Will $3 Million Be Enough For A 3-Bedder At Thomson Reserve?

Nobody knows the price yet. But you can work out what your unit type should cost, and what number means you're overpaying, before the showflat opens. We've put it all into one analysis, including a few things the marketing pages are getting wrong.

Artist's impression of the Thomson Reserve towers above the landscaped grounds
Thomson Reserve, artist's impression.

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The question everyone's sitting on

Thousands of buyers are waiting for this one launch. Other showflats are opening half empty while people hold their money for Thomson Reserve.

Everyone can see why. The MRT is right there, one of Singapore's most wanted primary schools is nearby, and MacRitchie is basically your neighbourhood park.

MacRitchie Reservoir on a bright afternoon, the park lawn and rain trees along the water's edge
MacRitchie Reservoir Park.

The developer can see all of this too, which is why the price won't be set with you in mind. It'll be set against the thousands of people queuing behind you.

So the question isn't really whether Thomson Reserve is a good project.

It's whether it's still a good buy at the price they announce, on whatever unit is actually left when your turn comes.

Most buyers only find that out inside the showflat, with a few minutes to decide. There's no reason you can't work it out now, while there's still time to think.

The four decisions that will decide your Thomson Reserve outcome

The Thomson Reserve price list only appears on launch morning.

When your queue number is called, some of your shortlist will already be taken, and you'll have minutes to commit to one unit at one price.

In those minutes, four decisions get made, whether you make them deliberately or not. The condos around Thomson Reserve show exactly what each one is worth.

1. Which unit you pick, out of the ones still left.

Inside the same launch, units of the same bedroom type can be priced far apart. At recent launches around Thomson, the gap between the cheapest and priciest unit of one bedroom type has run into six figures.

Some units deserve the higher price. Some are just higher.

Unless you can see the full spread for your unit type, sorted from high to low, you won't know which one is in front of you.

2. Whether you stretch one bedroom bigger, or stay where you are.

For some buyers this is the 2-bedder against the 3. For others it's the 3 against the 4.

Wherever your budget sits, the exact price gap between the two will be right there in the price list on launch morning, checkable in seconds.

What that gap has been worth at nearby condos by the time owners sold is in the analysis. It's a bigger number than the gap itself, and it changes the answer in both directions: some buyers should stretch, and some shouldn't.

3. How much you pay for the view.

Thomson Reserve's biggest selling point is the view over the landed estate next door. Green, low-rise, unblocked for years.

Artist's impression of the view from Thomson Reserve over the low-rise landed estate towards MacRitchie
The view over the landed estate next door, artist's impression.

The view stacks will carry a premium, and the showflat will make that premium feel obvious.

Before you pay it, here's one fact from the same neighbourhood. At JadeScape, a road-facing 2-bedder out-earned the landed-view 2-bedder by about $100,000, because the view lost to something buyers rarely rank above it.

What that something is, and which Thomson Reserve stacks have it, is in the analysis.

There's a second catch on the view stacks here, and it shows up every afternoon. That's in the analysis too.

4. How high you go.

Higher floors cost more at every launch. At a recent launch by these same developers, the identical 2-bedder cost about $200,000 more on the 11th floor than on the 2nd, which works out to roughly $8,000 for every floor you climb.

Sometimes that premium comes back with profit on top when you sell. Past a certain size, history says it stops coming back, and the extra floors become the seller's profit, not yours.

The rule for where that line sits is in the analysis.

At Thomson Reserve, this decision has a local twist: the land itself sits elevated, so some floors marketed as "low" aren't low at all.

Buyers who don't know this will pay high-floor money for height the land was giving away for free. The elevation detail is in the analysis too.

What the marketing pages won't tell you

Thomson Reserve marketing is everywhere right now, and some of it is measurably wrong. Before you shortlist anything, know about these.

The school claim.

Two famous schools appear on almost every marketing page, and for many families they're half the reason to buy.

Catholic High School campus in Bishan, one of the two schools named on Thomson Reserve marketing pages
Catholic High School, Bishan.

