Picture an HDB upgrader with S$1.25 million to spend and a fixed requirement: freehold, near an MRT station, in the East. Conventional wisdom says pick two. Aquarine Gardens, a 12-unit low-rise on Upper East Coast Road, quietly delivers all three — its most recent transaction closed at S$1,230,088, or S$1,731 psf, with Siglap station on the Thomson–East Coast Line a 287 m walk away (as of 2026-01).
The catch is scale in every sense. This is a five-storey building completed in 2004 by Continental Ind, with a dozen units, five recorded resales since 2021, and eleven rental contracts in the entire dataset. It offers no pool deck worth photographing and no showflat gloss — just a freehold title, a 3.45% gross yield that beats every large project around it, and a location that the 2024 opening of Siglap station transformed overnight.
Priced at the 47th percentile of District 15 while the district's celebrated launches trade above S$2,400 psf, Aquarine Gardens is the sort of property listings portals overlook and value hunters underline twice. Both instincts have merit, as the record shows.
Aquarine Gardens sits on the Upper East Coast flank of District 15 — administratively grouped with Joo Chiat and Katong, but classified Outside Central Region and priced accordingly. The contrast with the district's marquee stock is stark: The Continuum (freehold) averages S$2,790 psf, Emerald of Katong S$2,640 psf, Amber Park S$2,548 psf and Grand Dunman S$2,536 psf, while Aquarine Gardens' trailing transaction sits at S$1,731 psf (as of 2026-01) and its recorded history averages S$1,498 psf. That 47th-percentile position buys the same district address and tenure class as the Amber Road names, at entry quantums — S$985,000 to S$1.4 million — the launches cannot approach.
Overview & Key Facts
AQUARINE GARDENS is a freehold condominium at UPPER EAST COAST ROAD in District 15 (OCR), developed by CONTINENTAL IND, comprising 12 units, completed in 2004.
Location & Connectivity
AQUARINE GARDENS is approximately 290m from Siglap MRT station, with 3 stations within 1.5 km.
Schools & Education
11 schools within 2 km (5 within 1 km priority zone).
| School | Type | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Global Indian International School (GIIS East Coast) | International | 420m |
| East Coast Primary School | Primary | 430m |
| Chung Cheng High School (Main) | Secondary | 670m |
| Dunman High School | Secondary | 940m |
| Dunman High School (JC) | Jc | 940m |
| Temasek Junior College | Jc | 1.1 km |
| Victoria School | Secondary | 1.2 km |
| Victoria Junior College | Jc | 1.2 km |
Unit Mix & Pricing
| Type | Sales | Avg PSF | Avg Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 BR | 4 | $1,548 psf | $1,146,272 |
| 3 BR | 1 | $1,301 psf | $1,400,000 |
Market Position
AQUARINE GARDENS has recorded 5 sales at an average price of $1,197,018.
Ranks in the top 53% of condos in District 15 by average PSF.
Price Appreciation
| Year | Sales | Avg PSF | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 1 | $1,387 psf | — |
| 2022 | 2 | $1,353 psf | ↓ 2.4% |
| 2024 | 1 | $1,667 psf | ↑ 23.2% |
| 2026 | 1 | $1,731 psf | ↑ 3.9% |
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AQUARINE GARDENS prices sit at a fresh series high after a 3.9% gain on the prior period, now 24.9% above the 2021 starting level.
Neighbourhood Comparison
| Condo | Tenure | Avg PSF | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| GRAND DUNMAN | 99 yrs lease commencing from 2022 | $2,536 psf | 912 |
| EMERALD OF KATONG | 99 yrs lease commencing from 2023 | $2,640 psf | 844 |
| THE CONTINUUM | Freehold | $2,790 psf | 781 |
| TEMBUSU GRAND | 99 yrs lease commencing from 2022 | $2,467 psf | 644 |
| AMBER PARK | Freehold | $2,548 psf | 396 |
What Could Work Against You
- Only 1 transactions were recorded in the past 12 months, so the price figures here rest on a thin sample — a single outlier deal can move the averages.
- At 12 units, this is a boutique development — fewer comparable sales to anchor valuations, and maintenance costs spread across a smaller fee base.
Best suited for
Who This Actually Suits
The profile fits families with young children, mrt-walkable commuters, long-term hold (10+ yr) and freehold / generational hold best. Family-suitable layout and OCR (Outside Central Region) location with established school catchments nearby.
yield-focused investors should treat this as a shortlist candidate, not a default choice.
short-term flippers (<5 yr) and resort facilities should probably look elsewhere. TOP 2004 keeps the SSD window in mind for buyers exploring the 3-5 year resale-arbitrage strategy.
The affordability-tenure-transport triangle is the headline. Two-bedders here have transacted at an average of S$1,146,272 and the sole recorded three-bedder at S$1.4 million — freehold quantums that sit within reach of proceeds from a mature-estate flat sale, exactly as the property's first-time-upgrader persona suggests. Since 2024, that price buys a home 287 m from Siglap station (TE28, opened 2024), with Bayshore one stop east and Bedok's East–West Line interchange 1.19 km north. Run the numbers through the affordability calculator and the jump from flat to freehold looks unusually manageable here.
