Roxy Square's Legacy: Is It Time to Bet on This East Coast Campus?

Roxy Square is having a moment. Not the kind of moment that comes with a champagne-soaked showflat and a queue of property agents in branded polo shirts, but the quieter, more interesting kind — the moment when a neighbourhood old-timer suddenly starts looking like a rational bet. The Thomson-East Coast Line has switched on Marine Parade MRT station just down the road. The Katong food trail keeps pulling crowds past its doors. And a generation of buyers priced out of District 15's glossy new launches is starting to ask a question that would have sounded absurd five years ago: is this aging, 99-year-leasehold "campus" on East Coast Road actually the smartest property play in the neighbourhood?

Roxy Square isn't a condo. It isn't exactly a mall either. It's a distinctly Singaporean hybrid — a strata-titled retail podium with homes stacked on top, from an era when developers built "towns within a building" rather than single-use towers. Locals know it for its perpetually busy food court, its eclectic mix of clinics and tuition centres, and its slightly chaotic charm. Investors increasingly know it for something else: rental demand, a rail catalyst, and a land value that may one day exceed the building sitting on it.

In this piece, we dig into Roxy Square's legacy, its transaction and rental dynamics, and the forces — from the Thomson-East Coast Line to the possibility of collective sale — that have put this old warhorse back on the watchlist.

From Roxy Theatre to Roxy Square: A Brief History of the Site

To understand why Roxy Square matters, you have to understand the name. Long before anyone worried about lease decay or rental yields, the Roxy Theatre anchored this corner of East Coast Road. In the mid-20th century, it was one of Singapore's iconic standalone cinemas — part of the great golden age of movie-going, when a night out in Katong meant catching a film under the marquee lights before heading to a nearby coffee shop for a plate of laksa.

When the cinema era ended and the projectors dimmed for good, the site was redeveloped. Roxy Square rose in the late 1990s — roughly around 1997 — carrying the Roxy name forward into a new format. Where audiences had once gathered for screenings, a new generation would gather for fishball noodles, tuition classes, and medical appointments. The cinema became a campus.

The redevelopment was a product of its time — the mid-1990s era of mixed-use schemes that bundled shops, offices, and homes into one strata-titled envelope. But unlike the sleek integrated developments of today, Roxy Square was built for a slower, more grounded kind of living. Its retail units were sold individually, which is why the tenant mix today feels less like a curated mall and more like a living organism: a food court that packs out at lunch, a couple of long-standing medical clinics, a supermarket anchor at various points in its history, tuition centres that keep the corridors humming in the evenings, and a rotating cast of small retailers.

For a certain kind of Singaporean, that's precisely the appeal. Roxy Square is real — it has texture, history, and a loyal neighbourhood following. For a property investor, though, the question is less about nostalgia and more about whether the fundamentals still work. Let's break down what you're actually buying.

What Exactly Are You Buying? Anatomy of a Mixed-Use Campus

Calling Roxy Square a "campus" sounds like marketing fluff until you spend a morning there. You can wake up in your apartment, grab breakfast in the food court downstairs, drop the kids at a tuition centre in the same building, see a doctor at a clinic on the second floor, and never once step onto the street. That self-contained ecosystem is the core of Roxy Square's value proposition — and it's surprisingly rare in modern Singapore development.

But the physical product is unapologetically old-school. Compared to a 2020s launch with its smart-home integrations, branded fittings, and resort-style facilities, Roxy Square's residential units feel dated. Finishes are legacy-era. Bathrooms and kitchens cry out for renovation. The building doesn't have the sky gardens, lap pools, and co-working lounges that new launches use to justify premium pricing. What it has instead is location, scale, and an address in one of Singapore's most beloved food-and-heritage belts.

The leasehold math

Here's the number that dominates every conversation about Roxy Square: the 99-year lease started in 1996. As of 2025, that leaves roughly 70 years on the clock. Seventy years sounds like a long time — and for most buyers, it is. But property valuation in Singapore treats aging leaseholds with a cold, mathematical eye: value erodes as the lease decays, and the erosion accelerates in the final decades. Even so, at the 70-year mark, the property still sits in the "comfortably financeable" zone for most buyers, provided lenders apply their standard lease-remaining tests sensibly.

