The Collective at One Sophia: The Studios Sold, the Rest Did Not

By Edmund Ee, CEA Reg. No. R006498C. · Published 22 September 2026 · Last updated: 7 October 2026 · Independent New Launch Review

Most slow-selling launches are slow everywhere. This one is not. Split The Collective at One Sophia by unit type and two completely different projects appear. The studios behaved like a hot launch and are now 85 percent sold with ten left. Everything above a studio behaved like a project nobody had heard of. The 1-Bedroom Premium has sold none of its seven. The 2-Bedroom Deluxe + Study has sold none of its 34. The 2-Bedroom Premium + Study has sold none of its 17. The 3-Bedroom Luxury has sold none of its 17. That is not a market problem, because River Modern and River Green are clearing the same district. It is a product and price problem inside one building, and once you see where it sits, this becomes one of the more interesting negotiating situations in prime District 9.

What Exactly Is The Collective at One Sophia?

The Collective at One Sophia is the residential half of a larger mixed-use scheme called One Sophia, at the junction of Sophia Road and Selegie Road. The residential component is 367 homes in two 19-storey towers at 1A and 1B Sophia Road. Alongside it sits a 13-storey commercial tower holding 122 strata office units on the upper 11 floors and 127 strata retail units across a two-storey, 90,000 sq ft podium at the base.

The land is the former Peace Centre and Peace Mansion, sold collectively in December 2021 for $650 million to a joint venture of CEL Development, the property arm of Chip Eng Seng, SingHaiyi Crystal and Ultra Infinity, whose shareholders include KSH Holdings, SLB Development and the Ho Lee Group. The price works out at about $1,426 psf per plot ratio including the lease top-up premium, or about $1,388 psf ppr after allowing for a 7 percent bonus gross floor area on the residential component. The residential entity is Sophia Residential Pte Ltd and the commercial entity is Sophia Commercial Pte Ltd.

That history is worth pausing on. Peace Centre was a strata-titled mall, owned in hundreds of separate hands, which gradually lost its tenant mix, emptied out and ended in a collective sale. The development replacing it is selling 127 strata retail units. The developer has said it intends to curate the brands and concepts in the podium, and the renders show a well-considered food and lifestyle floor. But once handover is done, a podium in 127 separate ownerships is nobody's single responsibility, and Singapore has a long record of what happens next. If you are buying a home above that podium, that is a risk you are taking on, and it belongs in your thinking whatever the render shows.

Tenure is 99 years from 6 December 2023, and the expected TOP is December 2029. That timing matters and is covered in its own section below. Unit sizes run from 40 sq m to 116 sq m, or roughly 430 to 1,249 sq ft, across ten named layouts from Studio to 3-Bedroom Luxury.

What Has Actually Sold, and to Whom?

The project launched in November 2024, and URA's records show 54 sales that month, about 15 percent of the project, at an average of $2,739 psf. Sales have trickled since: by June 2026 URA had recorded 98 new sales at an average of $2,766 psf, matching the developer's own chart for September 2026, which records 98 sold, none reserved and 269 available.

That is roughly five more homes in the seven months between the two readings, on a project with 269 units of inventory. Here is the same 98 sales broken out by type, and this is the table that explains the whole review.

Three things fall out of that table.

First, the studio is the product that worked. Fifty-eight of the 98 sales, or 59 percent, came from a type that is 18.5 percent of the project. At 40 to 42 sq m for about $1.25 million, it was the cheapest way into a District 9 address with four MRT stations on foot, and the market took nearly all of it. Ten remain.

Second, the study did not work. Add up the three layouts with a study and you get 85 homes, of which three have sold. That is 3.5 percent. Take the study layouts out and the rest of the project is 95 sold out of 282, or 33.7 percent. When a single design decision separates a 34 percent take-up from a 3.5 percent take-up inside the same building, at the same address, on the same price list, that is the market speaking clearly. A study carved into a 51 to 71 sq m apartment costs real living space, and in a project where the quoted area already includes the air-con ledge, buyers appear to be doing that arithmetic and walking away.

