Borrowing

Every page under this site's buy, upgrade and refinance doors eventually asks the same question in a different costume: how is this paid for. The instinct is to start with the instrument — a bank loan, an HDB loan, a bridge, a private facility — and work outward from there. That gets the order backwards. A BUC buyer needs a floating-rate package with a progressive drawdown schedule and does not care yet what a fixed-rate resale package looks like. An HDB upgrader mid-sale needs a bridge sized against sale proceeds, not a cash-out equity loan. A retiree with no payslip and a fully paid condo needs a lender who reads the property, not the Notice of Assessment. The product only makes sense once you know which borrower you are. This page exists to sort that first, then hand you to the page written for your case.

The mechanics: how borrowing against Singapore property actually works

A property loan in Singapore is never the whole price. The Loan-to-Value ceiling set by MAS caps a first housing loan at 75% of the purchase price or valuation, whichever is lower, with a minimum 5% of the price in cash and the rest payable in cash or CPF Ordinary Account savings. The ceiling drops to 55% (LTV) with 10% minimum cash if the loan tenure runs past 30 years (25 for an HDB flat) or past age 65. A second outstanding housing loan caps at 45% LTV (25% long-tenure) with 25% minimum cash; a third or later loan caps at 35% (15% long-tenure), same 25% minimum cash. A non-individual borrower — a company, in practice — is capped at 15% LTV outright, which is one reason a property bought through a corporate structure is financed mostly in cash.

Money moves in a fixed order regardless of which borrower you are: cash first, then CPF, then the loan. On a building-under-construction purchase this matters twice over — the 5% option fee is cash only, the rest of the 20% downpayment can be cash or CPF, and the loan itself disburses in stages against construction milestones, with interest accruing only on what has actually been drawn down, not the full facility. A stalled construction stage means a smaller instalment, not a cheaper one — the rate is unchanged, only the base it is charged on. [⚠ buc.pps.interest_on_drawn_only: sources differ; awaiting a ruling]

Eligibility: who a lender will actually approve

Two ratios do almost all the gatekeeping. The Total Debt Servicing Ratio caps all of a borrower's monthly debt obligations — this loan plus every other loan, card and instalment — at 55% of gross monthly income, tested at a 4% floor rate for residential property (5% for non-residential) regardless of the rate actually quoted on the package. Variable, commission, bonus and rental income are counted at only 70% of face value, a 30% haircut, before they count toward that 55%. TDSR binds full banks, finance companies and merchant banks; it does not reach a moneylender or a private credit fund, which is exactly why those channels exist for a borrower TDSR would otherwise rule out.

An HDB loan runs a narrower, separate ratio: the Mortgage Servicing Ratio caps HDB and EC loan repayments at 30% of gross monthly income, on top of TDSR, and it never applies outside HDB or EC financing — a private resale loan is TDSR only. HDB's own concessionary loan carries its own eligibility gate that has nothing to do with either ratio: at least one applicant must be a Singapore Citizen (an all-PR household cannot get it), and no applicant, co-applicant, spouse or listed occupier may own or hold an interest in private residential, commercial or industrial property here or overseas. Fail that test and the household finances the flat through a bank loan instead, at bank rates, even though it is still an HDB flat.

Citizenship status: what changes before you even get to the loan

Citizenship status decides three things before financing enters the picture at all: whether Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty applies and at what rate, whether CPF savings can be used, and how a bank prices the loan. A Singapore Citizen pays 0% ABSD on a first property, 20% on a second, 30% on a third or later. A Permanent Resident pays 5% on a first property, 30% on a second, 35% on a third. A foreigner pays a flat 60% regardless of how many properties they already hold; an entity or trust pays 65%. Nationals of the United States, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland — and their Singapore PR spouses in a mixed marriage — are taxed at the same rate as a Singapore Citizen under their countries' free trade agreements with Singapore, a stamp-duty parity that does not extend to the Residential Property Act: an American buying landed housing still needs the same Land Dealings Approval Unit approval as any other foreigner.

CPF Ordinary Account savings can only be used by a Singapore Citizen or PR; a foreign buyer funds the downpayment, every stamp duty and every instalment shortfall in cash, full stop. Foreign income is not disqualifying but is priced and documented differently — banks typically offer 60–70% LTV in practice against a foreigner even where the ceiling allows more, ask for two years of tax returns, payslips, sometimes notarised and translated, and apply a heavier haircut to foreign-currency and variable income before TDSR is even calculated.

