Luxury Home Development

How landed developments are planned and delivered, and what design management actually does.

15 min · 3 articles

In this guide

7 min · 2 June 2026
What Design Management Actually Does
Design management is the discipline of keeping a scheme buildable and affordable while it is still being designed. On a landed development it means the design team, the cost plan and the construction programme are tested against each other continuously, rather than handed over sequentially and reconciled at tender.
4 min · 24 July 2026
What a Feasibility Study Tells You
A feasibility study answers three questions about a specific plot: what it can yield, what it will cost to get there, and what the result is likely to be worth. To answer them it checks the plot's zoning and housing type in URA's Master Plan, its height control, the setbacks set by the road it fronts, its levels, any public sewer crossing it, any protected trees, and its neighbours. It takes two to three weeks, and it is the only document that lets you walk away from a purchase for the right reason.
4 min · 17 July 2026
Delivering a Cluster Development
A cluster has to read as one composition from the street and as individual houses from inside. That tension is the whole design problem, and it is resolved by carrying a single formal idea across the scheme while planning each residence separately behind it. Legally a cluster is one of two things — landed houses on their own plots, designed together, or a strata landed development on one shared site, which URA's rules confine to sites zoned for flats and require to give at least 45 per cent of the site to communal open space.

Seven other guides, and the rest of the writing.

Costs, approvals, timelines and the decisions that are expensive to change later.

The Journal

Luxury Home Development

In this guide

What Design Management Actually Does

What a Feasibility Study Tells You

Delivering a Cluster Development

Seven other guides, and the rest of the writing.