Sentosa Cove: developers charged up to $3,252 per square foot, and resales since 2012 have a median of $1,679

Almost everyone who bought a Sentosa Cove apartment at launch and has since sold it lost money. The main reason is the launch price. From 2007 to 2011 developers charged between $2,563 and $3,252 per square foot, and in no year since 2012 has the median resale price reached $2,563.

Sentosa Cove is a waterfront enclave on the eastern end of Sentosa, built on reclaimed land and sold mostly to foreign buyers between 2004 and 2011. It is the only place in Singapore where a foreigner can buy a landed home. This page summarises what the notes in this series found.

The one number that mattered

Across all resales from 2012, the year after the last new launch, to 2026, the median price of a Sentosa Cove apartment is $1,678 per square foot. The median in any single year has ranged from $1,429 in 2019 to $2,125 in 2023. The chart sets the median resale price for each year against what developers charged at launch.

• Launch price
• Median resale price

Until 2006 developers charged less than $1,678 per square foot. From 2007 to 2011, the last launch year, they charged between $2,563 and $3,252.

The 2009 launch price of $3,252 per square foot is almost twice the $1,678 median resale price since 2012. In every launch year from 2007 to 2011, apartments in the enclave were already reselling for less than developers charged: in 2009, a median of $1,400 per square foot on resale against $3,252 at launch.

Read those launch figures as an upper bound rather than an exact measure. Before 25 May 2015 a new sale price was recorded as the price on the option, before any discount or rebate the developer might have given. Resale prices are not affected, because those are sales between individuals.

The launch price rose from $1,454 per square foot in 2006 to $2,563 in 2007, a level resale prices have never reached since.

Everyone who bought new after 2006 lost money

Bought new in	Share who made money on resale
2006	67.4%
2007	0%
2008	0%
2009	0%
2010	0%
2011	0%

Of the forty apartments bought new from 2007 to 2011 and since resold, none sold for more than the buyer paid.

We looked for something the losing buyers did wrong, and did not find one. The size of the apartment does not explain it: within a single project, larger units did better in three of seven cases. How long they held does not explain it. Which building they chose does matter, but every building's buyers from those years still lost.

What explains the losses is the launch price, which the developer set.

Which building you chose mattered too

The median resale outcome ranges from a 5.1% gain at The Berth by the Cove to a 41.7% loss at Turquoise.

Project	Median resale outcome
The Berth by the Cove	+5.1%
The Oceanfront	-3.9%
The Azure	-9.5%
The Coast	-10.0%
Seascape	-30.1%
Marina Collection	-32.4%
Turquoise	-41.7%

The projects are in the same enclave, and their buyers bought in the same years and held for about the same time.

Marina Collection's figures carry a caveat the others do not. In 2022 the High Court found its developer had misled a lender about the prices of 38 units, having given undisclosed rebates of 25% to 34%. Where a buyer received one, the loss we show is larger than the loss they took. Excluding Marina Collection moves the enclave-wide figures in this series very little, though it does move the project's own figure.

Most sub-sale sellers made money, and most of their buyers did not

There were three ways to buy an apartment in Sentosa Cove.

New from the developer. Resale, from someone who already owned it. Or sub-sale, which means buying from someone who had bought off-plan and was selling before the building was finished.

In 2007 and 2009, sub-sales made up two thirds to three quarters of all transactions in the enclave.

Of the sub-sales we can follow from purchase to resale, 93% made money for the seller, at a median gain of 28% in under two years.

The buyers on the other side of those sub-sales paid the higher price, waited for the building to be completed, and later sold. Only 20% of them made money.

One apartment at The Azure shows the pattern. It was sold by the developer in 2005 for $1,632,000, resold three times within twenty-four months to reach $3,850,000, and then sold in 2021 for $2,500,000. The first three sellers took $2.2 million out between them. The fourth owner held for fourteen years and lost $1,350,000.

