Emily Residence

Overview & Key Facts

Emily Residence is a 38-unit freehold boutique condominium tucked into the quiet, elevated cul-de-sac of Mount Emily Road in District 9 — a pocket of the Core Central Region that almost nobody outside its immediate catchment discovers by accident. Developed by M.E. Holdings Pte Ltd and completed in 2006, the development sits on a hillside site at the far end of a dead-end street that terminates in Mount Emily Park, one of the oldest public parks in Singapore. The location is the kind of anomaly that rewards deep local knowledge: five minutes from the chaos of Little India, ten minutes from Orchard’s tourist spine, and yet functionally silent because no through-traffic ever reaches this address.

With only 38 units — including a rare collection of five upper-floor apartments with private sky gardens — Emily Residence sits firmly at the boutique end of the Singapore market. Unit sizes trend compact: studios of roughly 538–667 sqft and two-bedroom layouts around 969 sqft, anchored by a current 12-month average PSF of S$1,675. That PSF is the headline of the investment case. Direct freehold competitors in the surrounding CCR submarket — The Avenir at S$3,190 psf, River Modern at S$3,234, River Green at S$3,134 — are pricing at roughly double Emily Residence’s current level. The 47% PSF discount versus The Avenir, on a freehold title at the same tenure profile, is one of the more striking arbitrage pictures in the CCR boutique segment.

The ShiokNest composite score of 62/100 reflects a property doing genuinely well on the things that matter for investors — rental activity is exceptional (98 rental transactions against just 9 sales creates a clearly investor-dominated profile, with a 3.82% gross yield that is strong for a CCR address), walkability scores 88/100, and three Downtown Line stations plus the North-East Line interchange sit within 700 metres. The counterweights are the 2006 vintage of the facilities, the compact unit footprint typical of early-2000s CCR investor builds, and the arts-and-education tenant base that shapes both the rental economics and the building’s day-to-day character. For the right buyer, this is a freehold CCR entry at roughly RCR pricing.

Location & Connectivity

Mount Emily Road is the kind of Singapore address that confounds casual map-readers. On paper, you are in District 9 — the country’s most famous postcode, shared with Orchard Road and Cairnhill — but the street itself terminates at Mount Emily Park and carries almost no through-traffic. The development sits on the slope of a small hill, genuinely elevated above the Little India basin to the north and the Selegie Road corridor to the south. Residents describe it as the quietest CCR address they have lived at, which is half marketing and half literal: the cul-de-sac geometry means you hear birdsong from the park far more often than traffic noise.

The MRT access profile is exceptional and frequently understated in marketing materials. Little India MRT (NE7/DT12) — a North-East Line and Downtown Line dual interchange — sits just 0.26 km from the development, a three-to-four minute walk down the hill. Rochor MRT (DT13) is 0.38 km. Bencoolen MRT (DT21) is 0.65 km, and Jalan Besar MRT (DT22) is 0.71 km. That is three Downtown Line stations plus a North-East Line interchange within 700 metres, an access density that is matched by perhaps a handful of addresses in the entire country. For commuters, the practical implication is that a single building delivers effectively two independent rail routes to the CBD (DTL via Bugis/Promenade, NEL via Dhoby Ghaut/Clarke Quay) plus north-line connectivity via Rochor toward Newton.

Dhoby Ghaut MRT (NS/NE/CC triple interchange) is roughly 1 km south — a 12-minute walk through the Rochor arts belt — placing SOTA, the National Museum, and the Plaza Singapura mall cluster within genuinely pedestrian range. For drivers, the Central Expressway (CTE) is accessible within four minutes via Bukit Timah Road, connecting northward to Toa Payoh and southward to the Marina Coastal Expressway corridor.

The day-to-day lifestyle infrastructure is distinctive rather than conventional. Little India’s F&B strip — Tekka Market, Mustafa Centre (open 24 hours), the Serangoon Road heritage shophouse restaurants — is a five-minute walk north. The Rochor Road arts corridor hosting LASALLE College of the Arts, NAFA, and the School of the Arts (SOTA) lies immediately south. Singapore Management University’s city campus is 0.83 km away. Residents who value heritage character rather than suburban-mall convenience will find this one of the more textured CCR addresses in Singapore.

