Buying a resale condo

A resale condo is a private home someone already owns, sold to you on the open market — not a unit a developer is selling off plans. There is no showflat, no balloting, no progress-payment schedule tied to construction milestones. There is a listing, a viewing, an Option to Purchase, a bank valuation, and a completion date, usually 8 to 10 weeks out. This page answers the two questions that actually matter before you sign anything: what do you pay, and when do you pay it. It runs in the order the purchase itself runs — mechanics, who can buy, what citizenship changes, tax, borrowing, what you can and can't do to the unit once it's yours, the legal machinery, and what happens to it when you die.

The mechanics: option, valuation, completion

A resale deal starts with an Option to Purchase, not a Sale and Purchase Agreement drafted under the Housing Developers Rules. Market convention has you paying the seller an option fee of about 1% of the price to hold the unit exclusively, with roughly 14 days to decide — sometimes stretched to 21 in a slower market. Exercising the option brings a further 4% or so to the seller, taking the total deposit to about 5%; the balance follows at legal completion. None of this is a fixed statutory figure the way a new-launch Form 2 option is — it is what the resale market has settled on, and a seller's agent will usually hold the line on it.

Once you exercise the option, your bank orders its own valuation — from a valuer on its own panel, not one you choose. The valuer pulls three to five recent comparable transactions in the same development or precinct (the Direct Comparison Method) and adjusts for floor, facing, condition and remaining lease; where comparables are too thin, a Depreciated Replacement Cost approach stands in instead. An independent pre-offer valuation, if you want one before committing to an option at all, runs roughly S$300 to S$600.

The bank lends against whichever is lower, price or valuation — never against the price you agreed alone. Agree S$2,000,000 for a unit the bank values at S$1,880,000, and your loan is capped at 75% of S$1,880,000 — S$1,410,000 — not of the price; the S$120,000 gap between price and valuation has to be found in cash, since neither the loan nor CPF can touch it. This is the resale market's central mechanic and worth internalising before you fall for a unit: the number a valuer will sign is not the number a motivated seller can ask for, and the difference is yours alone to fund. A worked illustration on a S$1,600,000 purchase against three different valuations shows the shape of it plainly — nil cash gap at a S$1.60m valuation, S$50,000 at S$1.55m, S$100,000 at S$1.50m — which is why the sensible move is to check what cash reserve survives that gap, plus renovation and moving costs, before agreeing to pay above valuation at all.

The other half of the mechanic is what a resale unit gives you that a launch cannot: a finished, inspectable home, occupied or vacant, available at completion — not a set of plans and a wait for Temporary Occupation Permit. There is no progressive drawdown against construction stages, no risk the finished unit differs from a showflat, and no multi-year gap between paying and moving in. See /realty/buy/new-launches for that side of the trade.

Eligibility: who can buy, and what approval it needs

A condominium unit needs no Land Dealings Approval Unit approval to buy, whatever your citizenship. That gate under the Residential Property Act catches landed housing and vacant residential land, not a strata condo unit or a flat inside an approved condominium development. A Singapore Citizen, a Permanent Resident, a foreigner of any nationality, or a company can all buy a resale condo unit outright — the approval hurdle a landed purchase faces simply does not exist here. What does change by profile is tax and financing, covered below.

The one eligibility gate that does bite is on the seller's side of many resale condo deals: an HDB flat owner and spouse cannot exercise an Option to Purchase or sign an S&P for private residential property, completed or under construction, until the flat clears its Minimum Occupation Period. After MOP, a Citizen owner may keep the HDB flat alongside a private home; a Permanent Resident owner must sell the flat within 6 months of acquiring the private one. If you're funding this purchase by selling an HDB flat, budget 8 to 10 weeks minimum for the HDB resale process itself after its own OTP, plus an average 60 to 90 days of marketing before that — and sequence it against the resale condo's own 14-day option and 8-10 week completion, because the two clocks rarely land together on their own. See /borrow/bridging for the cash gap that mismatch creates, and /realty/buy/upgrading for the fuller upgrader path.

Citizenship status: what you owe changes with who you are

Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty is the single line item that moves most by profile, computed on the higher of price and market value. US, Swiss, Liechtenstein, Norwegian and Icelandic nationals — and Permanent Residents of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland under the EFTA treaties — are taxed as a Singapore Citizen under FTA parity; this is a stamp-duty rule only and does nothing to the eligibility question above, since a condo needs no RPA approval for any nationality regardless.

