The Vanda Green: Who It's Actually For (And Who Should Look Elsewhere)
Disclosure: I market this development. Every figure below is sourced from the Government Land Sales award record or the developer's own statement, and I've flagged the points that need independent verification rather than glossing them.
Most write-ups of a new launch answer the question "what is it?" That's the easy part, and it takes about two paragraphs. The harder and more useful question is "who is this actually for?" — because a development that's excellent for one household is a poor fit for the one next door, and the marketing rarely says so.
So this is a fit assessment of The Vanda Green, the new 99-year leasehold condominium on the Dunearn Road parcel in Bukit Timah. It covers who should be paying attention, who should look elsewhere, and the three variables that decide which group you're in.
The Vanda Green at a glance
| Location | Dunearn Road, Bukit Timah planning area, Swiss Club subzone |
|---|---|
| District | District 11, Central Core Region |
| Tenure | 99 years from the date of the State lease |
| Developer | Wing Tai Holdings and Metro Holdings joint venture |
| Site area | 204,962 sq ft |
| Gross floor area | 327,944 sq ft |
| Plot ratio | 1.6 |
| Total units | 335 (indicative; developer has described approximately 330 homes) |
| Commercial | Up to 1,400 sq m at first storey, including a minimum 600 sq m childcare centre |
| Land awarded | 4 May 2026, at S$533 million (S$1,625 psf ppr) |
| Nearest MRT | Sixth Avenue (Downtown Line), approximately 630 m |
| Price and TOP | Not yet released by the developer |
Full parameters are on the project details page, with the planning constraints broken down on the site plan page.
Who The Vanda Green genuinely suits
1. Bukit Timah families who want a new build
This is the most obvious fit. There is a sizeable group of households already oriented to this part of Bukit Timah — the schools, the Sixth Avenue shops, the drive to town — who have been choosing between ageing freehold apartments because nothing new comes up.
New supply in District 11 arrives almost exclusively through Government Land Sales, and those parcels appear rarely. If you want a new-build condominium with current layouts and current facilities in this specific pocket, the choice set is very small, and this parcel is in it.
2. Upgraders entering District 11 for the first time
For a household moving up from HDB or from a suburban condominium, the leasehold tenure isn't a compromise to tolerate — it is the entire reason the address is reachable at all. Bukit Timah is dominated by freehold landed housing and older freehold apartments, and freehold in this district prices accordingly.
A 99-year lease buys you a lower entry point for the same postcode. Whether that's a good trade depends on your holding period, which I'll come back to.
3. Right-sizers who want to stay in the neighbourhood
Households already living in the surrounding landed estates, whose children have left, who want less to maintain but don't want to leave the area. A low-density new development in the same pocket, with a lift and a management corporation instead of a garden and a roof to worry about, is a specific and underserved want.
4. Households with young children
Worth separating out because of one detail: the tender reserves a minimum of 600 square metres of the ground-floor commercial provision for an Early Childhood Development Centre. A childcare centre on site, secured as a planning condition rather than offered as a developer's intention. There's a preschool roughly 180 metres away as well, so there are alternatives rather than a single point of failure.
Who should probably look elsewhere
This is the section most launch coverage skips, and it's the one that saves people time.
- Freehold purists. If tenure sits above everything else in your priorities, no amount of location argument will fix a 99-year lease. Bukit Timah has freehold stock. Buy that instead.
- Anyone needing to move within 12 months. The land was awarded in May 2026 and the project hasn't launched. A new launch is a multi-year timeline. If you need occupation soon, look at completed resale.
- Two-car households. Developments in the Bukit Timah Turf City precinct are to provide reduced car park provision, on the planning expectation of lower private-vehicle reliance. Confirm the lot count against the site plan when it's issued before assuming two lots are available.
- Buyers whose decision rests entirely on one school. More on this below — the distances need checking, not trusting.
- Anyone who needs a price today. There isn't one. No price list, no factsheet, no showflat. Any figure you see quoted elsewhere is somebody's estimate.
The three variables that decide it
Tenure, against your holding period
A 99-year lease is a trade, not a defect. Lower entry price for comparable positioning, in exchange for lease decay over decades and financing rules that tighten as a lease ages.
