One Marina Gardens: It Opened at Nearly $3,000 a Square Foot. What Happened to Those Who Waited?

One Marina Gardens sold 38% of its units at launch in April 2025. To many buyers that read as weak demand and a reason to wait for a discount. Fourteen months later, the discount still had not come.

How the sales moved

Sources: EdgeProp, April 2025 and 2 July 2026, caveats lodged. Unit counts for 2025 are my arithmetic from the reported shares of 937 units.

The average moved from $2,953 to about $2,966 psf, a rise of under half a percent. Over 14 months, a project that was two-thirds sold held its prices almost exactly where it started.

The new highs

Some units went the other way entirely. In January 2026 a 657 sq ft two-bedroom sold for $2.07 million, or $3,160 psf. In June 2026 a 1,647 sq ft four-bedroom on the 28th floor sold for about $5.42 million, or $3,290 psf, the project's highest (EdgeProp, July 2026).

That is about 11% above the launch average. The best stacks and floors held their value, and in some cases the developer priced them up.

What waiting cost one buyer

Take the January 2026 two-bedroom. At the launch average of $2,953 psf, a 657 sq ft unit works out to about $1.94 million. It sold for $2.07 million, about $130,000 more.

That is not a like-for-like comparison, because a specific stack can be worth more than the average. But it shows the direction. For the units buyers wanted most, waiting cost money rather than saving it.

Why the discount never came

A slow launch weekend is not the same as a struggling project. City projects sell to a smaller, more careful pool of buyers, so they take longer to fill. Developers know that and price for a longer sales runway, not a quick clearance.

There is a deadline too. Developers face extra stamp duty if they do not complete and sell every unit within five years of buying the land, and that pressure builds as completion nears. Until it bites, there is little reason to cut. With 297 units still unsold at the end of June 2026, the remaining third is where that test will play out.

Union Square shows the other side: there, a price adjustment did come, which I wrote about in why a developer discount is not automatically a red flag.

What it means for the next city launches

The River Opus in River Valley will be the next test of city demand, with sales from February 2027. If you are tempted to wait for its sales to stall and prices to soften, One Marina Gardens is a warning: the wait may cost you choice without saving you money.

The flip side is that there is rarely a rush either. My launch-day-or-later analysis shows later buyers in a rising market have done as well as early ones. The question is whether the price is right on the day you buy, not how early you were. See my River Opus review for its numbers.

My view

I would stop reading launch-weekend percentages as a buy or wait signal for city projects. I would read the average price over time instead, and the highs on comparable stacks.

If a project holds its average for a year while two-thirds sells, its pricing has been tested by the market, and the remaining question is only whether the unit in front of you is worth it.

If you are weighing a city launch against the suburbs, my three-launch comparison shows what a similar budget buys at One Chuan Grove, Chencharu Central and Hougang Central, where the launch-weekend story is likely to look very different. Suburban launches sell faster to a bigger pool of buyers, so the timing question works differently there.

Questions readers ask

Sources