• Singapore Citizen, first residential property — 0%
• Singapore Citizen, second residential property — 20%
• Singapore Citizen, third and subsequent property — 30%
• Permanent Resident, first residential property — 5%
• Permanent Resident, second residential property — 30%
• Permanent Resident, third and subsequent property — 35%
• Foreigner, any residential property — 60%
• Entity or trust, any residential property — 65%
• US, Swiss, Liechtenstein, Norwegian, Icelandic nationals (and EFTA PRs) — taxed as a Singapore Citizen

ABSD is rounded down to the nearest dollar and payable within 14 days of exercising the option — in cash first, since CPF reimbursement can only follow once a CPF charge is lodged against the property. A Citizen who already owns a home and buys this resale condo as a second property can get the 20% refunded if the first is sold within 6 months of this purchase completing (or of TOP/CSC for an uncompleted replacement, whichever is earlier); a married couple with at least one Citizen spouse has its own refund conditions, and a single Citizen aged 55 or above buying a second property has a separate concession from February 2024. None of these refunds extend the six-month clock — miss it and the ABSD is gone for good.

Taxes: buyer's stamp duty, additional buyer's stamp duty, seller's stamp duty

Buyer's Stamp Duty applies to every buyer regardless of citizenship, on a marginal schedule. On a S$2,000,000 resale condo it comes to S$69,600.

• 1% on the first S$180,000
• 2% on the next S$180,000
• 3% on the next S$640,000
• 4% on the next S$500,000
• 5% on the next S$1,500,000
• 6% above S$3,000,000

Seller's Stamp Duty is the exit-side tax, and it runs on its own four-year clock from purchase, computed the same way — on the higher of selling price and market value, payable within 14 days of the executed sale contract. On a S$2,000,000 resale condo sold inside the holding period, the arithmetic runs S$320,000 in year one, S$240,000 in year two, S$160,000 in year three, S$80,000 in year four, nil after that. This is the exit clock a resale buyer inherits at the moment of purchase, not something that shows up only when you come to sell — if there is any chance you'll flip the unit within four years, SSD is part of the cost of buying it.

• Sold within 1 year — 16%
• Sold in year 2 — 12%
• Sold in year 3 — 8%
• Sold in year 4 — 4%
• Sold after 4 years — nil

Property tax and rental income tax, if you let it out

Property tax runs on two different scales depending on whether you occupy the unit yourself. Owner-occupier rates are progressive and start at 0% on the first S$12,000 of Annual Value, up to 32% above S$140,000 of AV; the owner-occupier rate applies to only one property you occupy, and every other property you own — a second home you live in, or any unit you let out — is taxed on the steeper non-owner-occupier schedule, 12% to 36% by AV band. A one-off 2026 rebate of 10%, capped at S$500, applies only to an owner-occupied private property; a vacant unit gets no relief at all and is taxed at the non-owner-occupier rate regardless of how long it sits empty.

Rent it out and the income is taxed alongside your other income. IRAS lets you choose between claiming actual deductible expenses or a 15% deemed-expense shortcut pre-filled on the online tax form; either way, mortgage interest on the loan taken to buy the property can be claimed separately and in addition. IRAS's own worked example, on S$48,000 of gross rent, comes out close either way — about S$31,500 net on actual expenses of S$7,000 plus mortgage interest of S$9,500, against about S$31,300 net on the 15% deemed option. Whichever method you pick, you must apply it consistently across every tenanted residential property you own — you cannot claim actual expenses on one and the deemed 15% on another. A rental deficit cannot be offset against your other income. A non-resident landlord's income is taxed at a flat rate rather than the resident progressive scale, which one aggregator's estimate puts the net yield at roughly 1.5-2.5% after property tax, maintenance and that tax bite, against a gross yield of 2.5-3.5%.

Borrowing: LTV, TDSR, MSR, and the rate you actually get

Loan-to-value on a first housing loan is capped at 75% of the lower of price and valuation, dropping to 55% if the loan tenure runs past 30 years or the borrower's age plus tenure passes 65. A second outstanding housing loan cuts the ceiling to 45% (25% on the same long-tenure test), with a minimum 25% of the price required in cash rather than CPF. These are MAS floors, not bank marketing rates — a bank can be stricter but never looser.

