Buy US commercial property from Singapore

Researched and written 2026-09-29 05:55 SGT · 20 sources listed at the end · draft 1 · figures verified against the named sources on the date shown; where a source has since moved, the element carries a marker.

A Singapore-based buyer of US commercial property is not buying a Singapore asset with an American postcode. Almost nothing in the Singapore property stack, ABSD, BSD, SSD, CPF, MAS TDSR and MSR, HDB or URA rules, reaches an office, warehouse, retail unit or apartment block sitting in the United States: those are Singapore's rules for Singapore land. What replaces them is a different, largely unrelated federal and state framework: FIRPTA on the way out, a nonresident alien's US estate and gift tax exposure the whole time you hold it, a 30% withholding default on rental income unless you elect otherwise, and financing that runs through either a narrow set of Singapore banks or US foreign-national lenders, not MAS's loan-to-value grid. This page covers the mechanics in that order, then eligibility, citizenship status, tax, borrowing, fit-out, closing, estate, THE VOICE, the B2B angle, and what the agent earns. Figures are dated to when I read them this run; where sources disagreed or a point stayed genuinely unconfirmed, that is flagged, with a full list at the end.

The mechanics: how a US commercial deal actually runs

Commercial in the US spans office, retail, industrial and warehouse, and multifamily buildings of five units or more (four units and fewer is treated as residential financing, a different product entirely). A deal starts with a letter of intent, moves to a negotiated purchase and sale agreement, and an earnest money deposit that opens escrow with a neutral title or escrow company. There is no equivalent of Singapore's standard Option to Purchase and 14-day exercise window; due diligence, covering inspection, environmental assessment, title review and zoning confirmation, runs weeks to several months and is negotiated deal by deal. Closing is run by a title or escrow company, which disburses funds and records the deed; a lawyer is customary but only mandatory in certain 'attorney states', a state-by-state split this page cannot generalise past.

Buyer-side closing costs, separate from the down payment, run roughly 2% to 5% of price on top: title charges, financing fees, recording and your own due-diligence spend. A seller conventionally pays the whole broker commission out of proceeds. Ownership can sit in an individual's own name, a US LLC, or a foreign (non-US) corporation; which one matters enormously for tax and estate exposure, covered below, and almost nothing for the mechanics of the purchase itself.

Eligibility: no ownership ban, two real gates

There is no federal law barring a foreign person, Singaporean or otherwise, from owning US commercial real estate outright. What exists instead are two narrower gates. First, CFIUS: a November 2024 federal rule lets the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States review a real estate transaction by a foreign person within 1 mile of certain military installations, or within 100 miles of a wider second list, across 211 named sites nationwide. Most commercial property is nowhere near one of them, but a warehouse near a base, port or airport genuinely needs a location check before an offer goes in.

Second, a state-by-state patchwork: more than 20 US states have passed or proposed laws restricting foreign ownership of real property, most aimed at named 'foreign adversary' nationals, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela, not Singapore, and most focused on farmland, natural resources or land near military sites rather than an office building. A minority go further: South Carolina's 2026 bill, SB 1065, would bar any non-resident alien regardless of nationality from owning or leasing property in the state at all, and require divesting what is already held. The list changes every legislative session and past ownership is not reliably grandfathered, so a state-law check belongs in due diligence on every deal, not just the first one.

Citizenship status: SC, PR, foreigner, and FTA nationals

The direction this cuts is the reverse of every other page on this site. On the US side, FIRPTA, US estate and gift tax, and the 30% FDAP default on rental income apply to a 'foreign person', anyone who is not a US citizen, green card holder or US tax resident, in exactly the same way whether the buyer is a Singapore Citizen, a Singapore PR, or neither. Being an SC buys nothing on the US side of this transaction. What SC, PR or foreigner status actually determines is entirely on the Singapore side: whether CPF is even a live option (it never is here, see Borrowing), whether a Singapore bank's overseas-property loan desk will take the application, and whether the CEA-registered agent handling the introduction is allowed to act for you at all.

