.

October 11, 2020October 29, 2020

Tips on Reading Floor Plans Part 1 – Walls

Need some help to interpret floor plans as you go about your showflat or unit viewing? Let us give you some tips on how to read a floor plan like a pro.

All About Floor Plans

As the premier real estate data platform that provides analysis on unit design, it’s only natural that Attribuild has accumulated some insights into them. In this following article we will reveal 3 of these learnings to our users.

October 1, 2020October 11, 2020

What is Attribuild?

Using algorithms and a patented system, Attribuild has applied design analysis on floor plans and created a score for each residential unit in Singapore. Now consumers can have a sense of a unit’s liveability and spatial efficiency and with that be able to make better real estate decisions.

resi skyline — Singapore City skyline. Photo by Mike Enerio on Unsplash

What is missing in Property search and Property marketing till now?

Think about it, how have you been searching for your home? Chances are, you lock in on a location that you like, use your budget to filter down to units in multiple developments that are available, and trawl through listings (sometimes repeated) or head to multiple show flats (pre-Covid) or view multiple online tours. After some fatigue, you finally settle not the unit and hope you had made the best decision on one of the most expensive purchase.

September 18, 2020October 19, 2020

Tropical Sun and Fresh Air at your Doorstep

Where to find units with a sizeable balcony for that outdoor yoga session or to satisfy your green fingers?

Policy guides design

Singapore’s private housing design is very much influenced by planning guidelines of the Urban & Redevelopment Authority (URA).

URA launched a “Balcony Incentive Scheme” in 2001 to encourage the developers to design more balconies, private enclosed spaces (PES) and private roof terraces (PRT) to provide residents access to outdoor spaces from their homes. It also sought to facilitate high-rise greenery to improve the quality of the living environment.

September 4, 2020October 11, 2020

Do you have a proper space to WFH and for HBL? (Part I)

Which new launch condominiums have units with a good study room provision to create that productive home office or classroom?

The Circuit Breaker period in April and May of 2020, during Singapore’s fight against Covid19, forced many knowledge workers to work from home (WFH). Many households were caught unprepared; setting up workstations on dining tables, or scrambling to buy new desks to be placed in living rooms or bedrooms. This could be tolerable in the short term but it is definitely a compromise on lifestyles.

With the WFH movement gaining traction (including corporates considering office real estate needs and employees preferring a more flexible workspace arrangement), a space at home for a proper home-office setup or study rooms for home based learning is becoming more important; so that one can concentrate on the video calls or not become distracted by other members of the household.

Study rooms used be feature in condo developments in the past; with the trend towards smaller apartment sizes, dedicated study rooms are not as common nowadays.