To see how this plays out against the newer competition, consider the lease profile of a few District 15 developments:

The gap is stark. Newer launches offer more than nine decades of lease; Roxy Square offers seven. That gap is exactly why Roxy Square trades at a significant discount on a per-square-foot basis to its younger neighbours — and why it can look attractive to buyers who value income over a 30-year horizon. The discount is, in effect, the market pricing in the lease decay. The question is whether the discount has become too deep — and that's where the location story comes in.

The pros and cons

Every item on that list is a trade-off. Roxy Square buyers give up the polish of new development but gain a yield profile and an entry price that new launches simply can't offer. And crucially, they gain something else: a front-row seat to one of the most significant infrastructure upgrades in Singapore's east — the Thomson-East Coast Line.

The Thomson-East Coast Line: A Rail Catalyst Arrives

Here is the single biggest argument for taking Roxy Square seriously: Marine Parade MRT station opened on 13 November 2022 as part of the Thomson-East Coast Line's Stage 3. The old Roxy campus, which for decades relied on buses and taxis, is now within a comfortable five-minute walk of a modern, fully accessible rail station. For a property that hadn't seen a catalyst of this magnitude since it was built, that's a genuinely transformative moment.

But the story is bigger than one station. The Thomson-East Coast Line is being rolled out in stages, and the East Coast stretch is its final act:

Stage 3 delivered the 13-station stretch from Mount Pleasant through Orchard and the Marina Bay area down to the East Coast — a route that put Marine Parade, Tanjong Katong, and Katong Park on the rail map for the first time. Stage 4 followed in June 2024, extending the line from Tanjong Rhu to Bayshore. And the final stage — two more stations at Bedok South and Sungei Bedok — is expected to complete the line in 2026, connecting the East Coast directly to the city, Woodlands, and beyond.

The East Coast stretch of the TEL looks like this:

What does this mean for Roxy Square in practical terms?

• A direct city commute. From Marine Parade, a resident can reach Orchard in roughly 25-30 minutes and the Marina Bay financial district in about 20 — without a single bus transfer. That puts Roxy Square firmly in the commuter belt for white-collar workers who once dismissed the East Coast as too far.
• A lift for the entire district's rental appeal. Rail connectivity historically re-rates the rental premiums of properties within walking distance of a station, especially among young professionals and expat families who prize car-lite living. Katong's expat appeal — already strong thanks to its schools, food scene, and beach proximity — gets a structural boost.
• Future-proofing the "campus" concept. When the TEL's final stages open in 2026, the entire East Coast corridor becomes one seamless rail spine from Woodlands in the north to Sungei Bedok in the east. Roxy Square, sitting near the middle of that spine, becomes one of the best-connected older developments in the district.

The infrastructure story is not just about convenience — it's about foot traffic and commercial vitality. Roxy Square's retail podium has always survived on neighbourhood custom. A train station a few hundred metres away changes the economics of that retail: it widens the catchment, increases dwell time in the area, and makes the food court and services upstairs more visible to a daily river of commuters. For strata retail owners, that translates directly into rental sustainability — and for the residential owners, it makes the "campus" living proposition significantly more attractive to tenants.

The Portfolio Math: Rents, Yields, and the Lease Decay Question

Let's get to the part investors actually care about: the numbers. Because specific Roxy Square transaction and rental data fluctuate month to month, we'll paint the picture in ranges and principles rather than pinning false precision on a single datapoint.

Why old leasehold stock rents well

The conventional wisdom in Singapore is that older leasehold properties in good locations are yield heroes. Because their capital values have been disciplined by lease decay, the rental income they generate — which is driven by location and demand rather than building age — works out to a much healthier percentage return. Market observers commonly cite gross rental yields of 3.5% to 5% for older suburban leasehold stock, against roughly 2.5% to 3.5% for new launches. In a low-rate environment, that yield differential matters enormously.

Roxy Square's rental appeal sits on four pillars:

• Schools. Tao Nan School, Ngee Ann Primary, CHIJ Katong Convent, St Patrick's School, Victoria School, and Victoria Junior College are all within a short radius. Families chasing these schools form a reliable, long-tenure rental pool.
• The expat corridor. The East Coast has long been one of Singapore's traditional expat belts. The draw isn't just the housing — it's the lifestyle: East Coast Park's beaches and cycling paths, the Katong/Joo Chiat food scene, the easy-going village atmosphere.
• The heritage food pull. The sheer gravitational force of Katong's culinary reputation — the laksa stalls, the Michelin-recognised eateries along East Coast Road, the weekend crowds — keeps the area buzzing and makes it a desirable address for young Singaporeans who want their neighbourhood to feel alive.
• Rail connectivity. As covered above, the MRT turns Roxy Square from a car-dependent locale into a genuinely convenient one.