Schools & Education

1 primary school within the 1 km Priority Phase balloting radius.

Facilities

For a 38-unit boutique development completed in 2006, Emily Residence offers a measured facilities package proportioned for its resident community. The development includes a swimming pool with adjacent wading pool for children, a pool deck for sunbathing, a gymnasium, BBQ pits, basement carpark, and 24-hour security. Marketing materials from the launch described the building as a “resort-styled development” with tropical landscaping — an aspiration that the compact site and 38-unit scale necessarily softens in practice. The pool is the centrepiece facility, and for a building this size it functions more like a private residents’ pool than a shared resort amenity.

Facilities breadth is deliberately modest compared with newer 300–800 unit developments that offer tennis courts, function rooms, jacuzzis, reading pavilions, and resort-style concierge. Emily Residence is not attempting that value proposition. At 38 units, the realistic competitor set is other CCR freehold boutiques — and within that peer group, the facilities here are serviceable rather than distinguishing. Buyers who require the full lifestyle-amenity infrastructure typical of new launches at S$3,000+ psf will not find it here, but that mismatch is also priced into the S$1,675 psf entry point.

“The pool is small but it is basically never used — with only 38 units, you have it to yourself most of the time. The park next door is really the extension of the facilities. I run laps in Mount Emily Park in the morning and the pool is there when I get back.”

— Resident review, 99.co

Mount Emily Park — literally at the end of the cul-de-sac — functions as an effective extension of the building’s recreational footprint. The park’s paved paths, mature trees, and elevated viewpoints add genuine lifestyle value that a boutique development could never provide on its own land area. For families with young children, the playground and open lawn space in Mount Emily Park are within 50 metres of the lobby. This adjacency is arguably the most underrated amenity in the building’s proposition.

The facilities rating reflects this honest picture: the in-development amenities are proportional but not extensive, the building is showing its 2006 vintage in some common-area finishes, and the primary recreational advantage is the adjacent heritage park rather than anything contained within the condominium boundary itself. Prospective buyers should budget for their own assessment of sinking-fund adequacy for the next round of facilities refresh, which is due given the building’s age.

Unit Sizes & Layout

Emily Residence offers a compact-unit mix characteristic of District 9 investor-oriented freehold developments from the 2000s. The unit footprint spans studios of approximately 538–667 sqft and two-bedroom apartments of around 969 sqft, with a handful of larger configurations at the upper floors. The signature unit type is the group of five penthouse-level apartments with private sky gardens — a rare feature at this price point that gives the building its distinctive silhouette. Based on the 12-month transaction average of S$1,675 psf and a median sale of S$1,100,000, the typical transacted unit sits in the 650–700 sqft range, consistent with the studio-dominant investor tenant base that the 98 rental transactions versus 9 sales pattern strongly implies.

For a boutique freehold condominium in District 9 with a dual-line MRT interchange at 0.26 km, the S$1,100,000 median price point is the most arresting datum in the analysis. The absolute price is low enough that this development functions as one of the few genuine CCR freehold entry points for single-professional or dual-income buyers priced out of the S$2–3 million freehold CCR mainstream. The structural comparison is not with The Avenir or River Green — those are different buyer segments entirely — but with RCR and OCR studio/one-bedroom developments at similar absolute prices that offer 99-year leases rather than freehold title.

2006-vintage interiors across the broader unit mix show the specifications of their era: standard ceiling heights, compact kitchens, single-stack bathrooms, and finishes that most buyers will want to refresh. Budget planning for a competent renovation of a 650-sqft studio (S$40,000–80,000) or a 970-sqft two-bedroom (S$80,000–150,000) is a realistic assumption. The freehold title means this renovation investment is preserved indefinitely rather than lost to lease decay — a structural consideration that many buyers under-weight in comparison analysis against 99-year leasehold stock.

