What will this flat really cost you?
A buyer sees the asking price. What lands on the table is a good deal more: stamp duty, legal fees, a deposit, and years of interest. This works out all of it — and then the figure almost nobody calculates, which is what the flat costs for every month of lease it has left.
| Monthly instalment | $2,134 |
| Monthly while repaying, all in | $2,394 |
| Monthly once the loan is repaid | $260 |
| Interest over 25 years | $190,185 |
| Running costs over the remaining lease | $196,560 |
| Everything, over the whole lease | $1,002,245 |
What the agents are paid
Commission is invisible in the asking price and larger than the tax everybody remembers. On this flat the seller’s agent takes $12,000 plus $1,080 in GST, and the two agents between them receive $13,080.
| Paid by | Commission | GST | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seller, at 2.0 per cent | $12,000 | $1,080 | $13,080 |
| You, at 0.0 per cent | $0 | $0 | $0 |
There is no prescribed commission in Singapore. The Council for Estate Agencies does not set one, and an industry-wide scale would fall foul of competition law, so the rates above are market practice you can change rather than a rule anyone is citing. Buyers of resale flats frequently pay nothing, their agent being paid from the seller’s side. GST at 9 per cent applies where the agency is GST-registered, and the rate in force since Jan 1, 2024 is used.
If the interest rate moves
No rate is quoted on this page. Singapore’s floating home loans are priced off a benchmark that moves, so any figure printed here would be stale within the week. The useful question is not what the rate is today but what happens to you when it changes.
| Rate | Monthly | vs your rate | Interest over 25 years |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.00% | $1,907 | −$227 | $122,203 |
| 2.50% | $2,019 | −$115 | $155,633 |
| 3.00% | $2,134 | — | $190,185 |
| 3.50% | $2,253 | +$119 | $225,842 |
| 4.00% | $2,375 | +$241 | $262,580 |
| 4.50% | $2,501 | +$367 | $300,374 |
| 5.00% | $2,631 | +$497 | $339,197 |
A single percentage point on a $450,000 loan over 25 years is the difference between the rows above — a few hundred dollars a month, and tens of thousands over the term. It is the largest single variable in the whole calculation and the one nobody controls.
Why that last figure is the one to watch
Two flats at different prices with different leases cannot usefully be compared on the asking price, on psf, or on the monthly instalment. The instalment stops after 25 years; the lease does not, and the shorter one is being used up faster all the while.
Dividing everything a buyer will ever pay by the months they actually get puts the two on the same footing. Done that way, a flat at $1.23 million with 89 years to run can work out cheaper each month than one at $475,000 with 47. That is not a trick of arithmetic. It is what buying a shorter lease means.
What this does not include
Figures are not discounted: a dollar paid in the final year of the lease is counted the same as a dollar paid today. Opportunity cost, CPF accrued interest and any resale value are excluded.
It does not fetch a live interest rate: the Monetary Authority’s rate service was unreachable when this was built, and a rate that cannot be sourced is not printed. The table above exists instead.
Nor does it yet apply the borrowing limits — the loan-to-value cap, the Total Debt Servicing Ratio and the Mortgage Servicing Ratio — or the CPF rules and the housing grants, which shift the cash figure considerably for first-time buyers. Each of those will be added with its source and the date it took effect, in the way the stamp duty rates below already are. Until then, the loan percentage above is an assumption you have made, not a sum any bank has agreed to lend.
This is a calculator, not advice. It applies published rates to the figures entered. It knows nothing of your circumstances and recommends no property, no loan and no lender.
The rates it used
Buyer’s Stamp Duty on the schedule that took effect Feb 15, 2023, and Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty on the one from April 27, 2023. Both were taken from Iras on Oct 18, 2026.
ABSD has been revised 5 times since 2013 and on two occasions a rate doubled, which is why the figures here are held with the dates they took effect rather than written into the arithmetic. Source: IRAS, IRAS.
Questions people ask
- How much stamp duty do I pay on a property in Singapore?
- Buyer's Stamp Duty on residential property is charged in bands: 1 per cent on the first $180,000, 2 per cent on the next $180,000, 3 per cent on the next $640,000, 4 per cent on the next $500,000, 5 per cent on the next $1,500,000, 6 per cent on everything above that. Those rates have applied since Feb 15, 2023. On top of that, Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty depends on who you are and how many residential properties you will own once the purchase completes: a Singapore citizen pays 0 per cent on a first property, 20 per cent on a second and 30 per cent on a third or later; a permanent resident pays 5 per cent, 30 per cent and 35 per cent; a foreigner pays 60 per cent on any residential purchase and an entity 65 per cent. Those have applied since April 27, 2023. The calculator above works the exact figure out for a price you enter.
- How much cash do I need upfront to buy a flat in Singapore?
- More than the deposit, which is the part most buyers underestimate. The calculator adds the stamp duty, the down payment implied by your loan-to-value, conveyancing, valuation and any buyer-side agent fee, and shows the total you need on the table rather than the headline price. Stamp duty alone can be tens of thousands of dollars, and ABSD cannot be borrowed — a bank will lend against the property, not against the tax on it.
- Does a shorter lease make a flat cheaper to own?
- Not necessarily, and that is the point of the per-month figure here. A cheaper flat with less lease left can cost more for every month you actually get to live in it, because the total you pay is divided by fewer months. The calculator divides the full cost of ownership by the remaining lease, which is the comparison that makes two flats at different prices and different ages comparable. How much the market itself discounts a shorter lease is measured separately on the lease-decay page.
- Where do these stamp duty rates come from?
- Iras, the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore, and every schedule is stored with the date it took effect rather than as a single current rate. That matters because rates change: residential BSD was last revised on Feb 15, 2023 and ABSD on April 27, 2023, and this site holds 2 BSD and 3 ABSD schedules so a past transaction can be worked out on the rates that actually applied to it. Each schedule carries its source URL and the date it was read.
- Is this financial advice?
- No. It computes; it does not advise. Arithmetic over published rates is factual — which loan anyone should take, or whether a flat is a good buy, is not, and nothing here attempts it. The figures are also a model: they assume the loan runs to term at a fixed rate, which is why a range of rate scenarios is shown rather than one number.