The FTA parity, and why it does not apply here

US, Swiss, Liechtenstein, Norwegian and Icelandic nationals get Singapore-Citizen-rate ABSD when they buy property in Singapore, under the FTA parity this site covers on every Singapore residential page. That rule runs one direction only, into Singapore. An American buying a warehouse in Ohio gets no reciprocal concession from IRAS, MAS or anyone else; the FTA parity has nothing to say about a Singapore-based buyer's position on US soil, where US domestic law, not a trade treaty with Singapore, sets the terms.

Taxes: FIRPTA, estate and gift exposure, rental income, and the Singapore side

On the way out: FIRPTA

The Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act makes the buyer, not the seller, withhold 15% of the gross sale price, not the gain, on any sale of a US real property interest by a foreign person, and hold it for the IRS. That 15% has applied since 17 February 2016 (10% before). It covers a directly-held building and, separately, stock in a US corporation that holds enough US real estate to count as a real-property-holding company. A seller can apply on Form 8288-B for a certificate reducing withholding to the actual tax owed, but the IRS states it normally takes up to 90 days to act, routinely longer than the closing itself, so 15% of the gross price is commonly frozen for months even where the real liability is much smaller.

While you hold it: rental income

By default a nonresident alien's US rental income is FDAP income, taxed by a flat 30% withholding on the gross rent, no deduction for the mortgage, the property tax or anything else. Electing under IRC section 871(d) to treat it instead as effectively connected income puts it on the same graduated net rates a US taxpayer pays, after real deductions, which almost always beats 30% of gross once there is a loan in the picture, but the election requires filing a US non-resident return (Form 1040NR) every year to keep it. Singapore has no income tax treaty with the US and no totalisation agreement either, so there is no treaty rate to fall back on if the election is missed.

Depreciation, and the Singapore side of the same income

A US commercial building is US nonresidential real property for depreciation purposes: 39-year straight-line under MACRS, mid-month convention, land itself never depreciable. That depreciation lowers US taxable income without touching cash, the exact wedge THE VOICE frame below insists on keeping separate from cash flow. On the Singapore side, IRAS generally exempts foreign-sourced income received by a Singapore tax-resident individual, rental income included, with one exception: income routed through a Singapore partnership loses the exemption. Singapore also has no general capital gains tax, so a US sale gain is not separately taxed again once it reaches Singapore, provided you are not treated as trading in property as a business.

Property tax, and what does not follow you

Property tax is state and local, set city by city and county by county with no federal rate and no federal ceiling; the reported national average effective rate runs around 1.1% of assessed value, from under 0.3% in Hawaii to over 1.8-2% in New Jersey and Illinois. None of it looks like IRAS's owner-occupier concession: a US commercial owner gets no nationwide discount for occupying the building, and Buyer's Stamp Duty, Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty and Seller's Stamp Duty simply do not apply, because the Stamp Duties Act reaches Singapore property, not a building in Texas.

Two US reporting duties worth naming even though they usually do not bite here: FBAR applies once foreign financial accounts in aggregate exceed US$10,000, and Form 8938 has its own, higher thresholds for specified individuals abroad, but neither treats directly-held foreign real estate itself as a reportable financial account; a US LLC or blocker corporation you use to hold the building is a different question, and the entity's own bank accounts can trip both.

Borrowing: a narrow lane, not MAS's LTV grid

MAS's loan-to-value tiers, TDSR and MSR are built for property loans on Singapore property; this page could not confirm this run whether TDSR's own scope extends to a loan a Singapore bank grants for a property outside Singapore, and flags that as unresolved rather than asserting it either way. What is confirmed: CPF Ordinary Account savings cannot fund any part of an overseas purchase, not the down payment, not foreign legal or stamp costs, not one loan instalment, for any destination country, this product included.