The yield leads its district class. At 3.45% gross (as of 2026-01) — an average rent of S$3,445 across eleven recorded leases against the S$1.2 million average price — Aquarine Gardens outperforms the income arithmetic of every large-format comparable in the digest, simply because its entry price is a fraction of theirs. The +3.9% year-on-year price momentum reading adds capital growth to the story, with the 2021-to-2026 series climbing from S$1,387 to S$1,731 psf.
The school run is the quiet superpower. East Coast Primary School is 0.43 km away and the Global Indian International School (East Coast) 0.42 km, with Chung Cheng High (Main) at 0.67 km, Dunman High at 0.94 km, Temasek Junior College at 1.05 km and Victoria School with VJC at 1.15 km — a nationally enviable secondary-and-JC cluster inside a fifteen-minute radius, all reflected in the walkability data's full marks for schools.
And the format suits its buyers: twelve units across five storeys is domestic-scale living — a boutique community with a Moderate en-bloc score of 47, where the 20-of-20 unit-count component recognises how easily a dozen owners could one day agree on a collective exit if the Upper East Coast corridor re-rates around its new stations.
Liquidity is a single-file affair. One transaction in the trailing twelve months, five since 2021 — the trailing-year "average" of S$1,731 psf is literally one deal (as of 2026-01). Every headline number in this review therefore carries a wide confidence interval, and ShiokNest's composite score of 39, dragged down by a market-trend reading of zero, is the algorithm's way of saying the sample is too thin to trust momentum. Buyers should verify each cited transaction against URA's records and price their offer from fundamentals, not from a one-deal average.
Daily convenience is more suburban than the Katong postcode implies. The walkability breakdown places the nearest mall at roughly 4.7 km, the nearest supermarket at about 6.5 km and the nearest clinic at 1.5 km — figures that explain why the overall score is a middling 60 despite full marks for MRT and schools. Households should visit at errand hour and judge for themselves; a car remains genuinely useful here.
Age and scale carry their usual costs. A 2004 building is at the stage where waterproofing, lifts and common-area refurbishment appear on the agenda, and each bill divides among only twelve owners — a thin maintenance base with limited facilities to show for it. Investors should also respect the seller's stamp duty window flagged in the persona data: with so few transactions a year, a forced sale inside the SSD period could mean accepting a material discount, making any sub-five-year plan hazardous. The eleven-lease rental record, while yield-positive, is too small a sample to promise uninterrupted tenancy.
- ✅ First-time HDB upgraders
- ✅ MRT-walkable commuters
- ✅ Families with young children
- ✅ Freehold / generational hold
- ⚠️ Yield-focused investors
- ❌ Short-term flippers (<5 yr)
Aquarine Gardens is what value looks like before it becomes consensus. The 2024 arrival of Siglap station rewired the property's fundamentals — a freehold low-rise 287 m from rail, S$1,731 psf against a district whose benchmarks trade a thousand dollars higher (as of 2026-01), and a 3.45% yield that no large East Coast launch can match. Against that stand the honest deductions: one-deal-a-year liquidity, a 22-year-old building with twelve owners sharing every bill, and errands that assume a car.
Shortlist it if you are an HDB upgrader or young family that wants East Coast schooling and a freehold title at a flat-adjacent quantum, and can commit to living there long enough for the thin market to be irrelevant. Long-hold landlords chasing the district's best income arithmetic have a case too — provided the entry price is tested against the big comparables on the comparison tool rather than taken from a single 2026 transaction.
The right horizon is a decade. Over that span, the freehold title, the Thomson–East Coast Line effect and the possibility — no more than that — of collective-sale interest in a twelve-owner site all work for the patient owner. Over three years, none of them reliably does.
FAQ
What is the average PSF for AQUARINE GARDENS?
Is AQUARINE GARDENS freehold?
What is the rental yield for AQUARINE GARDENS?
Which MRT is nearest to AQUARINE GARDENS?
Sources & Next Steps
- AQUARINE GARDENS Dashboard — Live charts and analytics
- URA REALIS — Official transaction data
- District 15 (Joo Chiat, Amber Road, Katong) — District 15 neighbourhood guide
Methodology & Sources
This analysis covers All available years and refreshes as new data becomes available.
Transaction data sourced from URA REALIS.
- Sales data: 5 transactions
- Rental data: 11 leases
- Source: URA REALIS
Median values used to minimise outlier impact. PSF = price per square foot.
Latest recorded data point: Jan 2026 · 5 records analysed · Source: URA private-sale caveats
Price Index Check
The ShiokNest Price Index for District 15 reads 117.7 as of June 2026 — down 9.0% year-on-year. The index tracks repeat-sales price movement, so it is less distorted by shifts in what happens to be transacting than a raw average PSF.
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Rental Yield by Bedroom Type
Blended yield hides the spread between unit sizes — smaller units at AQUARINE GARDENS typically rent harder per dollar of purchase price:
| Type | Avg Rent | Avg Price | Gross Yield |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 BR | $3,290/mo | $1,146,272 | 3.44% |
| 3 BR | $3,575/mo | $1,400,000 | 3.06% |
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HDB Alternatives Nearby
Weighing AQUARINE GARDENS against staying public? These HDB towns sit within walking or short-drive distance:
- Bedok — 4-room average $659,895 (930m away), an upgrader gap of about $550,000
- Geylang — 4-room average $761,443 (980m away), an upgrader gap of about $450,000
- Marine Parade — 4-room average $648,065 (1.4 km away), an upgrader gap of about $550,000