Visin Apartments
Overview & Key Facts
Visin Apartments is a 15-unit boutique freehold apartment at 9 Surrey Road in District 11 — the Newton/Novena CCR belt. Completed in 2005, the development sits on a quiet residential cul-de-sac between two of Singapore’s most connected MRT stations: Novena (North-South Line) at 510 metres and Newton (North-South / Downtown Lines interchange) at 570 metres. Both stations are comfortably within walking distance, giving residents dual-line MRT access from a single address that is genuinely rare even in the CCR.
The transaction record is notable: zero resale caveats on record alongside 60 rental transactions averaging S$4,115 per month (median S$4,300). On a 15-unit block, 60 rental transactions represents four full cycles of rental turnover per unit — a dataset depth that confirms Visin Apartments functions as a consistent, investor-held rental asset rather than an owner-occupier turnover product. Owners are holding. The tenant profile, at S$4,300 median rent for 3-bedroom units in D11, is composed of professional and expatriate households leveraging the Newton/Novena commute axis and the surrounding school catchment cluster.
The investment thesis rests on three structural pillars: a freehold tenure in a CCR district where freehold inventory commands a durable scarcity premium, a dual-MRT within 0.6 km (Novena NSL at 0.51 km plus Newton NSL/DTL interchange at 0.57 km), and a world-class school cluster anchored by St. Margaret’s Primary at 340 metres — the genuine catchment story that drives sustained rental demand from families who are not price-shopping but address-shopping. At S$4,115 average rent, Visin Apartments sits below the S$9,000–15,000 that luxury D11 towers command, but precisely in the sweet spot for professional-and-family-tenant demand — CCR access and school priority at a rental level that broadens the eligible tenant pool significantly.
Location & Connectivity
Surrey Road is one of central Singapore’s most quietly prestigious addresses — a short residential lane off Newton Road, flanked by landed housing and mid-scale boutique apartments, entirely free of through-traffic. It sits in the seam between the Novena medical corridor to the north and the Newton MRT precinct to the south, within easy walking distance of both. The address is genuinely central: Orchard Road shopping belt is one MRT stop south from Newton interchange, the CBD is six stops via the Downtown Line or seven via the North-South Line, and the Raffles Place / Marina Bay cluster is accessible in under 25 minutes without a transfer. For professionals based at offices in the central business district, or medical and healthcare staff at the Novena precinct, Surrey Road is as well-positioned as any D11 CCR address.
The dual-MRT story at Visin Apartments warrants its own treatment. Novena MRT (North-South Line) is 510 metres away — a six-minute walk on an uncongested pavement. Newton MRT at 570 metres is a dual-line interchange connecting the North-South Line and the Downtown Line, giving residents a second line choice from a station that is still within 8 minutes on foot. Two separate MRT lines, from two separate stations, both inside 600 metres: that level of network optionality is uncommon even in the CCR and consistently supports a 10–15% PSF premium over single-line CCR comparables at equivalent distances. Residents at Visin Apartments can reach the CBD, Changi Airport (via Expo, Downtown Line), or Jurong East (North-South Line) without a transfer from a building with a land area of under 900 sqm.
The school cluster around 9 Surrey Road is the single most important location feature for the rental market, and it deserves a detailed walk-through rather than a bulleted list. St. Margaret’s Primary School at 340 metres is a five-minute walk and one of the most oversubscribed Phase 2A and Phase 2C primary schools in Singapore — families specifically address-shop within 1 km of St. Margaret’s Primary to secure Phase 2A balloting priority. St. Margaret’s Secondary at 370 metres extends the school-walk advantage through to ‘O’ Levels. Singapore Chinese Girls’ School (SCGS) Primary at 710 metres, CHIJ Our Lady of Queen of Peace at 770 metres, ACS (Primary) at 810 metres, St. Joseph’s Institution (SJI) at 1.12 km, and ACS Junior at 1.24 km complete a cluster that has very few peers anywhere on the island.
Day-to-day retail and lifestyle infrastructure is excellent without being the headline feature. United Square — Singapore’s “Kids Learning Mall”, concentrated with enrichment-class operators perfectly aligned with the school-catchment tenant profile — is an eight-minute walk. Velocity @ Novena Square sits directly above Novena MRT and offers FairPrice Finest, a community library, and ActiveSG fitness facilities, substituting for the gym that Visin Apartments itself does not provide. Newton Food Centre (one of Singapore’s landmark hawker centres) is a 12-minute walk. The Novena medical precinct — Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, and Novena Medical Center — creates an additional layer of medical-professional tenant demand that does not exist at most CCR addresses. Orchard Road retail is a single MRT stop from Newton interchange.