On the Singapore-bank side, the field is thin. OCBC's Overseas Property Loan, read directly this run, reaches the USA, specifically New York, at up to 70% LTV, in SGD or USD, for investment property only, open to Singaporeans, PRs, or foreigners employed and residing in Singapore. UOB's equivalent product does not list the US at all. On the US side, the working market for a Singapore-based buyer is non-bank DSCR lending, qualifying the loan against the building's own rental income rather than personal income, US tax returns or a US credit file: one 2026 lender guide for Southeast Asian buyers reports 25-30% down, 30-year fixed rates from about 6.875% for well-qualified deals, US$150,000 to US$5,000,000-plus loan sizes, DSCR covenants from 1.0, and 6-12 months of debt service held back as reserves, commonly against a US LLC rather than a personal name.

Put a number on the DSCR covenant, since it is the lender's own version of THE VOICE's C4: on a US$1,400,000 loan at a 1.25 DSCR requirement, the building's net operating income has to already run at roughly US$137,940 a year or more before the lender extends the term sheet at all; carry is not just this page's frame, it is the lender's pass/fail test before financing exists.

Fit-out: tenant improvements, and a different regulatory stack entirely

US commercial fit-out runs on landlord-and-tenant-negotiated 'tenant improvement' (TI) allowances rather than anything resembling BCA's Qualified Person regime or HDB's renovation-contractor directory, and permits are pulled from the city or county building department where the property sits, not from a national authority. That stack varies by every municipality in the country; this page cannot generalise a permit timeline or cost the way its Singapore-focused sibling pages do for URA and BCA, and says so rather than inventing a number. What does travel from the tax section above: a cost-segregation study, splitting parts of a fit-out into 5, 7 or 15-year MACRS property instead of the building's 39-year schedule, is a US-specific lever with no Singapore analogue.

Closing: title and escrow, not a conveyancing lawyer by default

Singapore conveyancing runs through a lawyer from Option to completion; the US default runs through a title or escrow company instead, holding funds, running the title search, issuing owner's and lender's title insurance, and recording the deed at closing. A lawyer is customary in every state but only compulsory to close in a subset of 'attorney states'; which one your property sits in changes who actually signs off the transaction, and needs confirming state by state, not assumed from the Singapore model.

Estate: the one exposure that follows you home

Singapore abolished estate duty for deaths on and after 15 February 2008; nothing about that reaches a building sitting in the United States. US real estate is a US-situs asset for US federal estate tax regardless of where the owner lives or holds citizenship, and a nonresident, non-US-citizen decedent's executor must file Form 706-NA once US-situs assets plus lifetime taxable gifts exceed just US$60,000. Secondary tax-advisory sources put the actual sheltered credit at only about US$13,000 against a 40% top marginal rate on the same graduated schedule US persons use, but without that person's roughly US$15,000,000 2026 exemption. As my own arithmetic, not a lawyer's, on that schedule: a US$2,000,000 building held outright in an individual's own name, with nothing else, owes on the order of US$730,000 in US federal estate tax alone at death, due within 9 months, against an asset that cannot be sold that fast.

Lifetime gifts of that same building carry the identical US-situs exposure and none of the large lifetime exemption a US person gets: only the ordinary annual exclusion, US$19,000 per recipient in 2026, shelters anything at all; a larger gift of a stake in the building to a spouse or child is taxable gift tax from the first dollar past that. The standard planning response is a blocker: a foreign (non-US) corporation owns the building instead of the individual, and stock in a foreign corporation is not itself a US-situs asset, so it sits outside this exposure entirely. The trade-off runs the other way on income tax, where a foreign blocker is taxed at flat corporate rates with none of the graduated-rate or capital-gains treatment an individual gets, and FIRPTA still applies to the blocker's own sale on the gross price. A domestically-controlled US REIT is a narrower alternative: its shares are not a US real property interest at all, at the cost of holding a fund rather than a specific building. None of this is a substitute for a cross-border estate lawyer, and this page does not attempt to be one.

A related, separate wrinkle: a 1031 like-kind exchange is available to a nonresident alien on the same terms as a US taxpayer, but FIRPTA's 15% withholding still applies to the relinquished property unless the exchange is simultaneous, same-day, with no cash or mortgage boot, backed by a specific Declaration and Notice to Complete an Exchange; an ordinary delayed exchange through a qualified intermediary needs that worked out in advance, not discovered at the closing table.