For a two-bedroom unit in an older East Coast development, rents commonly sit in the S$3,000 to S$4,200 range in recent market conditions; newer two-bedders in the district trade higher, but they also cost significantly more to acquire. The yield math tends to favour the older stock — that's the structural reason investors keep circling back to Roxy Square.

Who's buying and renting?

Financing: the ~70-year lease question

Here's where the leasehold math gets practical. When you apply for a bank loan on a leasehold property, lenders typically apply a "remaining lease" test: they want to ensure that the lease still has meaningful time left after the loan matures. A common internal benchmark is that the remaining lease at loan maturity should be a comfortable margin above the loan tenure — often on the order of several decades.

With roughly 70 years left on Roxy Square's lease, a buyer who takes a standard 30-year loan would see the lease down to about 40 years at maturity. That's below the comfort zone of many lenders, which means in practice:

• Loan tenures for Roxy Square units may be capped at 15 to 20 years rather than the full 30.
• Some buyers may need larger down payments or face slightly higher-than-normal interest rates.
• Age matters: a buyer over 50 may find their loan tenure compressed further by the standard rule that the borrower's age plus loan tenure should not exceed roughly 75 years.

None of this kills the deal. For an investor who plans to hold for 10-15 years and sell before the lease gets too short, financing is entirely workable. But it's a critical filter: Roxy Square is not a buy-and-hold-for-generations asset. It's a hold-with-an-exit-strategy asset.

So who should consider it? Let's map the decision.

The bottom line: Roxy Square's investment case is fundamentally an income-and-conviction play. You buy it because the yield is real, the location is proven, and the discount to new launches is wide. You hold it with both eyes on two future events: the completion of the TEL and the eventual redevelopment potential of one of Katong's most valuable land parcels.

The En-Bloc Dream: Redevelopment and the Future of the Campus

Every aging leasehold in a prime location eventually confronts the same question: is the land worth more than the building on top of it? For Roxy Square, that question has started to feel increasingly pertinent. The development sits on a sizeable plot at the junction of East Coast Road and Joo Chiat Road — arguably one of the most strategic corners in the Katong precinct. As nearby land parcels get redeveloped into new condominiums and mixed-use offerings, the value of Roxy Square's land component is quietly rising.

Why Roxy Square keeps appearing on en-bloc watch lists

• Location, location, location. The site is within walking distance of Marine Parade MRT, surrounded by the heritage conservation district of Joo Chiat, and minutes from the East Coast's future high-density corridors. A developer could envision a modern mixed-use project — residential over retail — that capitalizes on the same "campus" concept Roxy Square pioneered, but with a 2020s execution.
• Upside in density. Depending on the master plan zoning and plot ratio, a redevelopment could yield significantly more gross floor area than the current building, unlocking value that the existing strata owners cannot capture without collective action.
• The precedent effect. Singapore has seen successful en-bloc sales of older mixed-use and strata developments, and the collective-sale machinery — though demanding — is well understood. When developers are land-hungry and sites in prime districts are scarce, older complexes like Roxy Square become prime hunting grounds.

The strata-title hurdle

But here's the catch: Roxy Square is a strata-titled mixed development with a large number of owners. The retail podium alone contains dozens of individually owned shops, and the residential block adds more owners on top. Getting 80% or more of the owners to agree on a collective sale — and getting the retail owners to agree on the value of their shops — is a notoriously difficult exercise. Retail owners have to weigh their steady, tangible rental income against a share of a theoretical redevelopment windfall that may take years to materialise. This friction is the single biggest reason Roxy Square hasn't already been redeveloped.

Then there's the leasehold complication. A collective sale of a 99-year leasehold with ~70 years remaining is more complex to price than a freehold or a fresh-lease site — although, conversely, a developer who acquires and successfully redevelops the site can apply for a fresh 99-year lease, which is precisely where the value creation lies.