Total Debt Servicing Ratio caps every property loan to an individual at 55% of gross monthly income, stress-tested at a 4% floor rate for residential property regardless of what rate the bank actually quotes you — the floor decides whether you qualify, not what you pay month to month. On the same S$2,000,000 purchase valued at S$1,880,000, a 75% loan of S$1,410,000 over 30 years costs about S$6,732 a month tested at the 4% floor, needing roughly S$12,240 of gross monthly income with no other debt — against an actual monthly instalment nearer S$5,212 at a realistic 2.0% rate, or S$4,826 at 1.44%. The gap between the number that qualifies you and the number you'll actually pay is the floor rate doing its job.

Mortgage Servicing Ratio does not apply here at all. MSR caps the loan at 30% of gross income, but only for an HDB flat or an EC still inside its Minimum Occupation Period — a resale private condo is tested on TDSR alone. If you're an HDB upgrader currently living under MSR on the flat you're selling, that 30% ceiling disappears the moment you're financing this purchase; only the 55% TDSR governs the new loan.

There is no HDB concessionary loan for a resale condo — it is private residential property, so only a bank loan is available, with none of an HDB loan's no-lock-in, no-early-repayment-penalty terms; a bank loan typically carries a one-to-three-year lock-in and roughly a 1.5% early-repayment penalty on the outstanding balance. And unlike a unit bought under construction, where banks offer floating packages only until fixed rates open up at TOP, a completed resale condo can be financed with a fixed package from day one — 2-year fixed packages were quoted as low as 1.40% p.a. in September 2026, against floating packages typically priced at 3-month compounded SORA plus a 0.8-1.2% bank spread, an all-in rate nearer 1.9-2.3%.

CPF Ordinary Account use is capped at the lower of purchase price and valuation — the Valuation Limit — in full only if the remaining lease covers the youngest CPF-using buyer to age 95; short of that it's pro-rated. A bank-loan buyer who has set aside the Basic Retirement Sum can draw a further amount up to 120% of that same Valuation Limit figure — an extension available on a bank loan, not on the HDB loan option this page doesn't apply to anyway.

Renovation: what CONTROL looks like on a strata unit

A condo unit is not yours to rebuild — CONTROL here wears the clothes of MCST approval, not planning permission. A refundable renovation deposit runs S$2,000-5,000 at one guide's estimate and S$500-1,000 at another; MCST sign-off on the works can take one to two weeks, and work is confined to fixed hours, commonly weekdays 9am-5pm and a shorter Saturday window, none on Sundays or public holidays. Condo renovation cost itself runs roughly S$24,800-71,100 for a 2-bedroom unit and S$32,200-84,100 for a 3-bedroom, rising sharply for a penthouse.

CPF cannot fund any of it — renovation is excluded outright from CPF's housing uses, no exceptions listed. A dedicated bank renovation loan is also markedly more expensive than the mortgage money sitting next to it: one worked comparison put a S$30,000 renovation loan at roughly 3.5 to 4.4 times the interest cost of financing the same amount through a low mortgage-rate top-up, once the loan's own handling fee and insurance premium are counted in. Sources disagree on the current headline renovation-loan rate itself, from about 4.18% flat at one lender to 4.88% p.a. flat (5.96% EIR) at another — compare the effective rate quoted at the point of application, not the number on the flyer, before committing. See /borrow/renovation-and-works.

Conveyancing: the legal mechanics of a resale completion

A private conveyancing lawyer for a resale condo runs roughly S$2,300-3,200 in professional fees plus 9% GST and disbursements, against a wider S$2,000-5,000 all-in range across guides once CPF handling and stamp duty processing are folded in. Add mortgage duty of 0.4% of the loan amount, capped at S$500 — the cap is reached at a loan of S$125,000, so nearly every home loan simply pays the S$500 flat fee. From signing the option to legal completion, a transaction with a mortgage typically runs 10 to 12 weeks, with the lawyer acting for you and coordinating the seller's lawyer, your bank and the Singapore Land Authority. Legal fees and stamp duty, but not the option fee itself, can be paid in full from CPF Ordinary Account savings.