Which borrower am I

Thirteen shapes cover almost every borrower who reaches this page. Find yours, read one line, and go to the page written for it — the mechanics, the worked numbers and the pitfalls differ enough between them that a generic mortgage explainer serves none of them well.

Buying an HDB flat

HDB's own concessionary loan at 2.6% with no lock-in and no early-repayment penalty, against a bank loan at a lower headline rate but real exit costs — and the two are not a like-for-like comparison once MSR, eligibility and CPF mechanics are in the mix.

Buying a resale private property

Standard TDSR-and-LTV financing on a completed unit — fixed or floating from day one, no progressive drawdown, and the valuation gap is the risk that catches people who bid past the bank's number.

Buying a BUC or new launch

Banks offer floating packages only while the building is under construction; a fixed package only becomes available at TOP. Instalments start small and step up with each construction milestone, because interest accrues on the amount drawn, not the full loan. [⚠ buc.loan.fixed_available: sources differ; awaiting a ruling]

Upgrading — selling one home to buy the next

The sequencing problem: sell first and risk a gap with nowhere to live, or buy first and risk carrying two mortgages and a bridge. The ABSD refund clock and the bridging clock run on different triggers and neither forgives a missed date.

Refinancing an existing loan

Chasing a lower rate, or forced to move because a lock-in ended — either way the question is whether the switching cost clears before the next lock-in does, and whether TDSR even applies to your case.

Caught between two transactions — bridging

You need the sale proceeds from the old property to fund the new one, and the two completions do not land on the same day. A bridge is a MAS-defined instrument with a hard six-month regulatory identity, not just informally short-term.

Cashing out equity you already own

Not buying anything — pulling cash against a property you already hold, whether to fund another purchase, a business, or simply to hold liquidity. CPF-funded equity is not yours to cash out; only the cash portion is.

Earning outside Singapore

Foreign-currency or overseas-sourced income buying Singapore property — documentation, haircuts and which banks will even look at the file are the real gate, not the headline rate.

Borrowing through a company, or for a business

A company borrower is capped at 15% LTV outright and TDSR does not reach it — but MAS looks through a thinly capitalised holding company to the director's personal finances anyway, so incorporation is not a workaround.

No conventional income — asset-rich, income-thin

Retired, between jobs, or living off assets rather than a payslip: TDSR is built around income a bank can verify, and a property-rich, income-thin borrower fails it by design even with no real repayment risk.

The bank already said no — private credit

Non-bank lenders price on the property and the exit, not the payslip, at LTVs up to 90% and rates of roughly 6–9% a year, outside TDSR entirely — speed and access bought at a real multiple of the bank's cost of money.

Financing the renovation, not the purchase

CPF cannot touch this one at all. A standalone bank renovation loan at 2.5–6.5% is reported to cost several times what the same money would cost bundled into the mortgage at 1.4–2%.

Why does my quote cost more than my neighbour's

Same bank, same product, different price — because citizenship, property count, entity structure or a shorter lease each move the rate or the LTV independently, and most borrowers only discover which lever hit them after the offer letter arrives.

Taxes: what the loan does not cover, and has to be funded in cash or CPF alongside it

Buyer's Stamp Duty is payable on every purchase regardless of citizenship: 1% on the first $180,000, 2% on the next $180,000, 3% on the next $640,000, 4% on the next $500,000, 5% on the next $1,500,000, 6% above $3,000,000 — S$69,600 on a S$2,000,000 purchase. It is due within 14 days, in cash, with CPF reimbursement following only after a CPF charge is lodged against the property; the cash-first, CPF-after sequencing catches buyers who assumed CPF would simply cover it at completion.

Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty, where it applies, is the same cash-first mechanic at a much larger number: 20% on a Singapore Citizen's second property, 60% flat for a foreigner, 65% for an entity or trust. A Citizen who sells the first property within six months of completing the second may reclaim the ABSD paid — but the six-month clock runs from completion or TOP, not from signing, and IRAS has stated plainly it will not extend a missed deadline. Seller's Stamp Duty runs the other direction: 16%, 12%, 8%, 4% across a four-year holding period from the date of purchase, falling to nil after year four, which is a financing constraint in its own right for anyone planning to sell and re-borrow inside that window.

Property tax and, for a landlord, tax on rental income both run on separately from the loan and neither is CPF-payable: CPF Ordinary Account funds can pay stamp duty, legal fees and lodgment fees, but not property tax, monthly service and conservancy charges, or utilities — all of those come out of cash flow, every year, for as long as the loan runs.