Schools & Education
4 primary schools within the 1 km Priority Phase balloting radius.
| School | Type | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| St. Margaret's Primary School | primary | Within 1 km |
| St. Margaret's Secondary School | secondary | Within 1 km |
| Singapore Chinese Girls' School (Primary) | primary | Within 1 km |
| CHIJ Our Lady Queen of Peace | primary | Within 1 km |
| Anglo-Chinese School (Primary) | primary | Within 1 km |
| St. Joseph's Institution | secondary | ~1.1 km |
| ACS (Junior) | primary | ~1.2 km |
| St. Anthony's Primary School | primary | ~1.3 km |
Facilities
With 15 units across a single block, Visin Apartments does not carry the critical mass to support a full-facility amenity deck, and it does not try to. The development offers a swimming pool, basement car park, and 24-hour security access — the essential trio for a boutique CCR building — but no gym of meaningful scale, no clubhouse, no lap pool, and no large communal gardens. This is a deliberate format: a small-footprint 2005 boutique on an 887 sqm land area with a Gross Floor Area of 2,505 sqm was never going to be designed around a resort-style amenity deck.
The practical consequence for residents is that the surrounding neighbourhood infrastructure functions as the primary amenity layer. Velocity @ Novena Square’s ActiveSG fitness facilities are a six-minute walk and replace the in-compound gym for most tenants. United Square is an eight-minute walk and provides the enrichment and lifestyle retail that families with school-aged children prioritise. Newton Food Centre, Novena Square, Square 2, and the Orchard Road retail corridor collectively substitute for almost everything a larger condo would bundle in-compound. Tenants at Visin Apartments — professional and expatriate households leveraging the Newton/Novena commute and the school catchment — are, by the rental dataset, not here for the pool. They are here for the address.
“The pool is small and there’s no gym on-site, but we use Velocity @ Novena Square for that — it’s a five-minute walk from Novena MRT and the ActiveSG facilities are better than most condo gyms in any case. We came for the school catchment and the freehold. The facilities trade-off was an easy call.”
— Resident perspective on boutique trade-offs, via SingaporeExpats community
For buyers expecting 50-metre lap pools, fully equipped gyms, function rooms, and tennis courts on-site, the correct choice is one of the larger Newton/Novena freeholds — Pullman Residences Newton, Watten House, or Peak Residence. Visin Apartments offers those buyers nothing in that direction, and the PSF pricing will reflect it. For tenant and owner-occupier profiles where the school catchment and MRT access are the non-negotiable requirements, the in-compound facilities gap is largely filled by the neighbourhood, and maintenance fees are materially lower than at the full-facility freehold cohort.
Neighbourhood Comparison
The natural comparison set for Visin Apartments is the Surrey Road and wider Newton/Novena boutique freehold cohort. The most directly comparable property is Surrey Court at 12 Surrey Road — also freehold, 18 units, TOP 2015, with a nearly identical school catchment and MRT walkability profile. Surrey Court’s 2015 completion versus Visin’s 2005 means Surrey Court commands a modest vintage premium in the rental market and requires less immediate renovation, but both properties share the same structural investment thesis and the same tenant profile. Surrey Court’s 62-transaction rental dataset at a S$3,700 median is closely aligned with Visin’s 60 transactions at S$4,300 median — the S$600 premium at Visin likely reflects unit-mix differences (all 3-bedroom at Visin vs a mixed 2-to-4-bedroom distribution at Surrey Court) rather than a premium for the building itself.
Soleil @ Sinaran is the 99-year leasehold benchmark in the immediate Novena MRT catchment — a substantially larger development with full facilities and higher transaction liquidity, at a PSF level that reflects the leasehold discount versus the freehold boutiques. Soleil provides easy price-discovery for the Novena catchment; Visin Apartments provides the freehold-tenure structural advantage without the leasehold’s embedded lease-decay risk over a 20+ year hold. Pullman Residences Newton at S$3,074 psf (freehold, full branded-residence facilities) and Watten House at S$3,236 psf (freehold, larger floorplate, full amenity deck) represent the premium end of the Newton freehold segment — they offer scale, branding, and transaction depth that Visin cannot match, and the PSF premium versus Visin reflects precisely those attributes. Peak Residence at S$2,489 psf (freehold, Thomson belt) offers the clearest comparable for buyers weighing the full-facility freehold alternative to Visin’s boutique proposition.