Estate: what happens to a condo you own, when you die

Singapore has had no estate duty since 15 February 2008 — there is no inheritance tax on a condo passed to a beneficiary, at any value. Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty is not payable where the property passes by will or intestacy, and no Buyer's Stamp Duty is payable on the transfer to a beneficiary by way of assent. The one thing that does carry forward: an inherited property attracts no acquisition duty itself, but it still counts as a property the beneficiary owns for ABSD purposes the next time they buy — inheriting this condo can push a beneficiary's next purchase into the second-property ABSD band even though this one cost nothing to receive.

Where the unit was jointly held, property without a mortgage that passes by survivorship to the other joint owner may need no probate grant at all; a sole owner's or tenant-in-common's share instead follows the will or the Intestate Succession Act, which is where a grant of probate or letters of administration becomes the gate. A deceased owner's estate keeps the owner-occupier property tax rate as a concession for up to 2 years from death or transfer, whichever is earlier, before the higher non-owner-occupier rate applies if the unit is still held in the deceased's name. If CPF was used to buy the unit, the refund obligation that would normally apply on a sale is waived automatically on death — the property itself passes outside CPF nomination, by the will, intestacy, or the manner of holding. See /estate/probate, /estate/wills and /estate/the-family.

How to think about this, plainly

Two questions sort every buyer, and neither of them is "are you buying to invest or to stay" — nobody buys a home believing it will fall in value, so that question sorts nobody. The real questions are simpler and more mechanical.

Q1 — Are you borrowing to buy?

If you're paying cash, there is no leverage and no carry to think about at all — the unit either appreciates or it doesn't, and nothing else moves. If you're taking a loan — and on this page's own worked example, a 75% loan against a S$1,880,000 valuation, that's the overwhelming majority of resale buyers — you've introduced a fixed monthly outflow that exists whether or not the property is doing anything for you.

Q2 — Once you hold it, are you lending it out?

Living in it yourself and letting it out to a tenant are two different financial products wearing the same title deed. The combination of these two questions is the whole spine of what follows: cash plus own-use is pure appreciation with no carry to speak of; cash plus let-out is a yield play, positive carry by construction; borrow plus own-use is negative carry by construction — most owner-occupiers with a mortgage are here, and few say it plainly; borrow plus let-out is the spread play, and the gap between rent and interest is the entire game.

C0 — The play

A resale condo you live in is a balance-sheet play: you're converting cash and debt capacity into an asset you use, not one that pays you. A resale condo you let out is a cash-flow play layered on top of the same balance-sheet move — rent has to actually clear the mortgage, or the balance-sheet gain is funding a monthly loss.

C1 — Balance sheet

On completion you own an asset roughly worth the bank's valuation, offset by a mortgage liability of up to 75% of that same figure. Your net worth moves by the equity you put in, not by the price you agreed — which is exactly why the cash-over-valuation gap above matters: cash paid above valuation buys the same asset the bank sees, it just doesn't show up as equity the bank will lend against.

C2 — Cash flow

What actually moves, monthly: the mortgage instalment out, rent in if you let it out, MCST maintenance fees and property tax out regardless. The funding gap sits at completion — the cash-over-valuation shortfall, the downpayment cash component, BSD and any ABSD, legal fees — all due before or at the point you get the keys, none of it financeable by the loan.

C3 — P&L

Profit is not cash. If you let the unit out, your taxable rental profit and your actual cash position diverge the moment you start amortising the loan — interest is deductible against rental income, but the principal repayment portion of your monthly instalment is not, so you can owe income tax on a rental profit while your bank account shows less cash than the profit figure implies.

C4 — Carry

Carry is income minus financing cost, and on this page's borrow-and-let-out worked example, gross rent at a market yield against interest at a realistic rate leaves a real positive spread before tax and maintenance — but that spread is calculated against the actual rate you pay, not the 4% TDSR floor rate used to qualify you for the loan in the first place. Owner-occupiers financing this purchase with a loan and no rental income have no carry to offset the mortgage at all — negative carry by construction, funded entirely from other income.

C5 — Give / get

You give up cash today (the deposit, stamp duty, legal fees) and monthly cash going forward (the instalment, maintenance, property tax) for a claim on the unit's future value and, if let out, its rental stream. Stated plainly, that is the entire trade — everything else on this page is detail about how much of each side moves.

