Happened to hear the news that the Toa Payoh DBSS is open for balloting. What is so special about this DBSS by HoiHup? You can find absolutely no floor plans or brochures on their website regarding this DBSS, and there is no price range indicated at all. Only the starting price is indicated. I find that this is quite annoying, and not very customer friendly. The moment I've realised this, I suspect something is amiss. Luckily, some kind-hearted person posted some of the floor plans at myhometown.sg here, so I could at least confirmed my suspicions.
I will not repeat what I have written in my other posts on DBSS. You can refer to my Natura Loft post here, my Park Central post here, and my CityView post here. The CityView post includes some of the calculations I did to see if it fits into my affordability matrix.
DBSS @ Toa Payoh has been named The Peak, and is located at Toa Payoh Lor 1A. The balloting is already opened at their website here since 15 April 2009, and the pricing of the flats starts from $470psf onwards. The pricing and configuration are as follows:
| 3 room | 70 sqm | from $355,000 to $398,000 | Living Room w/ Planter |
| 4 room | 91 sqm | from $468,000 to $582,000 | Living Room w/ Balcony and Planter |
| 5 room | 110 sqm to 117 sqm | from $539,000 to $722,000 | Living Room w/ Balcony and Planter, and Master Bedroom w/ Planter (or w/ Study) Living Room w/ Balcony, and Master Bedroom w/ Planter (or w/ Study) Living Room w/ Balcony, and Master Bedroom w/ Balcony (or w/ Study) |
You can refer to the floor plans at the above myhometown.sg link.
All units are fitted with inverter air-conditioners in the living/dining area and all bedrooms, built-in wardrobes, built-in kitchen cabinets with soft-closing features and a quality hood and hob. Even fine details such bathrooms with hot water provision and yard/kitchen equipped with swing-out clothes rack are well taken care of. Residents can enjoy peace of mind with the proximity card access security system fitted at all ground floor lift lobbies. According to the map by hdb here, it's about a 5 mins walk to Toa Payoh Central, if you take the distance from the end of the development, to the start of Toa Payoh Central. I would put 8 to 10mins as a better estimate.
Even though it's situated at Toa Payoh, one of my favorite places, I do not like this DBSS offering because:
- The developer seems to only disclose the bare minimum information about the flats online. If you visit their website, they actually take the trouble to scan into PDF all the information relating to the purchase of the flat. But they choose to neglect to post the brochure containing the information and design of the flat in their website!
To me at least, that means you do not treat the customers as a number 1 priority. - A lot of space is wasted by the balcony and planter. Using the example of the 4 room flat which is 91sqm. You have a balcony and planter that takes up most of your living room space, and don't forget the air-con ledge for your inverter air-con.
In the end, you will end up with a house that is much smaller than 91sqm. A 90sqm 4 room HDB (excluding air-con ledge) is already quite small. Just imagine the size of this DBSS 4 room flat. That actually also means that the psf cost is much "higher", because there is so much space that cannot be utilised.
I thought Natura Loft wasted quite a bit of space, but The Peak beats Natura Loft, at least from the floor plan perspective.
I'm quite disappointed that the developer choose to waste all the space by putting planters and balconies. You can opt to add in these extras, but you should make the flat bigger. The funny part is that even for a 70sqm 3 room flat, they've added in a planter. I can't imagine how small the 3 room flat will be. Some people may like the proximity card access security system, but I find it more of a nuisance though.
There are of course other plus points. This DBSS is after all very near Toa Payoh Central, the bus interchange and the mrt station. It's also quite near a number of schools like CHIJ. Location wise is perfect, but ... ...
Do you want location? Or do you want to suffer from claustrophobia? I find this development a disappointment. I've also just recently realised that Park Central also has balconies and planters. I guess that's the in thing for DBSS. What's this craze about balconies and planters?
8 comments:
The smallest units - 95 of them - are the 753 sq ft three-room flats. They are priced from $355,000 to $398,000.
The 306 four-room flats of 980 sq ft will go for $468,000 to $582,000.
The next rung up the price ladder are the five-room flats, which mostly go for $539,000 to $698,000, and range from 1,184 sq ft to 1,259 sq ft.
The priciest of the lot are the 24 five-room high-ceiling flats costing between $700,000 and $722,000.
http://business.asiaone.com/print/Business/My%2BMoney/Property/Story/A1Story20090410-134563.html
MUAHAHAS! Edwin, I was googling for 'the peak toa payoh floor plan' and ur link is the first result returned to me!
HAHAHS! I like tpy. $300k for a 91m four room, abit.. HMMMM!
I would say the price is high for such small space.. Then again it's at TPY.. And they already have in-built stuffs...
As for balconies and planters..
I know there are pple who like balconies.. My aunt has lots of clothes, and she makes use of the balcony area to hang some of the bamboo poles of clothes.. If u stay at the top few floors, you could put telescope at the balcony to view the night sky.. (depends on direction)
Planter is good.. so the police won't complain abt the chilli plant that was placed at the aircon ledge coz there was no other place to put...
I have nothing against balconies and planters. But I find that it's weird that if the space is so small, the developer chose to make it smaller by adding balconies and planters.
And it's not only the living room. The master bedroom also has it.
If the space is big, I won't mind a balcony and a planter but ... ... 70 sqm? 91 sqm?
The purpose of the planters balconies and bay windows are for the developers to make more $$$ out of the buyers.It's because of Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) regulations that developers are exploiting it (although this exploit has been removed for all residential developments since 2009 for bay windows and planters only).
Trying to keep it simple, basically its like this: Every piece of land has a plot ratio (PR) which tells the maximum area (aka Gross Floor Area or GFA) a person can built there. e.g. a 100 sqm land has a PR of 2, so it means that u can built 100 x 2 = 200sqm building on a 100sqm piece of land. (a PR of 3 will give 300sqm and so on...).
Pre-2009 URA rules allows planters and bay windows to be built for residential buildings as long as they meet certain requirements. These do not factor into the maximum GFA of the land.
If they built balconies, they can build up to 10% of the maximum GFA.
(e.g. for a land with a GFA of 200sqm, a developer can build an extra 20sqm of balcony space)
So, using the previous example: a 100sqm land with of PR of 2 will give normally give 200sqm of building. If we include 10% extra balcony (20sqm) plus 30sqm (an example only, area can be higher) of planters and balconies. A 250sqm building can be built instead of 200sqm. The developer can earn an extra 50sqm of space which they will sell you. And which developer won't wanna earn your $$?
Hope this is clear. Tried to explain as simply as possible. :)
Hi Guy in property line,
Thanks for explaining. What you said jolted my memory. I remember reading something about it.
It seems that the intention of this "free" space should be for developers to build normal size flats, and extend it further so as to make it more attractive.
Instead, developers use this "loophole" to create smaller flats to squeeze more units, and market the flats as xx sqm when actually, the space is much much smaller.
Luckily not all developers are like that.
Hi. I would like to invite you to visit The Peak @ Toa Payoh online forum - http://www.peak.sg
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