The Return of the Single Floor Plate

Between 2012 and 2022, the prevailing logic in tall residential development was that four apartments on a floor produced more revenue than one. Across most of the price curve this remains true. At the top of it, it has stopped being true.

A subdivided upper floor produces four units with single or dual aspect. A full plate produces one unit with 360 degrees. The premium buyers at this level are paying for is not square metres — it is the absence of a shared corridor, a neighbouring wall, and a lift lobby they do not control.

In the eleven markets we track, full-plate residences transacted at an average of 2.3 times the per-square-metre rate of subdivided units in the same building. In Dubai and Hong Kong the multiple was higher.

Almost nobody is building them. A developer must commit to the full-plate configuration at structural design stage, because the core, the lift strategy, and the service risers all differ. That decision is taken five to seven years before the unit is sold, under financing conditions that reward unit count.

The consequence is a category where demand has grown and supply has been fixed by decisions taken half a decade ago. We currently have four full-plate mandates across nine offices and enquiries from considerably more than four qualified acquirers.

For buyers: shell purchases at structural stage remain the only reliable route, and they require a five-year horizon and tolerance for construction risk. For owners of existing full plates: the scarcity is structural rather than cyclical, and there is no supply response arriving before 2031.