Fernvale Lea BTO residents have cited a number of concerns regarding having a columbarium near their homes, chief among them are bad fengshui and impacted resale value of the house in the future. While we’re no professional geomancers, we do assess properties around an area pretty well.
As an objective study to see if columbariums do, in fact, negatively affect property prices, we took 10 known columbariums around Singapore and labelled HDB properties according to a distance range surrounding the columbariums. We then calculated the median HDB resale price PSF of each distance range to test if the hypothesis is true.
In land scarce Singapore, its not uncommon to see columbariums in HDB estates, but only in a few neighbourhoods do you see HDB flats being located almost side-by-side to a columbarium. Two such areas are in Yishun and Telok Blangah where the Yishun Columbarium and Saint Teresa’s Columbarium are located respectively. In both cases, HDB resale and rent prices less than 250m away from the columbariums are more negatively impacted per-square-foot than prices more than 250m away.
Certain amenities such as good schools and MRTs can largely dissipate this impact. For example, Bright Hill columbarium in Bright Hill Road is located just 300m away from Ai Tong School, a well-known primary school, and less than 500m away from the future Bright Hill MRT. HDB resale prices costs more as a result, compared to properties more than 500m away.
Source: SRX (8 Jan 2015)