C6 — Exposed to

Interest rates, since your loan's payment can move against a floating package or reprice on a fixed package's lock-in expiry; resale market comparables, since the bank's valuation next time you refinance or sell is set by what similar units actually transacted for, not what you think the unit is worth; and, if let out, tenant demand and vacancy in this specific development and precinct.

C7 — For how long

Practically, at least four years if you want to avoid Seller's Stamp Duty on exit entirely — the schedule above runs 16% down to 4% across that window. Realistically, most buyers hold considerably longer than that given the transaction cost on both ends: BSD and any ABSD in, a realtor's commission and possibly SSD out.

C8 — Failure cascade

The order matters and is easy to get backwards: negative carry (rent, if any, not covering the mortgage) first hits cash flow (you're topping up the shortfall from other income or savings each month); if that persists it accumulates into a P&L problem (sustained losses, not just a timing mismatch); sustained enough, and against a falling market, it can tip into negative equity (the loan exceeds what the unit would sell for); at that point the unit becomes genuinely illiquid (you cannot sell without bringing cash to the completion table to clear the loan); and only at the far end of that chain does it become insolvency. Most owner-occupiers never get past the first stage because their income covers the gap — but the chain exists, in that order, whether or not anyone reaches its end.

C9 — Liquidity

A resale condo is more liquid than a landed home or a commercial asset but nowhere near as liquid as cash — expect the same 8-10 week completion timeline you experienced buying it, plus however long marketing takes to find a buyer, plus SSD if you're inside the four-year window, plus a realtor's commission, typically 2% from the seller's side. The haircut on a forced, fast sale is whatever discount to fair value gets a buyer to move quickly — there is no fixed figure for that, only the general rule that speed costs money.

C10 — Control

You control very little of the structure itself — no rebuild, no extension, nothing past what the MCST's by-laws and approval process allow inside your own four walls. What you do control: whether you let it out or live in it, which loan package you choose and when you refinance, how much cash you bring above valuation if you choose to pay above it, and whether you hold past the SSD window before selling.

C11 — The exit

You sell through the same resale mechanism you bought through — an OTP to a new buyer, their bank's valuation against your asking price, completion in 8-10 weeks. What it costs you: a realtor's commission if you use one, SSD if you're inside four years of your own purchase, and the CPF refund of principal plus accrued interest if you used CPF to buy, which comes off the proceeds before you see a dollar.

Buying through a company

A company buying this same S$2,000,000 resale condo pays ABSD at the entity rate of 65% — S$1,300,000 — plus the ordinary S$69,600 BSD, and its loan is capped at 15% loan-to-value rather than the 75% an individual gets. On this page's own worked numbers that's S$300,000 of debt against S$1,700,000 of equity, for total cash of roughly S$3,069,600 — about 153% of the purchase price — against a Citizen buying the same unit as a first home, who pays no ABSD at all. MAS looks through a thinly capitalised holding company to the individual director for TDSR purposes, so setting up a company does not get around debt-servicing limits either. A structure this expensive only makes sense for a specific legal or estate reason — holding an asset for a group of unrelated co-owners, ring-fencing liability, or a succession plan already in motion — not as a tax-minimisation move on a single owner-occupied home. See /invest/structures.

What the agent earns, and where the incentive points

CEA sets no fixed commission and no guideline on amount — it is negotiated and documented in a Prescribed Estate Agency Agreement before the agent starts marketing the unit, and payment must go to the licensed agency, never to the individual agent directly. Market convention on a resale condo has the seller paying roughly 2%, with the buyer's agent paid by co-broke out of that same commission or, where agreed, directly by the buyer — one agent may never collect from both sides of the same deal, which CEA treats as an offence. On this page's own S$2,000,000 example, a seller's agent on a 2% commission earns S$40,000 if the sale completes and nothing at all if it falls through — which is the entire incentive picture in one sentence: the agent is paid on completion, not on getting you the best price, and the pressure runs toward closing the deal at all, not toward holding out for a better one. A 2024 industry best-practice guide encourages salespersons to collect commission only from the client they actually represent, adopted by agencies covering roughly 90% of salespersons as of early 2025, but it isn't mandatory. Reported market income across the trade sits around S$72,000 a year at the median, with new agents earning S$10,000-40,000 in their first year — numbers that explain why an agent under financial pressure is more likely to push you toward exercising an option than toward walking away from one.