Third, the top of the project is untested. The 3-Bedroom Luxury at 114 to 116 sq m has sold nothing in 22 months. The highest absolute price the project has achieved is $2.91 million, for a 1,023 sq ft 3-Bedroom Premium on the eighth floor at $2,850 psf in February 2025. The asking range for the larger 3-bedders today tops out at $3.664 million. Nobody has paid that, and nobody has paid anything close.

For completeness, the project has set two psf records. In November 2024 a 484 sq ft one-bedder went for $1.413 million, or $2,917 psf. In February 2026 a 764 sq ft 2-Bedroom Premium between the 16th and 20th floors sold for $2.29 million, or $2,996 psf, which remains the project high in URA's records. So the building can achieve close to $3,000 psf. It just does so a handful of times a year.

What Will a Unit Cost?

Short answer: from $1,250,000, and on headline psf from $2,591. Those are the developer's figures for units still available as at September 2026, and they make this the cheapest new launch in prime District 9 that we track.

Two features of that table are worth naming. The first is that the cheapest rate in the building is a 2-bedder, not a studio. The $2,591 psf floor belongs to a 62 sq m, 667 sq ft 2-Bedroom Deluxe at $1,728,000. The 1-bedroom band floor is $2,689 and the 3-bedroom floor is $2,768. In most projects the psf ladder falls as the unit gets bigger; here it dips in the middle and rises again. If you can carry $1.73 million, the 2-Bedroom Deluxe is the best rate on the list, and it is also one of the two types outside the studio that has shown any real movement.

The second is the relationship between the low psf and the high psf. The spread from $2,591 to $2,996 is only 15.6 percent across the whole building, which is unusually tight for a 19-storey project. There is not much storey premium here to negotiate away, which in practice means the discount conversation is about the list itself rather than about picking a lower floor.

The Area Question: What "From $2,591 PSF" Really Buys

This is the single most useful thing to understand before you compare One Sophia's psf against anything else, and almost nobody explains it.

Every floor plan in this brochure states its area in the pre-harmonisation format. Type 2C3 reads "Area: 65 sq m (include Balcony 5 sq m, A/C ledge 3 sq m)". Type 3D1 reads "Area: 114 sq m (include Balcony 12 sq m, A/C ledge 6 sq m)". Under the strata area harmonisation rules that apply to projects granted planning permission from June 2023, air-con ledges are excluded from the strata area a buyer pays for. One Sophia predates that, so the ledge is inside the number.

Work it through on the cheapest unit on the list. A 62 sq m, 667 sq ft 2-Bedroom Deluxe at $1,728,000 is quoted at $2,591 psf. Take out the 4 sq m air-con ledge and you are left with 58 sq m, or about 624 sq ft, of space you can actually stand in. The same $1,728,000 over 624 sq ft is $2,769 psf. That is 6.9 percent higher than the headline, and it is the number you should use when you compare this project against a harmonised launch completing around the same time.

This does not make the pricing bad. At $2,769 psf on liveable area, a 2-bedder here is still well below anything else in prime District 9. But it does mean the gap is smaller than the brochure suggests, and it is a large part of why the bigger layouts have struggled. When the quoted 71 sq m of a 2-Bedroom Premium + Study contains 5 sq m of balcony and 3 sq m of ledge, a buyer standing in the showflat is comparing 63 sq m of real space against a competitor quoting 63 sq m of real space and wondering where the saving went.

Project Snapshot

Why This Location Matters

This is the part of the review where the project is unambiguously strong.

Four MRT stations are within walking distance, across five lines. Dhoby Ghaut is a three-line interchange serving the North-South, North-East and Circle lines. Bencoolen and Rochor are both on the Downtown Line. Bras Basah is on the Circle Line. Very little on our benchmark table matches that. Union Square Residences, which scores 77, has three. The Robertson Opus, which scores 82, has one.

The education belt is unusually deep, and it is a different kind of catchment. LaSalle College of the Arts sits 280m away, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts at 400m, St Margaret's School (Primary) at 550m, Singapore Management University at 650m, the University of the Arts Singapore at 800m and Anglo-Chinese School (Junior) at about 2km. The School of the Arts is also in the immediate area. For a family buyer, St Margaret's inside 1km is the headline. For a landlord, the tertiary cluster matters more: students and academic staff renew every year, which gives this address a tenant pool that does not rise and fall with the expatriate hiring cycle the way most Core Central Region rental demand does.

