This Is Nassim Road, Singapore’s Most Expensive Street

23.04.2024 - 08:25 / forbes.com

This quiet, leafy road may not look like much on first glance. Scratch the surface and you will discover more multi-million-dollar mansions than you can shake a Hermès purse at and a neighborhood full of top-notch restaurants and exclusive hotels. This is Nassim Road, Singapore’s billionaire’s row.

Singapore is an island city-state measuring just 281 square miles. It is also the world’s fifth-wealthiest city according to the World's Wealthiest Cities Report 2023. Singapore is currently home to 240,100 millionaires, 329 centi-millionaires, and 27 billionaires, says the report, with a higher number of high net worth (HNW) individuals than Asia’s richest city, Tokyo.

In Singapore, billionaire’s mansions are referred to as Good Class Bungalows (GCBs) and Nassim Road is full of them. The term Good Class Bungalows was coined in the 1980s by the Singapore Government that was seeking to protect landed properties from creeping development while looking to attract wealthy investors. For a house to qualify as a GCB, it must have a land area of at least 1,400 square meters, or 15,070 square feet, be no more than two stories high and located in one of the city’s 39 designated GCB areas. There are believed to be around 2,800 GCBs in Singapore, each with a price tag of tens of millions of dollars.

Sadly, a walk along the almost mile-long Nassim Road will not reveal much about the houses or the people living in them. Most are either ultra-wealthy or celebrities (or both) and rumors about their identities are mainly based on hearsay. Nassim Road is also home to a number of embassies, including those of Japan, Pakistan, and the Philippines, as well as Eden Hall, the residence of the British High Commissioner and a place of great historical significance.

For most mere mortals, living Nassim Road is sadly off bounds, but that does not mean it is not worth a visit. So, if you are not here to buy property, what else can you do in Nassim Road?

Apart from wandering up the street to try to peer over the walls, there is not much to do in Nassim Road per-se, but the surrounding neighborhood is infinitely worth exploring. The top of Nassim Road will lead you directly into the Singapore Botanic Gardens, the city's first UNESCO World Heritage site. Founded in 1859, the modern-day space is not only filled with more than 10,000 different types of spectacular tropical plants, it is also a world-class scientific institution that has evelved from a British colonial botanic garden to a key center for research and plant conservation.

At the opposite end of Nassim Road, in the part closest to the city, you will find major thoroughfares like Tanglin Road and, of course, the legendary Orchard Road, known for its world-class shopping and