Narra Residences Review 2026: From S$1.49m, 540 Units
Narra Residences backs onto gazetted nature reserve at Dairy Farm, a supply limit written in law, not forecast. What that is worth, and what it is not.
By Invest Singapore Editorial · Updated September 23, 2026 · 9 min read
Quick answer: Narra Residences is a 540-unit Santarli and Apex Asia joint venture at Dairy Farm Walk, D23, guiding S$1,750 to S$1,950 psf for completion around 2030. What makes the address different from every other outer-region launch in this pipeline is what sits behind it: a gazetted nature reserve, which is a supply constraint written in law rather than in a market cycle.
A supply constraint you can point at
Every launch brochure in the outer regions makes a supply argument, and almost all of them are forecasts. Land is released through a public programme, the programme changes, and a buyer arguing that nothing will be built nearby is arguing about a decision that has not been taken.
Dairy Farm is different in one direction. The pocket backs onto Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, which is gazetted. Protected land does not enter the housing pipeline; it is not a parcel awaiting a favourable cycle. So on that flank, the question “what else could be built here” has an answer rather than an estimate.
Be precise about how much that is worth:
- It bounds one side, and only one side. The other approaches to Dairy Farm and Hillview are ordinary land like anywhere else.
- It pays late. A supply constraint matters at resale in year eight or ten and does little at handover. A buyer with a five-year horizon is mostly buying the building.
- It cuts both ways on access. The reserve that stops housing also stops roads. This is a pocket, and a pocket has one way in and out at rush hour.
What the constraint does not fix
Rail here is Hillview on the Downtown Line: one line with no interchange. That is a real difference at resale, because a single-line address serves a narrower band of workplaces, and the tenant pool prices commute time rather than district code. A buyer should ride it once at 8am before deciding what the green flank is worth.
Pricing sits where an outer-region launch usually sits against its own district:
| Reference | psf (S$) |
|---|---|
| Narra Residences launch guide | 1,750 - 1,950 |
| D23 resale, 2025-26 | 1,540 - 1,853 |
| OCR average, 2026 | 1,313 - 1,658 |
| Indicated entry across layouts | From (S$) | To (S$) |
|---|---|---|
| 540 units, 99-year leasehold, ~2030 | 1,487,500 | 2,072,850 |
The launch floor of S$1,750 clears the top of the resale band. Someone buying here is paying above every completed D23 transaction of the last two years for a lease that starts in 2030, and the reserve argument is a large part of what is being asked to justify that.
The sponsor is running two strategies at once
Apex Asia appears on this project through the Dairy Farm Walk joint venture, and separately as the developer of Artisan 8, a 34-unit freehold mixed-use scheme in D20 built on a site acquired for about S$49 million.
Those are opposite products. One is 540 leasehold units sold on a precinct and a green boundary; the other is 34 freehold units sold on scarcity and a specific address. A developer running both is not being inconsistent, it is holding volume risk and scarcity risk in separate baskets. What it means for a buyer here is that the house’s attention, its best site and its freehold title are elsewhere, and this is the volume side of the book. None of this is a defect, though it is a reason to research the delivery record on the volume side specifically, rather than being reassured by the boutique one.
One way in, one way out
A pocket bounded by protected land has a road network shaped by that boundary, and Dairy Farm is a clear example. Access runs along a limited number of approaches, which is pleasant on a Sunday and a different proposition at eight on a Tuesday morning.
This is worth converting from an impression into a measurement before committing, because it is the part of the location a brochure cannot photograph. Drive or ride the exit route at peak, then repeat it on the return. The variance matters more than the absolute time: a pocket with few approaches has little redundancy, so an incident on one road moves everybody onto the same alternative.
The same geometry shapes the tenant pool. Households that prize a green boundary and accept a longer, less flexible commute are a real market, and they are a narrower one than a district-wide rental figure implies. They tend to be families rather than sharers, they stay longer, and they are less price-sensitive about the setting and more sensitive about the journey.
What 540 units does to a quiet pocket
The project brings 540 households to an area whose defining characteristic is its low density. There is no contradiction in that, since the land was zoned for it and the reserve is unaffected, but it changes the estate a buyer is inspecting today.
Two effects deserve pricing. The first is on the roads described above, where 540 homes is a material addition to a network with limited approaches. The second is on the resale market: at completion this becomes the largest single block of comparable, same-age stock in the immediate area, so the first owners to sell will be selling against each other rather than against the older houses and low-rise stock that currently set the tone.
Neither is a reason to avoid the project. Both are reasons to treat the nature reserve as an argument about year ten, and the unit count as an argument about years one to three, rather than blending the two into a single sentence about scarcity.
What to verify
- The reserve boundary on the actual survey plan, not on the brochure map. The distance from the block to protected land is the whole argument, and it is a measurable number.
- The single-line commute, timed once in the morning peak from the site itself.
- The 2030 completion against the other D23 project. Vela Bay at Bukit Batok West completes around 2029 and still has developer inventory; overlapping windows in one district code affect the leasing market even across different pockets.
The reserve is a ten-year argument. Overseas buyers meet a nearer one at the option: additional buyer’s stamp duty at the 60% foreign tier adds S$892,500 to a S$1,487,500 entry, ahead of buyer’s stamp duty, and the ABSD ladder explains why no structure removes it. Treaty nationals of five countries are charged as citizens instead, under the remission order. Leaving inside four years costs more again, on the schedule in the seller’s stamp duty ladder; the regional bands are in the CCR, RCR and OCR guide.
The reserve is the reason to look at this address and it is not, on its own, the reason to buy. What decides that is whether the pocket’s access, its single rail line and its incoming 540 households still leave a household better off here than in a denser part of the west at a similar price. That is a comparison to make on the ground, in the morning, with the exit route timed.
Finally, a note on how to weigh the two arguments against each other. The nature reserve is the durable half of this page and the access constraint is the immediate half, and they do not resolve on the same timetable. A household that will live here for fifteen years is buying the first and tolerating the second. One that expects to sell in five is doing the reverse without meaning to, because the reserve will not have paid yet and the roads will have been the daily experience throughout.
Frequently Asked Questions
A gazetted nature reserve. The Dairy Farm and Hillview pocket backs onto Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, and protected land cannot be rezoned for housing the way a car park or an industrial parcel can. The constraint on future competing launches here is legal rather than commercial, which is unusual in Singapore's outer regions.
It protects the supply side, not the demand side. Fewer future launches can appear on the reserve flank, so the stock competing with a resale unit ten years out is more predictable than in a district still releasing land. It does nothing about interest rates, ABSD, or whether buyers want that part of the island.
A joint venture recorded as Santarli and Apex Asia at Dairy Farm Walk, delivering 540 units on a 99-year leasehold title with completion indicated around 2030. Apex Asia is also the sponsor behind Artisan 8, a 34-unit freehold boutique scheme in D20, so the same house is running a volume project and a boutique one at the same time.
Indicated entry runs from about S$1,487,500 to S$2,072,850, on a launch guide of S$1,750 to S$1,950 psf. D23 resale over 2025 and 2026 ran S$1,540 to S$1,853, and the OCR average S$1,313 to S$1,658.
Vela Bay sits in Bukit Batok West at the Jurong gateway, guiding S$1,700 to S$1,900 psf, and is partly sold with the developer still holding inventory. Narra is the reserve-flank project at Dairy Farm with a named sponsor. Same district code, different edges of it, different supply stories.
Hillview station on the Downtown Line serves the pocket, which is a single-line connection rather than an interchange. That is worth pricing directly: a one-line address behaves differently at resale from a two-line one, and the reserve that constrains supply also constrains the road network.
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