Orchard Road is walkable and the CBD is two stops. Plaza Singapura sits at Dhoby Ghaut, with the rest of the Orchard belt beyond it. Raffles Place, City Hall, Bugis and Marina Bay are all short rides. The Civic District itself, with the National Museum, the Singapore Art Museum and the Bras Basah Bugis arts cluster, is the immediate neighbourhood.

The honest counterweight is the street. Selegie Road is a busy arterial, not a quiet enclave road, and the development's lower floors face it. The residential lobbies are lifted above a commercial podium, so your ground-floor experience is a shopping and office environment rather than a landscaped drop-off. Some buyers want exactly that. Families with young children often do not, and the sales chart suggests that is part of what has happened here.

The Product and Facilities

Facilities sit on the level 3 deck, above the commercial podium. The set is: the Azure Pool and Azure Spa, a Gymnasium and a separate Fitness Zone, The Patio, The Playpen for children, a Lounge Deck, a Games Room and The SOcial Club. Above that there are Sky Alcoves on levels 5, 7, 9, 12, 14 and 19, and One SOcial, a rooftop lounge with a skyline outlook, on level 19.

It is a well-presented set and the renders are genuinely attractive. It is also a compact one for 367 households. There is a single main deck, a single pool, no tennis court, no separate function rooms beyond The SOcial Club and the Games Room, and no second pool for lap swimming. Compare that with a 300-unit suburban launch on a larger land parcel and the difference is obvious. Compare it with what is actually achievable on a city-centre corner site above a retail podium and it is about par. The Sky Alcoves on six levels are a nice touch that spread some of the social space up the building rather than concentrating it.

The site plan is worth studying if you are serious about a unit here, because the two towers are shaped very differently. Block 1A carries the larger layouts, including every 3-Bedroom Luxury and both study-configured 2-bedroom types. Block 1B carries the studios and most of the 1-bedroom stock. If you want a three-bedder, you want Block 1A, stack 23, and you should know before you walk in that nobody has bought one yet.

Floor Plans: What You Are Actually Buying

Ten layouts, every one of them still available in some quantity. Areas below are the brochure's stated strata areas and include the balcony and the air-con ledge. Availability is from the developer's September 2026 chart.

The Investment Case

The case for buying here rests on three things and it is worth being precise about each.

One, the entry price is genuinely low for the address. $1.25 million buys a home in prime District 9 with a three-line interchange at the end of the road. Nothing else on our benchmark table offers that combination. Even after correcting for the air-con ledge, the 2-Bedroom Deluxe at an effective $2,769 psf on liveable area undercuts everything comparable in the district by several hundred dollars a foot.

Two, the tenant pool is structurally different. Most Core Central Region rental demand tracks expatriate hiring. This address also draws on a permanent, annually renewing academic population from LaSalle, NAFA, SMU, the University of the Arts Singapore and the School of the Arts, all within a short walk. That is a less glamorous tenant than a banker in Marina Bay, but it is a more reliable one across a cycle, and it is the kind of demand that suits exactly the studio and one-bedroom stock this project is full of.

Three, negotiating leverage is real and unusually measurable. The developer is holding 269 homes. Four types have never sold. When you sit down, you are not negotiating against a scarcity story. Use the new launch ROI calculator to work out what a given discount does to your holding cost and breakeven, then negotiate against the last transacted price in your specific stack rather than against the list.

The risks are equally specific. The developer overhang is the main one. When your four-year seller's stamp duty window closes in late 2030, the developer may still be selling units in your stack at whatever price clears them. That is the situation a resale seller least wants and it is a live possibility here, not a theoretical one.

The strata podium is the second. A 90,000 sq ft retail floor in 127 separate ownerships has no single party responsible for keeping the mix coherent after the developer's initial leasing is done. Ask the sales team directly whether the developer is retaining any units and whether there is a binding management or use-restriction framework in the by-laws. The answer materially changes what you are buying into.