The way to resolve it is to be honest about your horizon. A family settling into a school catchment for fifteen years is buying daily logistics, and lease decay over that window is a secondary concern. An investor planning a shorter cycle is buying exit liquidity, and weighs it differently. Neither is wrong. But you can't answer the tenure question without first answering the horizon question, and most people try to do it the other way round.
Density, which you'll feel every day
A plot ratio of 1.6 is low by current new-launch standards. It caps buildable floor area relative to site area, which caps height and density — and it's fixed by the Master Plan rather than by a developer's generosity.
Roughly 335 homes across a site of just over 200,000 square feet produces a development with space around it. That shows up in lift waits, in whether the pool is usable on a weekend, in car park pressure, in the general feel of the common areas. It's never a brochure headline and it governs a large share of daily life.
The precinct, which is about to change
Bukit Timah Turf City is planned as a new housing estate of an eventual 15,000 to 20,000 homes, with a Turf City station on the Cross Island Line. An established address gaining a second rail line is a genuinely unusual combination.
The honest counterweight: 15,000 to 20,000 homes take years to build, and the planning material notes that road widening along Eng Neo Avenue, Dunearn Road and Bukit Timah Road is under study. Early entry captures the upside and absorbs the disruption. Both. Background is on the location page, with the road and rail picture on the Dunearn Road access guide.
The schools question, handled properly
Bukit Timah is the schools district and for many buyers that's the whole point, so it deserves precision.
Straight-line distances from the land sales record: Methodist Girls' School (Secondary) about 980 m, Methodist Girls' School (Primary) about 1.02 km, National Junior College roughly 1.42 km, La Petite Ecole about 580 m. The wider catchment picks up Nanyang Primary, Raffles Girls' Primary, Hwa Chong Institution, Nanyang Girls' High and Ngee Ann Polytechnic.
The point that needs stating plainly: 1.02 km for MGS Primary is outside the one-kilometre band that carries priority in Primary One registration. The one-to-two kilometre band still confers an advantage over the beyond-two group, but it is not equivalent, and any site that implies otherwise isn't being straight with you.
These are also straight-line measures from the parcel, not from a specific block — and the blocks aren't sited yet. Verify with the Ministry of Education's OneMap school query tool, from the actual address, at the time you register. The Bukit Timah schools guide sets out how the bands and balloting work.
What's known and what isn't
Known: the site, the tenure, the developer, the land price, the planning parameters and the approximate unit count. All of it from the public award record.
Not known: the final unit mix, the layouts, the facilities plan, the TOP date, and every figure to do with price. Anyone presenting the second list as settled is filling gaps with guesswork.
One more thing worth knowing if you're comparing listings: the postal sector places this in District 11, but some published references describe the Bukit Timah stretch of Dunearn Road as District 10. You'll see both labels applied to the same land. Neither is a mistake exactly — it's a genuine inconsistency in how the boundary gets described.
What to do now
Nothing is for sale, so the useful work is preparation rather than decision.
Establish your ceiling before pricing exists — borrowing capacity under the loan-to-value limits and the TDSR framework, plus Buyer's Stamp Duty and any ABSD on top of the purchase price. Check what comparable Bukit Timah stock has actually been transacting at on the recent transactions page, so you have a reference point when the developer's numbers land. Read the developer's track record and go look at their completed projects if you can.
Then get in the queue. Indicative pricing and the floor plan set go to registrants before general release, which is the difference between choosing from the full stack list and choosing from what's left. Registration is free, commits you to nothing, and there's no buyer commission on a developer sale.
You can request an appointment slot here, or request the official e-brochure to be sent the day it's released. If it turns out this isn't a fit for your household, that's a useful outcome too — and I'd rather tell you that early than sell you something that doesn't work.
The Vanda Green is a 99-year leasehold condominium of approximately 335 homes on Dunearn Road, Bukit Timah, District 11, developed by a Wing Tai Holdings and Metro Holdings joint venture. The project is in pre-launch and no price list has been issued. Figures cited are from the Government Land Sales award record of 4 May 2026 and the developer's award statement, are indicative, and are subject to change on release of the official factsheet. Distances are straight-line measures. Full project information at thevandagreen.com.sg. Nothing here constitutes financial advice.
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