Our property market may be the only thing with more sudden U-turns than Upper Thomson Road. I reckon that most of our longtime readers might be able to pick out distinctive design trends in the condominium market. Perhaps some seasoned property agents and real estate investors could even identify the age of a project, even the developer behind a specific project, from a quick glimpse of the unit layout. But one thing that’s always amused me is how dramatically Singaporean condo buyers can completely reverse their preferences in just around a decade. For example, take the sentiment toward mega-developments. These are projects with more than 1,000 residential units. About 10 years ago, I recall that most buyers tended to dislike these large projects. The often cited complaints were: ‘It feels too crowded’, ‘it feels like living in a HDB estate‘, and ‘Later there will surely be problems when selling’. The prevailing sentiment at the time was that mega-developments would...