Elevated above higher ground

Amid the hype and fluff around luxury residential property launches in the various corners of Singapore, I wrote an opinion piece defining luxury homes in January 2013. At that time, Forbes counted 1,426 billionaires in the world, holding a combined US$5.4 trillion. The 2026 list counts 3,428 of them, worth US$20.1 trillion ($25.9 trillion).

In its 20th edition, Knight Frank’s The Wealth Report 2026, puts the number of individuals worth more than US$30 million at 713,626, a third higher than five years ago, with 89 people somewhere in the world crossing that threshold every day. In June, when SpaceX listed on the Nasdaq, Elon Musk became the first person in history to be worth a trillion dollars. The apex of the wealth pyramid has risen to an altitude where the word “luxury,” as property agents and property developers tout it, is already inadequate.

In 2013, I posited that a luxury residence is defined by two criteria: the address and the interiors. That definition still holds, as it still serves the average millionaire well. Put these two together in a well-built house and we have what is called the “collectibles”: the bespoke freeholds that hold their value across generations, the homes of the ultra-high-net-worth individuals and, increasingly, of the family office.

However, a new tier of criterion is needed today, a crown that sits above the first two. Buyers at this tier do not ask what a home costs. Whether the figure is US$20 million ($25 million) or US$200 million, or US$1,000 psf or US$10,000 psf, is beside the point.

What they ask is whether it is worth owning. Worth owning means the home, or in this case the “presidence”, carries what I would call a “life scenario”: a presidence answers the needs of a household at every stage of a lifespan — from birth to marriage and from old age to death, then serves the generation that follows.

A presidence defines the pinnacle of luxury homes. However, “luxury,” the word printed on property advertisements and brochures, has been worn too thin and is an unworthy adjective. The presidence takes its measure from the residences of heads of state — the Versailles, the Schönbrunn, the Hofburg, Windsor Castle and the Ninomaru-goten Palace at Nijō Castle. These are homes built so well, by the finest hands of their age and from materials chosen to endure, that they have stood for centuries and will stand for centuries more.

A home may be classified as a presidence only if it satisfies all three criteria.

Criterion one: The address

While a palace may be the best residential property in a city, every neighbour is ranked beneath the occupants of the palace. However, a presidence is set among peers, in an enclave where each household is of comparable standing, because the company a home keeps is part of what the home is.

Tokyo’s Denenchofu, Japan’s first garden suburb, has held this quality since 1918. Laid out at low density with plots generous enough for the gardens, tennis courts and swimming pools that the rest of the city can only dream of, its character is preserved by its own building rules, and its residents drawn from the country’s executives, politicians and public figures. When the Great Kanto earthquake levelled central Tokyo in 1923, Denenchofu stood almost untouched, a reminder that location matters as much as how the homes are built.

The finest of such enclaves share a further feature, in that they rest on elevated ground: Bukit Tunku in Kuala Lumpur, Victoria Peak in Hong Kong, Yangmingshan in Taipei, Rokurokusocho near Kobe and Beverly Hills in California all sit above their cities. Height achieves several things at once: it sets a barrier between the home and the casual visitor, that is, privacy; it commands a view; it lifts the house clear of floods and, along a coastline, of tsunamis; and it drains cleanly, which is to say it is more hygienic and healthier ground to live upon.

Criterion two: The substance

For a buyer who is not concerned about the dollar value, what does “value for money” mean? Value, here, is a US$3 million wrought-iron gate forged by hand, a US$200,000 stove, a US$30,000 leather armchair — all built to outlast the five generations who will use them. The materials of the interiors and the craftsmanship of the house itself are important; not an overpriced Dalí painting hung on its wall to be admired and one day resold.

Price psf — the figure that news headlines hype — carries no meaning at this level. Knight Frank’s 2026 figures show that US$1 million now buys 172.2 sq ft in Monaco, 355.2 sq ft in London and 366 sq ft in New York. At this level one is paying for the abundance of space, peace and restfulness, so the psf rate is a meaningless indicator. It is the opposite of the mass-market logic, where developers shrink the units, lift the psf price, and allow the commoner-millionaire a chance to humblebrag.

Criterion three: The space and security

This is the one that the present-day rich and famous demand: space, quiet, health and security. Space and silence come from the low-density suburban location, and from not sharing a wall, a lift or a swimming pool with 400 other households.

Health is clean air, clean water, clean food and the sanity that having room to breathe restores. In Suzhou, the Sangha Retreat has built an entire residential community around precisely this, ordering its architecture, its food and the rhythm of its day around physical and mental wellbeing.

Security has widened far beyond a guardhouse, and at One Hyde Park in London it means purified air, bullet-proof glass, panic rooms, iris scanners in the lifts and a building designed so that residents and their staff move through separate cores and never share a corridor.

It increasingly means autonomy as well: a home with its own reserves of power, water and food, able to sustain its household when the world beyond the gate cannot. Finally, these needs for space, quiet, health, security and autonomy are supported by attentive resident care service, designed to make daily life as seamless as it would be at the world’s finest resorts.

Not every presidence stands on its own grounds: One Hyde Park rises vertically in the heart of Knightsbridge, and in New York City, a single apartment at 220 Central Park South changed hands for around US$238 million in 2019, a figure that shows how little the quantum restrains this buyer.

Singapore has candidates of its own, among them The Marq on Paterson Hill, whose units were built with cross-beams able to bear chandeliers weighing more than 300kg, and the Good Class Bungalow enclave at Chatsworth Road, the nearest thing the island offers to an enclave of presidences.

However, Singapore is among the most densely populated nations on earth. Our built environment is cramped, and on the measure of space alone we cannot hold a candle to the hillsides of Kuala Lumpur, Taipei or Kobe. The Singaporean who wants the full measure of a presidence will, for now, have to find it abroad.

The number of the ultra-wealthy looking for presidences is increasing: 89 individuals with more than US$30 million of investible wealth are added every day. A first trillionaire is already among us; perhaps, a second and a third are not far behind.

But presidences that can attract such wealth: on elevated and quiet ground, among equals, built of substance to last for generations, are not increasing as fast.

The developer who builds to these three criteria is offering more than a property: they are offering a home that fulfils life scenarios across generations. The question, then, is whether bespoke developers and builders will rise to build presidences for prestige, peers and posterity — embodied in the triple criteria of address, substance and security — or leave this growing tier of wealth to seek their crowns elsewhere.