Borrowing: LTV, TDSR, MSR, HDB versus bank, and floating versus fixed by phase

The four numbers that decide almost every quote you will be given: LTV sets how much cash and CPF you need at the front; TDSR at 55% (4% floor) sets how much loan your income supports; MSR at 30% is the extra, tighter ceiling that applies only inside an HDB or EC purchase; and the rate floor itself — 4% for residential, 5% for non-residential — is what a bank uses to stress-test you, not the rate you will actually pay month to month.

HDB versus bank is a live choice only where you qualify for both: HDB's concessionary rate has sat at 2.6% with no lock-in and no early-exit penalty, while a bank package typically carries a one-to-three-year lock-in with an exit penalty around 1.5% of the outstanding loan. The asymmetry runs one way — an HDB loan can be refinanced into a bank loan at any time; a bank loan can never be refinanced back into an HDB loan. That is a one-way door, and it is worth pausing on before switching for a headline rate that resets in two years.

Floating versus fixed is not really a preference — it is set by which phase of ownership you are in. On a BUC, banks offer floating only; a fixed package becomes available at TOP, when the full loan is finally disbursed and there is a completed asset to price against. On a completed resale purchase, both are available from day one, and the practical question shifts to how long you intend to hold before the next lock-in or the next sale. [⚠ buc.loan.fixed_available: sources differ; awaiting a ruling]

Renovation, A&A and rebuild: control that wears different clothes at each lifecycle phase

CPF cannot be used for renovation under any circumstance — the CPF Board's own list of approved housing uses does not include it. A standalone bank renovation loan is capped at S$30,000 or six times monthly income, whichever is lower, priced at roughly 2.5–6.5% a year, plus a 2% handling fee and a 1% insurance premium taken off the top before any work starts. The same money, if it could be bundled into the mortgage instead at 1.4–2%, is reported to cost roughly a quarter of what the standalone product costs over five years — which is why the timing of a renovation loan application, relative to the purchase or refinance, is worth more attention than the headline rate. [⚠ borrow.reno.fee_and_penalty_structure_2026_09_16: sources differ; awaiting a ruling]

A&A and a full rebuild on landed property are a different order of financing: banks cap a land loan itself at roughly 50–55% LTV, well below the 75% on a completed home, and a separate construction loan then disburses progressively against certified work stages, interest accruing only on what has been drawn, before converting into an ordinary home loan once the rebuild reaches TOP. This is the borrowing-side expression of control — the same lever that shows up as tax and legal structuring elsewhere on this site, just applied to a lifecycle phase where the asset itself is being remade rather than bought or sold.

Conveyancing: two clocks running at once

Stamp duty must be paid within 14 days of the contract; the transaction itself, where a mortgage is involved, typically takes 10 to 12 weeks from signing to completion. Those are two separate clocks, and the first one runs out long before the second one finishes — which is why BSD and ABSD are paid in cash up front and only reimbursed from CPF once a CPF charge is formally lodged against the property, not the other way around. Private conveyancing runs S$2,000 to S$5,000 all-in for a straightforward purchase, with no government fee schedule constraining what a lawyer can charge; mortgage stamp duty itself is a much smaller, separate item, 0.4% of the loan amount, capped at S$500.

Estate: what happens to the loan and the borrower's plans after death

Mortgage Reducing Term Assurance, the policy most borrowers hold to clear an outstanding loan on death, is not portable — refinancing or restructuring the loan typically means cancelling that cover and buying new, and the sum assured can drift out of alignment with the actual balance if this is missed. A residential property that passes to a beneficiary under a will or intestacy attracts no ABSD at the point of inheritance, but it counts toward that beneficiary's own property count the next time they buy — an upgrader's or investor's ABSD tier can shift because of a property they did not choose to acquire.

The mechanics of settling an estate, probate, wills and what an executor actually has to do sit on their own page, not this one — worth reading before assuming a mortgaged property simply resolves itself on death.

The voice: twelve questions before you sign

Two questions sort every borrower on this page before the twelve below even start. Are you borrowing to buy at all, or paying cash? And once you hold the property, are you living in it or letting it out? Four combinations fall out of that: cash plus own-use is pure appreciation with no carry to speak of. Cash plus let-out is a yield position, positive carry by construction — rent comes in, no financing cost goes out. Borrow plus own-use is negative carry by construction, and it is worth saying plainly because most owner-occupiers sit here and rarely name it that way: the mortgage payment is a cost with no offsetting income. Borrow plus let-out is the spread play, and the entire game is whether rent clears the financing cost, not just whether the property appreciates.