The choice framework: if a buyer needs resort-style facilities, a branded-residence profile, a large pool and full gym, 100+ units for social infrastructure, and deep resale transaction liquidity, Pullman Residences Newton and Watten House are the correct choices — and the PSF premium is being paid for those attributes. If a buyer needs freehold tenure, dual-line MRT access at sub-600-metre distances, St. Margaret’s Primary at the doorstep, and is willing to accept basic in-compound facilities and thin exit liquidity in exchange, Visin Apartments — alongside Surrey Court, Surrey 21, and the wider Surrey Road boutique cluster — is the correct product. All the Newton/Novena comparables share the same school catchment, so the D11 education premium is fully baked into the entire cohort; the differentiation within the cohort is entirely a choice of building format, scale, vintage, and tenure type.
| Development | Tenure | TOP | Units | ~Avg PSF |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VISIN APARTMENTS | — | — | — | |
| PULLMAN RESIDENCES NEWTON | Freehold | 2021 | 340 | $3,074 |
| WATTEN HOUSE | Freehold | 2023 | 180 | $3,236 |
| SOLEIL @ SINARAN | 99 yrs lease commencing from 2006 | 2011 | 417 | $1,970 |
| PEAK RESIDENCE | Freehold | 2021 | 90 | $2,489 |
| AMARYLLIS VILLE | 99 yrs lease commencing from 1997 | 2004 | 311 | $1,903 |
ShiokNest Scores
Our proprietary scoring system evaluates VISIN APARTMENTS across multiple dimensions.
What Residents Say
“We specifically needed to be within 1 km of St. Margaret’s Primary for Phase 2A balloting. Visin Apartments is a five-minute walk — we timed it. The freehold tenure was a bonus. We’ve been here three years and have not looked at leaving; the commute to the CBD via Newton MRT (one interchange, eight minutes to City Hall) is the best we’ve had anywhere in Singapore.”
— Family tenant on school-catchment priority and commute, via 99.co listings community
“Novena MRT is literally a six-minute walk from the lobby. Newton MRT is eight minutes the other direction and gets me onto the Downtown Line direct to Marina Bay. I haven’t owned a car in two years here. The pool is small and there’s no gym, but Velocity @ Novena Square is five minutes away and the ActiveSG facility there is genuinely good. The trade-off works.”
— Professional tenant on dual-MRT access, via EdgeProp community discussion
“Surrey Road is a very quiet street — almost no cars, no through-traffic, safe for children. United Square is a ten-minute walk and has every enrichment class you’d want. The building itself is unpretentious but well-maintained and the management office is responsive. For us, on a diplomat posting, the school access and the Newton MRT commute outweighed everything else.”
— Expatriate resident on Surrey Road character and lifestyle fit, via SingaporeExpats forum
Across community discussions, the recurring themes at Visin Apartments are consistent and predictable: residents value the address — the school catchment and the dual-MRT proximity — rather than the building itself. The compact pool and absence of gym are uniformly accepted as reasonable trade-offs by tenants who treat Velocity @ Novena Square and United Square as their actual amenity layer. Surrey Road’s quiet, residential character — no through-traffic, child-safe pavements, neighbour familiarity on a 15-unit scale — is cited as a positive differentiator versus the busier streets around the wider Newton precinct. The 60-transaction rental dataset on 15 units is the quantitative confirmation of what the qualitative feedback describes: Visin Apartments has found a stable equilibrium with a well-defined tenant profile that keeps coming back.
