Singapore publishes an unusual amount about what property actually sold for. Most of it is misread in the same few ways.
These are short pieces built from the same lodged records our ratings are built from — HDB resale prices published by the Housing & Development Board, and caveats and tenancy contracts lodged with the Urban Redevelopment Authority. Every claim here is measured, and where the evidence is thin we say so instead of rounding it up into confidence.
A 2-room flat runs at S$743 per square foot and an executive at S$577 — and the “cheaper” one costs two and a half times as much. Why comparing price per square foot across sizes reliably points the wrong way, and the three cases where PSF is genuinely the right instrument.
Asking prices sit above the transacted record — but by about 2% in HDB resale and about 14% in industrial. The gap is a property of how visible the record is, not a discount anyone is owed, and reading it correctly changes what a listing price is telling you.
COV cannot be looked up, cannot be borrowed against, and does not exist until after the Option to Purchase. What you can check first: inside one block, flat type and quarter, recent sales differ by about 8.5% — a median gap of S$50,000.
The raw record says a high floor is worth 82% more. Measured inside the same block, where the address, age and lease are held still, it is worth about 7% per ten storeys — and in one block in twelve, nothing at all.
Older HDB flats sell for more per square foot than newer ones. That is not the lease being worthless — it is where the old flats are. What 50,912 resales say once you hold the town, flat type, size and storey still, and why the curve has a step in it at 55–60 years.
241,495 signed leases say the market-wide rent range is mostly a trick of the mix. Hold the project, the bedroom count and the quarter still and the gap between a good rent and a poor one collapses from 53% to about 8%.
“The market is strong” cannot be argued with, because it is a claim about nothing checkable. The four questions the transacted record does answer, the three arguments that collapse on contact with it, and what the difference sounds like across the table.
Not a guide, but the same question asked more often than any other: what a valuation is, when you actually need a licensed one, and how to check a price without one — for condos and for HDB resale, including COV. For the methods a valuer actually uses and how PriceVero's own rating is built, see how property valuation works.
More to come. If there is a comparison you keep seeing quoted and want tested against the record, tell us at support@pricevero.com.