• C0 The play — is borrowing here a balance-sheet decision (what you own versus what you owe) or a cash-flow decision (can the monthly number be met)? For most borrowers on this page it is both at once, and conflating them is the first mistake.
• C1 Balance sheet — a mortgage adds an asset and a liability at the same time. Equity is the gap between them, and LTV sets how thin that gap starts out.
• C2 Cash flow — what actually leaves your account each month: the instalment, plus property tax, plus MCST or service charges, plus insurance. On a BUC this understates early years and overstates them later, because the instalment grows with each drawdown.
• C3 P&L — not the same thing as cash flow. Mortgage interest is an expense; the principal portion of your instalment is not — it is building equity, not spending money, even though it leaves your bank account exactly the same way the interest does.
• C4 Carry — rental income minus financing cost, if the property is let out. Positive, negative, or none if you live in it yourself. A borrowed, owner-occupied home always carries negative; that is not a flaw, it is the definition.
• C5 Give / get — you give up liquidity and take on a fixed monthly obligation; you get leverage, meaning gains (and losses) are magnified against a smaller cash outlay than buying outright.
• C6 Exposed to — the interest rate at the next repricing or the end of a fixed term; your own income if it is variable and TDSR-haircut already thin; the property's valuation if you ever need to refinance above the original loan.
• C7 For how long — the loan tenure you are committing to, which caps out at 30 years for an HDB flat and 35 for other property, and cannot run past your own age of 65 without the LTV ceiling dropping.
• C8 Failure cascade — the order matters: negative carry, if unaddressed, hits cash flow first; sustained cash-flow strain accumulates into a P&L loss; a P&L loss deep enough, combined with a falling valuation, produces negative equity; negative equity blocks a clean sale or refinance, which is illiquidity; illiquidity under enough pressure becomes insolvency. Each stage is a different problem with a different fix, and they do not skip steps.
• C9 Liquidity — how fast the property becomes cash again, and at what haircut. A forced sale inside the SSD holding period costs up to 16% of price on top of whatever discount a rushed sale extracts.
• C10 Control — can you change the outcome, or are you a price-taker on the market? Renovation, A&A and a full rebuild are this page's version of control: each is a lever a borrower can pull to change what the asset is worth, at a real, financed cost.
• C11 The exit — selling inside four years costs SSD on a sliding scale to nil; selling to refinance elsewhere costs a lock-in penalty around 1.5% of the outstanding balance; either way, the exit has a price, and it is worth pricing before you sign, not after.

A mortgage broker is paid a referral commission by the bank on disbursal, not by you, disclosed under MAS rules — useful, and worth knowing the incentive runs toward whichever bank pays the broker best among the packages that qualify you, not necessarily the single cheapest one available market-wide. A private credit broker or fund prices on the property and the exit, explicitly outside TDSR, at 6–9% a year and up to 90% LTV — real access for a borrower a bank has declined, at a real multiple of the bank's cost of money, and the broker's fee sits inside that spread, not disclosed as a separate line most of the time. A licensed moneylender is capped by law at 4% a month interest, a 10% admin fee and total lifetime charges no larger than the principal — the legal ceiling on the most expensive, least discretionary channel on this page, and one that will lodge a caveat against the property itself if the loan terms allow it, blocking any sale until the debt is cleared.

Every one of these professionals is compensated by a mechanism that does not always point toward your cheapest outcome. None of that makes the channel wrong to use — it makes it worth asking, plainly, who pays them and how much before you sign anything they hand you.

A property agent is typically paid around 2% of the transaction price by the seller — S$40,000 on a S$2,000,000 sale — and nothing at all if the deal does not complete. CEA states plainly that commission is not fixed and is negotiable, that it should be agreed and documented before signing, and that payment goes to the licensed agency, never to the agent personally. The incentive this creates cuts both ways: an agent paid only on completion is motivated to get a deal done, which can mean pushing a buyer toward a price or a timeline that suits closing the sale more than it suits the buyer's own borrowing capacity or the terms actually available to them. The same agent has no financial stake in which loan package you choose, whether you use a mortgage broker, or whether refinancing later saves you money — that decision is entirely yours to make well, independent of the person who sold you the property.