We measured the distances ourselves.

Only one of the two actually qualifies for 1km priority, and the other misses by a distance that surprised even us. The full measurement is in the analysis.

And the school that qualifies has a catch.

Within 1km gets you a ballot ticket, not a place, and there have been years where nearly half the priority families went home with nothing.

We'll show you how to check your exact block before you buy.

The MRT walk.

One page says 2 minutes. Another says 5. Another says doorstep.

They disagree because this site is nearly 600 metres end to end.

From one corner the walk really is short, and from the other end a reviewer clocked around 7 minutes. Which walk you get depends on your stack, and the analysis breaks it down.

The "sold out fast, so it's safe" assumption.

A short drive away, another condo launched to a packed showflat.

Years later, dozens of buyers sold at a loss, some over $500,000.

The project itself wasn't the problem. The mistake was something else, it was avoidable, and it's the most important lesson for anyone queuing at a hyped launch.

We break it down inside.

What will Thomson Reserve actually cost?

Right now, everyone around this launch is guessing.

The forums are guessing, the property channels are guessing, and the estimates floating around put Thomson Reserve at roughly $2,700 to $2,800 per square foot. Nobody can tell you if that's right.

At that level, a 3-bedder could land anywhere from $2.4 million to over $3 million depending on size, floor and facing.

So a $3 million budget might fit comfortably, might just squeeze in, or might quietly push you down to a 2-bedder.

The same squeeze happens at every budget. Whatever number you're bringing, it decides which unit types are really open to you, and most buyers only find out which one they're in when the price list is already in their hands.

Here's the part almost nobody has clocked: the price isn't actually a mystery.

The two developers behind Thomson Reserve launched two other condos recently, and both times, the gap between what they paid for the land and what they charged buyers followed the same pattern.

We applied that pattern to the Thomson Reserve land price. What it says about where your unit type should start, and the number above which you're overpaying, is in the analysis.

One more thing from their last launch, and it's the trap most buyers will walk into first.

A small handful of units were priced noticeably below everything else, to pull the crowd in. Buyers who budgeted on those prices were shopping for units that were gone within hours.

Will Thomson Reserve be handled the same way? Which prices will be real, and which will be bait? That's in the analysis too.

The last number worth settling before launch morning is your walk-away price.

Since May, twenty property channels have reviewed Thomson Reserve, and not one said don't buy. But fifteen of them, working separately, landed at roughly the same level where they felt the project stops making sense.

Do you know what that level is? More importantly, have you set your own?

Walk in without one and the queue will set it for you. We'll work yours out with you in the analysis, for your budget and your unit type.

Who we are

Hi, we're Adriel and Nicole. 603 families advised, 14-year track record.

We started in a four-room BTO in Punggol and built our own portfolio past $2.5 million, using the same method we now use with every client. The move most of the families we advise are in the middle of is one we have made ourselves.

Early on we decided instinct was not something to bet a family's money on, so we took it out of the work entirely. We pay about $5,000 a year out of our own pocket for transaction data, and every number we put in front of you comes out of it.

Across that work, no client of ours has sold at a loss, and the average capital gain on a two or three bedroom unit has been about $350,000. Roughly half the families we advise now were sent to us by a family we advised before.

Over 14 years, we've guided 603 families through decisions like this, tracking more than 13,700 transactions along the way.

Sometimes the right call at a launch is no unit at all. If the units left at your queue number don't make sense against your budget, we'll tell you so, and we'll walk you through the backup plan if the price runs past what's sensible.

On launch morning we'll be at Thomson Reserve with live pricing on our screens. Plenty of agents will have the same price list open, so what we bring is having already worked out, a week earlier, exactly what to check in the two minutes before your number is called.

The Thomson Reserve Buyer's Analysis

Request the analysis and we'll work all of this out for your budget and your unit type, not for a generic buyer. Here's what we'll cover with you:

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Which unit type are you looking at?

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Where should we send your analysis?

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