What buying US commercial property does to your money: the twelve questions

The operator's own frame, asked in the same order on every page on this site, in layman's terms, no beta, no IRR. The two questions that actually sort a reader: are you borrowing to buy, and once you hold it, are you letting it out? This page assumes the dominant case for a Singapore-based buyer of US commercial property, borrow and let out, the spread play, and flags the alternative, cash and own-use through a US operating subsidiary, in the B2B section below.

C0. The play: balance sheet or cash flow?

Cash flow, for most Singapore buyers of this product. Very few are moving in; the building earns rent, services a loan, and the entire case rests on the gap between the two, not on watching the balance-sheet number rise.

C1. Balance sheet: what you own and what you owe

On a US$2,000,000 building at 70% LTV, you own an asset carried at US$2,000,000 (in USD, so FX-exposed against SGD from day one) and owe US$1,400,000 to the lender, leaving US$600,000 of equity before a single dollar of appreciation or depreciation.

C2. Cash flow: what actually moves, and when

The cash out at signing is far larger than the down payment alone: US$600,000 in equity, plus closing costs of roughly US$40,000-100,000 (2-5% of price), plus a lender's typical 6-12 months of debt-service reserves, another US$55,000-110,000 on a US$1,400,000 loan at the terms above. Call it US$700,000-810,000 in cash actually required before rent has paid a single instalment, converted from SGD at whatever spread applies to a single large one-off transfer.

C3. P&L: what it does to profit, which is not cash

39-year straight-line MACRS depreciation on the building portion of the price reduces US taxable profit every year without moving a dollar of actual cash, the clearest possible illustration of why C1, C2 and C3 are three separate questions: the building can show a tax loss and a healthy bank balance in the same year, or the reverse.

C4. Carry: income minus financing cost

The DSCR lender turns this into an underwriting rule before you even close: at a 1.25 DSCR covenant on a US$1,400,000 loan, net operating income has to already clear roughly US$137,940 a year. Below that, no term sheet; above it, the surplus is your positive carry, in USD, before Singapore tax (largely exempt) and before FX conversion back to SGD, which is its own cost.

C5. Give and get: the trade, stated plainly

You give up CPF entirely, a large one-off FX conversion, and exposure to a legal and tax system you do not live inside. You get US dollar rental income and US dollar capital appreciation genuinely uncorrelated with the Singapore property cycle, and, if the deal is a real spread play, a carry Singapore's own commercial yields rarely match.

C6. Exposed to: what can move against you

• US interest rates resetting a floating or maturing DSCR loan
• A state legislature adding a foreign-ownership restriction after you already own the building, as South Carolina's 2026 bill would, forcing divestiture
• FX movement between USD and SGD on both the way in and the way out
• A CFIUS review if the site later turns out to sit near a covered military installation
• Losing the 871(d) election by failing to file a US return, reverting rental income to 30% of gross

C7. For how long: the horizon you are committing to

Long, structurally. Closing itself runs weeks to months of due diligence; exiting well needs the market to cooperate, and FIRPTA holds back 15% of the gross sale price for months afterward regardless of how fast a buyer is found.

C8. Failure cascade: how it goes wrong, in order

Thin or negative carry (C4) hits cash flow first, forcing the reserve account or your own pocket to cover the debt-service gap; sustained shortfalls accumulate into P&L losses; a DSCR covenant breach at refinancing can force a distressed sale straight into FIRPTA's 15% gross-price withholding, compounding illiquidity with a frozen chunk of the very proceeds meant to solve the problem; and if the owner dies mid-hold, the roughly US$730,000 estate tax bill on a US$2,000,000 building (illustrated in Estate, above) is due in cash within 9 months regardless of the property's own cash flow, forcing the executor toward exactly the distressed sale the whole structure was meant to avoid.

C9. Liquidity: how fast this becomes money, at what haircut

Slow, and taxed on the way out before the tax is even known: due diligence alone commonly runs weeks to months, and FIRPTA freezes 15% of the gross sale price at closing; a refund of the excess over actual tax due needs a withholding certificate the IRS says can take up to 90 days to process, so real proceeds land well after the deed does.