Three possible futures

Scenario 1: The en-bloc. An owner-led collective sale effort gains traction, a developer acquires the site, and Roxy Square makes way for a modern mixed-use project. Owners receive a premium over the value of their individual units — generally a substantial uplift for the residential owners, who get paid for the land's development potential rather than the aging building's utility. This is the dream scenario, and it's the reason many investors tolerate the lease decay and dated fittings.

Scenario 2: The asset enhancement. A less dramatic but more realistic near-term path. The building's management and owners pour money into upgrading the common areas, refreshing the food court, and repositioning the retail mix. Rents and foot traffic lift, the campus becomes more attractive to tenants, and capital values quietly re-rate. This scenario doesn't require 80% consensus — just a management committee with vision.

Scenario 3: The status quo. The building continues to function as it has for two decades — valued by locals, tolerated by investors, slowly aging. Rents hold steady because the location holds steady, but capital appreciation drifts sideways to down, tracking the lease decay curve. The en-bloc remains perpetually "a few years away."

Which scenario plays out depends on factors no single investor controls: interest rates, developer land bids, owner sentiment, and the broader property cycle. But here's the key insight: scenarios 1 and 2 both contain upside, and scenario 3 at worst preserves the income. That asymmetric payoff — limited downside if the status quo holds, significant upside if redevelopment happens — is the structural reason Roxy Square has a following among contrarian investors.

The wider D15 context

Roxy Square doesn't exist in a vacuum. District 15 has been one of Singapore's hottest residential corridors in recent years, with launches like Grand Dunman, Meyer Mansion, The Tembusu, and the upcoming Bayshore precinct commanding strong buyer interest. The district's transformation is anchored by the TEL, the rejuvenation of the East Coast stretch, and the continued appeal of the Katong/Joo Chiat heritage lifestyle. As new supply pushes asking prices upward, the price gap between new launches and older stock like Roxy Square widens — and at some point, that gap becomes the trade. Buyers who can't stomach new-launch prices, or investors who refuse to accept 2.5% yields, are the natural audience for Roxy Square.

The comparison also cuts the other way: the influx of new supply in D15 could, in the medium term, put competitive pressure on Roxy Square's rental pool. Younger renters with budgets that stretch may prefer a brand-new unit near Telok Kurau or Bayshore. Roxy Square's counter-punch is price: it will always rent below the new stock, and for many tenants, 70 years of lease is a non-issue over a two-year lease term.

Food for Thought

Before you decide whether Roxy Square deserves a place in your portfolio, ask yourself these questions:

1. What's your holding horizon? If you plan to hold for 30 years, the ~70-year lease at purchase becomes ~40 years at exit — a level where buyer pools shrink and financing gets harder. If you plan to hold for 10 years, the lease decay barely registers. Which investor are you?

2. Are you buying income or a lottery ticket? Roxy Square's yield is the tangible, reliable part of the thesis. The en-bloc is the lottery ticket. If the en-bloc never happens, would the rental yield alone have been enough to justify the purchase?

3. How much would you pay to live in Katong? The same money buys more space at Roxy Square, but the building itself is old. Is the heritage lifestyle worth the dated fittings — or would a new launch, with fewer years of history but better building technology, serve you better?

4. Could the TEL story already be priced in? Marine Parade station opened in late 2022. The "rail premium" may have already been absorbed into the asking prices of nearby properties. What's the next catalyst — and how likely is it?

5. Are you comfortable with strata complexity? A mixed-use building with dozens of independent retail owners is not a typical condominium. Decision-making is slower, the management situation is more complex, and the en-bloc path is harder. Would you rather own a clean, simple residential asset?

The Bottom Line

Roxy Square is a study in Singapore property's grand trade-offs. It offers location, heritage, yield, and a genuine shot at redevelopment upside — in exchange for an aging building, a decaying lease, and a financing landscape that will only get more complicated with each passing year. It is not a safe, obvious, or easy bet. But for investors who understand the leasehold math, who can tolerate renovation and imperfection, and who believe the East Coast's infrastructure transformation is still underpriced, this old campus on East Coast Road is worth more than a nostalgic glance.

The rail line is fully arriving. The food queues are getting longer. The land beneath the old cinema is quietly appreciating. Sometimes the most interesting property in the district is the one everyone has walked past for two decades.