Chestnut Avenue Good Class Bungalow GCB Review – District 23, Singapore

Besides Windsor Park Estate in D20, the only other GCBA gazetted by the 1980 URA Masterplan outside the prime districts of 10, 11 and 21 is found at Chestnut Avenue in District 23. The nearest MRT is Cashew and it is within the wider Bukit Panjang estate. It is relatively close to the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and next to Chestnut Nature Park.

Being an Eastie, this is a part of Singapore I do not venture to at all. I only decided to pop by because my reservist camp is 10 mins away, which also highlights how distant this place is from the rest of Singapore. It is close to Bukit Batok and Jurong East down south and Choa Chu Kang up north. This is definitely the least accessible GCB area of the lot. It takes almost 25 mins by car to get to Raffles Place as opposed to 11 mins from my lowly non-GCBA home.

Roads within Chestnut do feel wide and congestion-free. The estate gives off a laid-back, sleepy feeling and that may be part of the estate’s appeal. There were no GCB transactions in the past 6 months.

There were 2 99-year bungalows at 7,868sqft and 5,920sqft on neighbouring Almond Crescent and Street sold in March and Jul 2020 at $3m ($381psf) and $3.2m ($540psf) respectively. Do note that these prices are a poor indication of the GCB prices along Chestnut Estate as GCBs are freehold land and have stable prices given its different classification. For example, in Aug 2019, 7 Chestnut Crescent (9,232sqft) in the GCBA was put up for auction at $9m ($975psf) while 29 Chestnut Crescent was sold for $8.8m ($1,103psf) in Q3’18.

Prominent past and present owners in this GCBA are said to include Chia Song Heng, Group President of HKSE-listed event marketing firm Pico Group and Patrick Ng, CEO of civil engineering firm Huationg Global.