C10. Control: can you move the outcome, or are you a price-taker?

More control than a passive fund investment, since leasing, tenant improvements and refinancing timing are yours to run, but a price-taker on a local zoning and permitting stack you do not live inside, and a price-taker on state law itself: a state can legislate a foreign-ownership restriction after your purchase, as the 2026 South Carolina bill would, and force a sale regardless of anything you have done right.

C11. The exit: how you get out, and what getting out costs

Sell, into FIRPTA's 15% gross-price withholding and months of settlement lag; 1031-exchange into another US building, which defers the gain but not the FIRPTA withholding unless the exchange is structured as a simultaneous swap in advance; or die holding it, triggering the estate-tax exposure above and, if the property is held in the individual's own name rather than through an entity, an ancillary US probate proceeding in the state where it sits, on top of whatever Singapore does with the rest of the estate.

The B2B spoke: an operating premises, or a portfolio line

Two genuinely different buyers show up under this one product. The first is a Singapore-headquartered operating business opening or expanding a US presence, buying its own office, warehouse or retail premises rather than a household buying an investment: for that buyer, cash flow and P&L run through the operating business's own accounts, the building is a cost of doing business in the US rather than a standalone carry trade, and MACRS depreciation and the 871(d) election interact with the business's broader US tax filings, not a personal 1040NR alone.

The second is a Singapore investment holding structure, a private company, a trust, or, at the top end, a Section 13O or 13U family office fund, buying US commercial property as a portfolio line rather than an operating asset. That buyer inherits the estate-tax and blocker-structure questions above at the entity level as well as the personal one: who ultimately owns the Singapore holding vehicle, and whether that ownership chain itself creates a US-situs exposure, is a question for the structure, not just the building.

The realtor economics: what the agent earns, and where the incentive points

US commercial commission is fully negotiable, reported at roughly 3% to 6% of price, conventionally paid by the seller at closing and split between the listing broker and the buyer's broker, close to even on a mid-size deal. Smaller deals, under about US$1,000,000, run toward the top of that range; larger institutional deals, US$5,000,000 and up, toward the bottom.

A Singapore-based buyer usually reaches that US broker through a CEA-registered agent at home, and CEA's licensing regime reaches that introduction directly: anyone finding buyers or negotiating for reward from Singapore needs CEA registration regardless of where the property sits, under Practice Guidelines CEA issued specifically for agents marketing foreign property back in March 2014. CEA sets no fixed commission on any transaction, residential, commercial or overseas, so the Singapore-side introducer's fee, commonly a referral cut of the US broker's own commission, is negotiated deal by deal and must be declared to the client in writing before the client acts on it.

Name where the incentive points, including against the operator's own trade: a referral fee is earned once, on close, whether the building turns out to carry positive spread or negative, whether the state later restricts foreign ownership, or whether the buyer would have been better off not doing the deal at all. Nothing in the CEA disclosure duty changes that the introducer is paid for the introduction, not for how the investment performs five years on; the DSCR covenant in Borrowing, above, is a better check on deal quality than the agent's own recommendation, because it is the one party in the chain with no fee riding on the answer.

What is uncertain

• Whether MAS's TDSR framework reaches a Singapore bank's loan for property outside Singapore, including OCBC's own Overseas Property Loan into the US: not confirmed either way this run.
• Whether DBS offers US commercial property financing at all; its overseas-property page surfaced London terms only this run, with no US detail found.
• Exact current-year figures for the NRA estate and gift tax unified credit and top rate came from secondary tax-advisory sources, not a rendered IRS rate table; confirm the live numbers before relying on the US$730,000 illustration above.
• Whether a Singapore holding company (as opposed to an individual) buying US commercial property through a blocker faces PFIC-style characterisation risk on the blocker itself; not resolved this run.
• CFIUS's practical relevance to an ordinary mid-market Singapore buyer is probably low, but the 1-mile and 100-mile installation zones were not cross-checked against any specific property.

