Residential Projects

A full landed house rebuild in Singapore typically costs S$1.2 million to S$3 million or more, driven by land size, built-up area, design complexity, and specification level. As a rough gauge, budget S$350 to S$500 or more per square foot of built-up area for standard-to-good finishes, with basements, pools, and premium specifications pushing the figure higher still. We quote itemised from your design once it’s ready, so there are no lump-sum surprises once construction starts.

An intermediate terrace rebuild generally sits in the S$1.2 million to S$1.8 million range for a standard 3-storey house with decent, non-premium finishes. Corner terraces and semi-detached houses run higher purely because there’s more house to build. Add a basement, a lift, or a pool, and that baseline moves up considerably.

Two terrace houses on paper-identical plots can still land quite differently in cost, depending on things like existing soil conditions, how tight the site access is for machinery, and how much of the design has already been resolved before we quote. That’s why we always work from our drawings for a firm number, and treat any figure given before drawings exist as a planning estimate.

Plan for roughly 18 to 24 months from your first meeting with us to moving into the finished house. That splits into two phases: 3 to 6 months upfront for design development and authority approvals before any demolition happens, followed by 12 to 18 months of construction from groundbreaking to TOP.

Where a project lands within that range usually comes down to a few things: how quickly design decisions get locked in during the early phase, whether the site has difficult access or conservation requirements, and whether a basement is part of the design. Homeowners who make design decisions slowly, understandably, since it’s a major decision, tend to see that time show up later as schedule pressure. We set out a realistic programme at the start and flag anything putting that timeline at risk as early as possible.

A rebuild moves through six stages and getting the sequence right shapes how smoothly everything after it goes. It starts with design development, either with our in-house design and build team or your own architect, since every decision after this point gets priced and scheduled against whatever is agreed here. Next comes authority submissions to URA and BCA, which has to be cleared before demolition can legally begin. Demolition of the existing house follows, then structural construction covering foundations, frame, and roof. After the structure is up, architectural finishes and M&E works fill in the house itself. The process closes with final inspections, TOP, and handover.

We manage every stage directly rather than handing pieces off to separate parties, so you always know which stage you’re in and what triggers the next one.

Start with evidence, not pitch decks. Ask a shortlisted contractor for addresses of houses they’ve completed and ask whether you can speak with the owner or, better still, walk the site itself if it’s still standing or occupied. A contractor confident in their own work will arrange this without hesitation, since it costs them nothing but a phone call.

Beyond that, three checks tell you more than any brochure will. Confirm that builder has BCA registration and Builder License. Read reviews but weigh what they say about defects handling after handover more heavily than praise about the finished look, since a beautiful house with an unresponsive builder afterwards is a common and expensive disappointment. And pay attention to how a contractor behaves during the quotation stage itself, before they’ve won anything from you, since a contractor who is vague or evasive at that point rarely becomes clearer once the contract is signed.

Yes, that’s the structural point of a design and build arrangement. One contract covers concept design, authority approvals, demolition, construction, and handover, and one team is accountable for all of it, rather than an architect, an engineer, and a builder each managing their own slice under separate agreements. The practical benefit shows up most clearly when something goes wrong mid-project, which happens on almost every build to some degree. Under a fragmented arrangement, an issue at the boundary between design and construction often becomes a dispute over whose responsibility it was. Under design and build, that boundary doesn’t exist in the same way because the same team owns both sides of the decision.

Landed rebuilds come with a specific set of recurring problems that don’t show up in commercial fit-outs or condominium renovations: party-wall disputes with adjoining neighbours, tight lorry and machinery access on narrow estate roads, Earth Retaining and Stabilising Structure (ERSS) requirements where excavation is involved, and URA envelope controls that shape how tall and how far a house can be built on a given plot. On top of the technical side, there are always neighbours living through months of noise and dust next door and managing that relationship well is its own skill.