Ventilation and natural light are consistently highlighted in resident reviews, with several layouts oriented to benefit from the elevated hillside site and the greenery of Mount Emily Park. Upper-floor units in particular report meaningful visual separation from the density of Little India to the north — an aspect advantage that buyers should verify at individual unit level before committing.

Pricing & Market Position

Based on 9 recorded transactions, sale prices range from $900,000 to $1,850,000, averaging $1,206,889 (~$1,675 psf).

Rents range from $2,500 to $5,500 per month across 98 rental transactions. Current rental yield sits at approximately 3.8%.

Price Appreciation

From 2021 to 2025, the average PSF has appreciated by 14.3% (from $1,466 to $1,675 psf).

Neighbourhood Comparison

Emily Residence occupies a distinctive position in the District 9 CCR freehold landscape. Its direct freehold peer — by geography, tenure, and district — is The Avenir (376 units, freehold, S$3,190 psf) on River Valley Close. The comparison is instructive: both are freehold CCR, but The Avenir is a newer and substantially larger development at a prime River Valley frontage with full amenity infrastructure. Emily Residence trades at a 47% PSF discount to The Avenir. That discount is larger than the quality differential would justify in a rational market, and the structural explanation is the 2006-vintage boutique scale plus the Mount Emily–Little India address character, both of which a significant slice of the CCR freehold buyer pool will discount heavily.

Against the newer 99-year leasehold CCR stock, the comparison sharpens usefully. River Modern (S$3,234 psf, 99-year) and River Green (S$3,134 psf, 99-year, TOP 2024) both trade at roughly double Emily Residence’s PSF while offering a 99-year lease that began depreciating from 2022–2024. Irwell Hill Residences (540 units, 99-year from 2020, S$2,726 psf) and Kopar at Newton (378 units, 99-year from 2019, S$2,512 psf) compress that gap but are still priced at 50–63% above Emily Residence on lease-disadvantaged title. Buyers performing a rigorous lease-adjusted total-return analysis on a 20-year holding horizon will find that the freehold-versus-leasehold structural premium at Emily Residence is currently priced as a discount rather than a premium — a genuinely unusual market configuration. Stacked Homes’ freehold vs leasehold framework lays out the mathematics in detail.

On rental yield, Emily Residence is a clear standout within its CCR peer group. The 3.82% gross yield materially exceeds The Avenir, River Green, River Modern, Irwell Hill, and Kopar at Newton — all of which sit in the 2.5–3.0% gross yield range typical of premium CCR stock. The yield differential is a direct consequence of the lower absolute price point and the captive LASALLE/NAFA/SMU/SOTA arts-and-education tenant base that produces the abnormally high 98-rental-versus-9-sale activity ratio. For yield-oriented CCR freehold buyers, this is a genuinely differentiated profile; for capital-growth-oriented buyers, the thesis shifts toward the PSF-convergence-over-time argument rather than the yield itself.

The honest summary is that Emily Residence is not a direct like-for-like substitute for a new-launch CCR freehold — the buyer segments are different, the facilities expectations are different, and the day-to-day experience is different. But as a freehold-title, dual-interchange-MRT, high-yield entry into District 9, at a PSF closer to mature-OCR pricing than to CCR freehold norms, it occupies a value niche that very few addresses in Singapore currently replicate.

ShiokNest Scores

Our proprietary scoring system evaluates EMILY RESIDENCE across multiple dimensions.

What Residents Say

“I have lived here for six years now. The location is unbeatable for my daily life — I teach part-time at LASALLE and my partner works at SMU. Walking to both takes under fifteen minutes. Little India MRT is basically our front yard, and I have not used the CTE for a weekday commute in years. The building itself is quiet because the street dead-ends at Mount Emily Park.”

— Resident review via 99.co

“It is a small condo and the pool is modest, but with only 38 units you basically have the facilities to yourself. The sky-garden units are the real draw — I viewed one during a resale and it was genuinely unique for this price bracket. The park next door is the best amenity and nobody else in the CCR has it.”

