Analysis of publicly available data on HDB sales has uncovered a rather surprising find for homebuyers — Yishun might just be the best location to purchase your HDB resale flat

In a report compiled by local data analytics school Hackwagon Academy, analysts set out to discover if HDB resale flats offered good returns for homebuyers, and if so, in what locations.

They studied the historical price of resale flats as well as the popularity of flats in each of the 26 towns in Singapore from 2017 to 2021, discovering strong popularity and price appreciation in Yishun, Bukit Panjang, and Bukit Timah in the process.

In contrast, Toa Payoh and Bishan recorded a fall in prices over the same period.

Resale flats as an investment?

Presenting their findings to Mothership, Hackwagon surmised that despite median prices of resale flats dropping marginally in 2018 and 2019, prices had grown by 6.25 per cent in 2020 and 15 per cent in the first month of 2021.

Overall, from January 2017 to January 2021, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.92 per cent was observed.

Which towns had the most growth?

However, Hackwagon posited that only a few towns made significant contributions to that growth.

This included Queenstown and Yishun which had the strongest growth of median resale prices, while Toa Payoh and the Central Area experienced a downward trend in prices.

The most popular towns

To identify the popularity of each town, Hackwagon crunched numbers for each town relating to the total number of resale flats in that town in a particular year and the total number of transactions involving resale flats in a particular year.

In 2019, for example, Yishun was the town with the fifth-highest number of flats, but saw the third-highest number of resale transactions, as a larger proportion of its flats were transacted in that year as compared to other towns. Hackwagon used this as an indication of the popularity of the town.

Hackwagon then calculated whether the popularity of the town had increased or decreased over the course of the four-year period.

What they found was that Yishun and Bukit Panjang ranked the highest for popularity, as the numbers suggested that they had grown more popular over the years.

Where’s the best place to buy?

Combining data from growth trends of prices and the popularity of each town over the four year period (2017 to 2021), Hackwagon visualised the data into a scatter plot, placing each group into one of four clusters:

• The Golden Hens (Cluster 1) - Towns with both strong popularity and price appreciation.
• Second Tier (Cluster 2 and 3) - Towns with okay growth rates
• Laggards (Cluster 4) - Towns that are seeing a fall in prices

This graph showed Yishun, Bukit Panjang, and Bukit Timah as the best places to buy HDB resale flats if the buyer wanted to see a positive return on their investment.

Punggol and Queenstown featured in the second tier, while Toa Payoh and Bishan were considered laggards.

Acknowledging that the results had come from a “simplified model”, Hackwagon said further exploration could be conducted to account for variables such as the size of the flats and proximity to public transportation.

You can view the report analysis here.

Here’s how you can do a similar analysis

The report was put together by analysts from Hackwagon Academy, the same analysts who teach the school’s students and equip them with the skills to produce similar reports.

The school was established for the purpose of helping individuals seeking to transition into the rapidly growing information and communication technologies (ICT) industries.

They do this with a teaching team made up of information technology experts who specialise in various ICT domains, ranging from programming languages to specific fields like web development, data science and fintech.

Courses such as “Data Science 101” span for seven weeks and are designed to teach students with no prior knowledge in the subject how to use the python coding language for data science applications.

Students are given exclusive access to specially designed collaborative software and supported by instructors that double as mentors.

The course is also eligible for subsidies.

Find out more about Hackwagon Academy and their courses here.

Top image by Modern Affliction via Unsplash

This Hackwagon Academy-sponsored article has the writer thinking about a future in Yishun.