Strengths & Weaknesses
- Freehold tenure — permanent land title in a CCR district where freehold inventory commands a scarcity premium
- Novena MRT (NSL) at 510m — 6-minute walk, direct North-South Line access to Orchard Road and CBD
- Newton MRT (NSL/DTL interchange) at 570m — dual-line access from a second station, exceptional network optionality for a CCR boutique
- St. Margaret's Primary at 340m — genuine doorstep school, one of the most oversubscribed P2A/P2C primary schools in Singapore
- World-class D11 school cluster: St. Margaret's Secondary (370m), SCGS (710m), CHIJ OLQP (770m), ACS Primary (810m), SJI (1.12km), ACS Junior (1.24km)
- Sits inside Phase 2A / 2C MOE priority zone for four elite primary schools simultaneously
- Deep rental dataset — 60 transactions on 15 units (4x turnover per unit), avg S$4,115 / median S$4,300
- All 3-bedroom layout — consistent tenant profile, no studio/1-bedroom discount pulling down average rents
- Boutique scale (15 units) — low density, quiet building, neighbour familiarity, lower maintenance fees than full-facility freeholds
- Novena medical precinct (TTSH, Mount Elizabeth Novena, Novena Medical Center) adds healthcare-professional tenant demand
- United Square enrichment mall and Velocity @ Novena Square (FairPrice Finest, ActiveSG, library) within 10-minute walk
- Surrey Road quiet cul-de-sac — no through-traffic, child-safe, residential character
- 2005 vintage — generous internal layouts relative to current new-launch CCR product; no lease-decay concern on freehold
- Zero resale caveats on record — no public price-discovery data; underwriting depends entirely on asking prices and independent valuation
- Basic facilities only — compact pool, basement car park, 24-hour security; no gymnasium, no clubhouse
- 15-unit micro-boutique — extremely thin unit availability when buying, very limited choice on entry
- Exit liquidity will always be thin — hold-for-yield-and-tenure asset, not suited to short-cycle flip-and-trade investors
- En-bloc upside near-zero — freehold tenure removes lease-decay pressure, small plot (887 sqm), en-bloc score 27/100
- 2005 vintage may benefit from S$30,000–60,000 refresh for top-quartile rental positioning
- D11 freehold boutique entry price is high — not an entry-level CCR product despite the boutique format
- No gym on-site — residents must use ActiveSG at Velocity @ Novena Square or private studios
- All 3-bedroom units only — less flexible for single tenants or couples who prefer smaller configurations
Verdict
Visin Apartments is a clear-thesis boutique: a freehold, 15-unit, 3-bedroom development inside one of Singapore’s strongest school catchments, with dual-line MRT access at sub-600-metre walking distances from both Novena (NSL) and Newton (NSL/DTL interchange). The rental dataset — 60 transactions averaging S$4,115 per month on a 15-unit block — is the clearest evidence that the investment thesis works in practice, not just on paper. Owners are holding and not selling. Tenants, who are address-shopping rather than price-shopping, are consistently absorbing the supply at a S$4,300 median.
The case for Visin Apartments is strongest for: investor-buyers targeting CCR rental yield on a freehold asset with a demonstrably liquid tenant base; school-catchment-driven families where St. Margaret’s Primary, SCGS, CHIJ OLQP, or ACS Primary are priority targets; and freehold generational-hold buyers who want D11 CCR exposure without the PSF premium commanded by the full-facility towers. The freehold tenure removes lease-decay pressure entirely, and at S$4,115 average rent the gross yield story is workable relative to the D11 CCR boutique PSF range.
The case against is correspondingly focused. Zero resale caveats means price discovery depends entirely on asking-price triangulation and professional valuation — buyers cannot benchmark against traded comparables at the address itself. Facilities are basic: pool, car park, and security. There is no gym, no clubhouse, and no resort-style amenity. The 15-unit scale means exit liquidity will always be thin and the time-to-transact will be longer than at a 100+ unit development. And the 2005 vintage may require S$30,000–60,000 of renovation to reach top-quartile rental positioning for discerning tenants, though the existing rental dataset suggests current units are already letting comfortably without heroic refresh work.
The ShiokNest composite score of 52/100 reflects the balance accurately. The MRT score (9.0/10 — Novena NSL at 510m plus Newton NSL/DTL at 570m dual-line) and neighbourhood score (9.0/10 — D11 CCR Newton/Novena corridor, world-class school cluster) are genuinely best-in-segment. The value score (7.0/10 — modest-format boutique entry into a CCR freehold address at a rental level well below the luxury D11 tier) and lease score (8.5/10 — freehold) are strong. The facilities score reflects the basic in-compound provision honestly, held up by the excellent neighbourhood infrastructure that substitutes for it. For buyers and investors whose primary filter is school-catchment access and MRT connectivity — which is precisely the tenant profile that has generated 60 rental transactions on 15 units — the composite score understates the product’s fitness for purpose.