— Resident review via PropertyGuru

“Little India at the doorstep is a character filter. If you love the heritage, the 24-hour Mustafa, the Tekka Market, the Serangoon Road food — this is the best CCR address for you. If you want a suburban-mall lifestyle, this is the wrong address. We love it, but we knew what we were buying.”

— Resident review via EdgeProp

Resident accounts converge on three durable themes: the MRT access profile (specifically the sub-300 metre walk to Little India’s dual-line interchange) as a transformative commute variable; the Mount Emily Park adjacency as a lifestyle differentiator that effectively extends the building’s recreational footprint into a historic public park; and the arts-and-education neighbourhood character that defines both the tenant base and the day-to-day rhythm of the area. The consistent counterweights are the 2006-vintage interiors in un-renovated units, the modest in-development facilities footprint, and the acquired-taste quality of the Little India surroundings for buyers unfamiliar with the heritage character of the precinct.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Verdict

Emily Residence is a contrarian buy with a clean structural thesis: it is a freehold boutique in the Core Central Region, with a dual-line MRT interchange at the doorstep, trading at a PSF that is closer to mature-OCR suburbs than to its freehold CCR peer set. At S$1,675 psf, the headline discount to The Avenir (S$3,190 psf freehold) is 47%; against Kopar at Newton (S$2,512 psf, 99-year leasehold), the discount is still 33%. No responsible analyst would argue these developments are identical — The Avenir is a far larger, newer, and more amenitised project, and Kopar sits on a different block of the Newton submarket. But the gap is wide enough, and the fundamentals at Emily Residence strong enough, that the price discount is plausibly larger than the quality differential.

The rental economics are the secondary pillar of the thesis. 98 rental transactions versus 9 sales is a ratio that can only be produced by a building that has been absorbed into a stable investor-landlord base — the effective free-float for sale is very small, and the rental demand is exceptionally deep. Median rent of S$3,500 against the median sale price of S$1,100,000 produces a 3.82% gross yield that is materially better than typical CCR yields of 2.5–3.0%. The structural tenant base is self-explanatory: LASALLE College of the Arts (0.40 km), NAFA (0.74 km), ACS Junior (0.82 km), SMU (0.83 km), and SOTA (0.92 km) collectively anchor a deep pool of arts-faculty professionals, post-graduate students, and SMU academic staff who rent rather than buy. That tenant base is geographically captive and unlikely to migrate.

The walkability score of 88/100 is among the highest in the ShiokNest dataset and reflects a genuinely rare urban context: heritage park adjacent, dual-line MRT at the doorstep, 24-hour Mustafa Centre five minutes away, Orchard accessible on foot. The investment score of 56/100 is less flattering and captures the honest counterweights — the 2006 vintage, the modest facilities package, the compact unit footprint, and the thin sales-side liquidity in a 38-unit building.

The weaknesses are real and should be weighed explicitly. First, the unit stock is compact and the building skews studio/small-two-bedroom — this is not a family-sized property. Second, the 2006 vintage means the next sinking-fund cycle for major mechanical and electrical works is approaching; buyers should request the most recent BCA facade inspection report and management accounts before committing. Third, the en-bloc score of 57/100 indicates a finite but non-trivial collective-sale probability given the boutique scale and the centrally-zoned land value — a double-edged sword that delivers upside in a successful en-bloc but complicates longer-horizon occupancy planning. Finally, the thin secondary market (fewer than 10 sales per year) means buyers requiring fast exit liquidity should look elsewhere.

For a long-horizon buyer comfortable with boutique scale and compact unit sizing — particularly investors seeking freehold CCR exposure at a genuine yield, or owner-occupiers prioritising walkable heritage-urban character over facilities volume — Emily Residence offers one of the more asymmetric risk-reward profiles in the current CCR freehold market. Verify the specific unit’s layout, orientation, and condition carefully, and model the lease-adjusted total return against the 99-year leasehold comparables before finalising.