The third is timing on the developer's side. The site was acquired in December 2021 and TOP is December 2029, an eight-year span. The Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty remission regime for housing developers requires a project to be completed and all residential units sold within a set window from the land acquisition date, and the extended timelines announced in 2026 apply only to land acquired on or after 29 July 2026, so they do not help this site. We cannot confirm from public records exactly how the deadline falls here, because the scheme is mixed-use, is held through separate residential and commercial entities, and IRAS grants extensions case by case. What we can say is that the question is worth asking the sales team directly, because a developer working to a deadline prices very differently from one that is not.

Who The Collective at One Sophia Is For

It suits the single professional or couple who wants a prime District 9 address at a mass-market quantum. $1.25 to $1.75 million, four MRT stations, Orchard on foot. On that brief, this is the best value in the district and it is not close.

It suits the landlord buying for the education catchment. A studio or a 1-Bedroom Suite here leases to a tenant pool that renews itself every year. There are ten studios left, so if that is the plan, the window on the cheapest entry is closing.

It suits the negotiator. If you are the kind of buyer who is comfortable asking for a real discount on a type nobody has bought, with 269 units of context on your side, there is a deal available here that is not available at River Modern or River Green.

It does not suit the family buyer who wants space and a landed-style environment. Thirty-four three-bedders, no four-bedders, a compact facilities deck and an arterial-road frontage. The Robertson Opus at 999-year tenure, or a larger District 9 project, serves that brief better even at a higher price.

It does not suit the buyer who needs the market's endorsement. Twenty-two months and 27 percent is a fact, not a narrative, and if you want to follow the crowd, the crowd is elsewhere in this district.

Related reading: Sophia Meadow, the 41-unit boutique launch on the same road with a 103-year lease, and TMW Maxwell, built by the same CEL and SingHaiyi consortium and relaunched in 2026 at an entry 12 percent below its 2023 list. Both are useful comparisons for different reasons. The full scoring framework and every project we track sit on the PropertyNet Insider Benchmark, and the wider prime-district context is in our District 9, 10 and 11 prime condo guide.

The Bottom Line

The Collective at One Sophia is two projects wearing one name. One of them, the studio collection, sold out in all but ten units at a price the market clearly accepted. The other, everything with two bedrooms or a study or a proper family footprint, has been on the market for twenty-two months and has sold 40 homes out of 299. The location is not the problem: four MRT stations, Orchard on foot and six education institutions inside 2km make this one of the strongest walksheds we score. The price is not obviously wrong either, because at $2,591 to $2,996 psf this is the cheapest way into prime District 9 on our table. What has not worked is the product mix, and in particular the decision to put a study into three of the ten layouts, which the market has bought three times out of 85. That is what a Selective Buy at 75/100 means here. If you want a studio or a 1-Bedroom Suite in D9 at a quantum that works, buy it, and know the studio window has ten units left. If you want a 2-Bedroom Deluxe at $2,591 psf, that is the best rate in the building and you should ask for better. And if you are looking at a three-bedder or a study layout, you are the first buyer that unit type has ever had, so price it like one.

Information herein is based on the developer's Collective at One Sophia brochure (new development copy), the developer's sales and price chart as communicated in September 2026, URA's private residential transaction records, the buyers' announcement of the December 2021 collective sale, and URA quarterly real estate statistics, and is subject to change without prior notice. Availability and pricing move continuously; confirm current status before acting. PSF figures vary by unit, storey and facing. All stated areas are the developer's strata areas and include balcony and air-con ledge where indicated, and are subject to final survey. The liveable-area calculations in this review are our own arithmetic on the brochure's stated components and are illustrative, not the developer's figures. Renderings are artist's impressions and the completed development may differ. Walking distances are the developer's representations. Commentary on the strata retail podium and on developer ABSD timelines reflects publicly available information and our reading of it, is not legal or tax advice, and should be verified with the developer and your own advisers. Please verify all figures, plans and timelines with the official sales team before making any purchase decision. This article is for general information only and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. Please consult your banker, lawyer, and a licensed property professional before committing to any purchase. PropertyNet Insider Benchmark scoring is the independent opinion of PropertyNet.SG based on the framework published at /insider-benchmark/, with no developer affiliation or sponsorship.