A contractor who rebuilds landed houses regularly has worked through variations of these issues many times over and generally has a playbook for each. A capable general contractor encountering an ERSS requirement or a party-wall dispute for the first time on your project isn’t incompetent, but they are, in effect, learning at your expense, on your site, and on your timeline.

The starting point is understanding what URA’s development envelope permits for your specific plot, since most owners underestimate it. That means building up to the maximum permissible height and number of storeys allowed for the estate, making full use of attic and basement space where feasible, extending to the rear and side within the required setback distances, and designing layouts that don’t burn buildable floor area on oversized corridors or awkward leftover space.

A builder-designer team that has worked extensively within your estate’s specific controls will usually be able to tell you, fairly quickly, whether a given design idea is using your full legal entitlement or leaving square footage on the table. That’s often the difference between a design that feels adequate and one that feels spacious on the same plot size.

Often, yes, though the answer depends on two separate questions rather than one. The first is regulatory: depending on the estate zoning, 2-storey or 3-storey zoning, if your current house is 2-storey you can add an attic in a 2-storey zoning area, whereas you can add additional floor with an attic in a 3-storey zoning area. The second, and usually the deciding one, is structural: whether your existing foundation has the adequate sizing or space to improve the existing foundation that can actually carry the additional load of new floors above them.

In many cases, the answer to that second question is no, not without extensive and expensive strengthening work, which is often where a partial or full rebuild starts to make more financial sense than trying to preserve the existing structure. We can look at your specific address and existing structure and tell you, before you commission any design work, whether adding floors is realistically achievable or whether a rebuild gets you to the same result more reliably.

Expect a schedule built around milestones you can physically see completed, not a calendar or a lump sum handed over upfront. Our payment structure starts with 1 to 2 per cent of the contract value on award, followed by claims at the end of each month tied to work finished that month, with a portion of each payment held back as retention until 12 months after handover, covering the defects liability period.

If a contractor asks for a large payment before demolition or any groundwork has started, treat that as a warning sign. A payment schedule that tracks visible progress protects you if a project stalls partway through, since you’ve never paid meaningfully ahead of what’s built.

They should be, and it’s one of the easier things to verify before signing anything. Kang Sheng Engineering takes out Contractor’s All Risks insurance and Work Injury Compensation insurance separately for each project.

If a worker is injured on site, or a neighbour’s fence, wall, or driveway is damaged during demolition or excavation, an uninsured contractor leaves the homeowner exposed to that liability directly. Ask to see the certificates for your specific project, with your address on them, before demolition starts, not a general certificate the contractor keeps on file for marketing purposes.

Yes, Kang Sheng Engineering holds BCA registration as a General Builder Class 1, which is above the minimum legal threshold required to carry out landed house rebuild works in Singapore.

To hold that registration, a builder has to meet BCA’s requirements on completed project track record, financial standing, and having qualified technical personnel on staff. In practice, this is the fastest way to filter out unlicensed operators quoting attractively low prices for work they aren’t permitted to carry out. We’re happy to show our registration and project history to anyone comparing us against other builders.

A named Project Manager is assigned to your project as your single point of contact, supported by site supervisors present on site daily to oversee the construction work. You are not routed through a call centre or a rotating cast of coordinators over the course of an 18-month build.

Because Kang Sheng Engineering remains a family-run business, that accessibility extends beyond the project manager. Clients can reach the owner directly if something needs attention at that level, rather than being limited to an account manager several steps removed from the decision-making.

Yes, and the standard to look for is a 12-month defects liability period, starting from handover, during which the contractor returns to fix anything that surfaces, from hairline cracks to fittings that weren’t installed quite right. This isn’t unusual on paper. What separates contractors is whether they honour it the same way in month 11 as they did in month 1.

Our own record on this extends past what the contract technically requires. We’ve gone back to rectify issues for clients even after their defects period had formally ended, because a house that develops a problem a year after moving in is still, in the client’s mind, our work to stand behind.