Related pages

Sources

• IRS — FIRPTA Withholding (2026-09-29) · https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/firpta-withholding
• IRS — Some Nonresidents with US Assets Must File Estate Tax Returns (2026-09-29) · https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/some-nonresidents-with-us-assets-must-file-estate-tax-returns
• IRS — Effectively Connected Income (ECI) (2026-09-29) · https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/effectively-connected-income-eci
• IRS — Frequently asked questions on estate taxes for nonresidents not citizens of the United States (2026-09-29) · https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/frequently-asked-questions-on-estate-taxes-for-nonresidents-not-citizens-of-the-united-states
• CPF Board — Can I use my CPF savings to buy properties overseas? (ask.gov.sg) (2026-09-29) · https://ask.gov.sg/cpf/questions/cmhjrwiz6003zokqm9mex6ymt
• CEA — Regulatory Matters (2026-09-29) · https://www.cea.gov.sg/regulatory-matters/overview/
• OCBC — Overseas Property Loan (2026-09-29) · https://www.ocbc.com/personal-banking/loans/overseas-property-loan.page
• UOB — International Property Loan (2026-09-29) · https://www.uob.com.sg/personal/borrow/property-loans/international-property-loan.page
• America Mortgages — The Singapore and Southeast Asian Investor's Complete Guide to U.S. Real Estate in 2026 (2026-06-08) · https://www.americamortgages.com/singapore-investor-us-real-estate-guide-2026/
• Baker Tilly (tax advisory guide) — U.S. gift and estate taxes for non-U.S. Persons with U.S. assets (2026-09-29) · https://www.bakertilly.com/insights/us-gift-and-estate-taxes-for-non-us-persons
• Skatoff (Florida estate-planning law firm) — Updated for 2026: Estate and Gift Tax Chart for Non US Persons (2026-09-29) · https://skatoff.com/florida-estate-planning-attorney/updated-for-2026-estate-and-gift-tax-chart-for-non-us-persons-greencard-holders-and-nras/
• GHJ Advisors (tax advisory guide) — Tax Rules Explained: Foreign Investments in U.S. Real Estate (2026-09-29) · https://www.ghjadvisors.com/ghj-insights/tax-rules-explained-foreign-investments-in-us-real-estate
• IPX1031 (1031 exchange qualified intermediary) — FIRPTA Issues in 1031 Exchanges - Foreign Seller Tax Withholding (2026-09-29) · https://www.ipx1031.com/firpta-issues-in-1031-exchanges/
• Mayer Brown (law firm, summarising US Treasury's final rule) — CFIUS Issues Final Rule Expanding the Scope of Its Real Estate Transaction Purview (2024-11-07) · https://www.mayerbrown.com/en/insights/publications/2024/11/cfius-issues-final-rule-expanding-the-scope-of-its-real-estate-transaction-purview
• Committee of 100 (tracker of federal and state bills) — Laws and Bills Restricting Foreign Property Ownership (2026) (2026-09-29) · https://www.committee100.org/our-work/federal-and-state-bills-prohibiting-property-ownership-by-foreign-individuals-and-entities/
• Agora Real (commercial real estate guide) — Commercial real estate closing process: Key steps, documents, and checklist (2026-09-29) · https://agorareal.com/learn/commercial-real-estate-closing-checklist/
• Lornell Real Estate (commercial brokerage) — Commercial Real Estate Closing Costs in 2026: Who Pays What (2026-09-29) · https://www.lornellre.com/insights/commercial-real-estate-closing-costs-buyers-sellers-guide/
• Lornell Real Estate (commercial brokerage) — Commercial Broker Fees: What Sellers Pay (2026-09-29) · https://www.lornellre.com/insights/commercial-real-estate-broker-fees-what-sellers-actually-pay/
• PropertyShark — 2026 U.S. Property Taxes - Ranked by State (2026-09-29) · https://www.propertyshark.com/info/property-taxes-by-state/
• IRS Publication 946 (via ustax.tools reference table) — MACRS 39-Year Nonresidential Real Property Straight-Line Schedule (2026-09-29) · https://ustax.tools/macrs-39-year-commercial-property/