Sub-sale buyers did worst because they paid the most and bought in the most expensive years.

Rents are high, but they have not covered the price losses

Size for size, an apartment in Sentosa Cove rents for more than one in the core central region on the mainland (CCR), from 2.5% more in the smallest sizes to 21% more for large waterfront homes.

And because prices fell while rents did not, on leases and resales from 2024 to 2026 it has a higher rental yield than the mainland CCR, by roughly a quarter to a half depending on the size of the apartment. Rental yield is rent divided by price, so part of that higher rental yield comes from the fall in prices.

For someone who bought at a launch and rented the apartment out, sixteen years of rent covers something over half of what they lost on the price, once the costs of renting it out are taken out. An owner from 2007 who is still holding would need close to another decade of rent to break even, having already held nineteen years. Both figures depend on what renting out actually costs, which the records do not show, so treat them as estimates rather than measurements.

Sentosa Cove's higher rental yield comes roughly a quarter from higher rent and three quarters from lower prices.

Foreign buyers fell from 20.9% to 5.8% of purchases

Foreign buyers made up 20.9% of Sentosa Cove purchases in 2023 and 5.8% in 2025.

The additional buyer's stamp duty (ABSD) on foreign buyers rose five times between 2011 and 2023, reaching 60%. The last increase, in 2023, removed about two thirds of the remaining foreign buyers from every part of the Singapore market.

The effect on each market depended on how many of its buyers had been foreign. The foreign share of purchases fell by 15.1 percentage points in Sentosa Cove, 4.8 in the mainland CCR and 2.3 across Singapore.

Between 2023 and 2024, the median resale price per square foot increased in the mainland CCR, from $2,080 to $2,144, and decreased in Sentosa Cove, from $2,125 to $1,679.

What this series does not answer

• Why the buildings differ so much from each other. We can show that The Berth by the Cove and Turquoise have median outcomes of a 5.1% gain and a 41.7% loss, and that the difference between them is stable across seven years of buyers. Transaction records do not say whether it is the marina berths, the sea frontage, the developer, the maintenance, or something else.
• Why the developers priced where they did, or why buyers paid it. The records carry prices, not reasoning.
• Whether any of this repeats elsewhere. These are launches from 2004 to 2011 in one enclave with a buyer base later narrowed by policy. Nothing here says a project launching at a high price in 2026 will do the same.
• Much about the landed homes. Roughly 392 landed homes sit inside Sentosa Cove, almost all detached. They are covered only in a note on 54 resales, which finds that a landed home loses money less often than an apartment, partly because landed homes were bought later.
• What one particular home did. Everything here is a middle value across a group. Floor, facing, berth access and condition matter for a specific apartment in ways a median cannot see.
• What a declared price includes. Every price here is as declared to the authorities, and in one project a court has found that declared prices misstated what buyers actually paid.

Method and data notes. Sale data to 4 August 2026.

Figures are transacted prices from URA caveat data and rental contract records for the Sentosa Cove non-landed projects, excluding collective sales. The Residences at W Singapore is excluded throughout: eighty-three of its sales fall in a single year, 2024, which does not describe a market.

Every figure in this note comes from one of the articles it summarises, and each is recomputable from the underlying records. Where a figure appears here and in an earlier note, it is the same figure rather than a new calculation. The single Azure apartment traced from 2005 to 2021 is an illustration drawn from the entry-price note, not evidence.

Prices are as declared to the authorities. URA has published new-sale prices net of discounts only since 25 May 2015, and every launch here predates it.

Sentosa Cove is part of the Core Central Region under URA's definition, so the mainland CCR means the rest of that region.

Sale data to 4 August 2026. Rental data to June 2026.

30 October 2026. This note placed homes in market segments by postal district. URA places them by planning area, which moves about one in seven private sales between regions. The figures by region here use the earlier segments and differ from what the same records give now. How regions are set: How we measure prices and sales.