The Singapore housing ladder, rung by rung

From an HDB 2-room at $372,000 to a detached house at $12 million — 32 times the price, across 12 rungs, on resales measured the same way on both halves. It is not evenly spaced, and it is not even one shape: the flat market, where 94 per cent of resales happen, climbs 1 per cent to 43 per cent a rung with one 70 per cent wall in it, while every step among houses costs at least 37 per cent.

The whole ladder, cheapest rung first

Each row is a median of real resales over the twelve months to Oct 2026, with the number of sales it rests on. The step column is the increase on the row above. The price-per-square-foot column is not comparable across the landed line — a flat is measured by its floor area and a house by its plot, so the two figures share a unit without sharing a meaning.

43,523 resales in all. Steps shown in teal cross from one tier into the next. Area and psf are on floor area for flats and on land area for houses. Every landed row is labelled individually, because the basis changes inside that tier as well as at its edge: Strata Terrace is a house sold as a strata unit, so it is measured by its floor like a flat.

Flat where almost everyone buys, steep where almost nobody does

Ordered by the size of the step rather than by price, the market turns out not to have one shape but two. Across the eight flat rungs — HDB and private strata, together 94 per cent of all the resales in this table — a step costs 1 per cent to 43 per cent, and the whole distance from the cheapest flat to the dearest is 4.8 times. The one exception inside it is the step out of public housing, at 70 per cent — bigger than every other flat step, which is what earns it the word wall.

Houses behave nothing like that. Every step among the four landed rungs costs at least 37 per cent, and they span 3.8 times between them, so the landed market is a staircase that keeps climbing rather than a tier you arrive at. It is also only 6 per cent of the resales here, which is why a step range pooled across all three tiers — as an earlier version of this page reported it — was wide enough to describe nothing. The three ranges are published separately for that reason.

1. +90%Semi-detached → Detached$5,691,200 more
2. +77%Condominium → Strata Terrace$1,395,000 more · crosses into landed
3. +70%HDB Executive → Executive Condominium$645,000 more · crosses into private strata
4. +44%Strata Terrace → Terrace$1,413,000 more
5. +43%HDB 3-room → HDB 4-room$190,000 more
6. +37%Terrace → Semi-detached$1,700,800 more
7. +23%HDB 5-room → HDB Executive$172,056 more
8. +18%HDB 2-room → HDB 3-room$68,000 more
9. +18%HDB 4-room → HDB 5-room$112,944 more
10. +14%Apartment → Condominium$220,000 more
11. +1%Executive Condominium → Apartment$20,000 more

The step out of HDB costs more and buys less

This is the rung most buyers are actually standing in front of, and it is the one that behaves least like a ladder. Executive Condominium resales ran a median $1,560,000 against $915,000 for HDB executive — $645,000 more, or 70 per cent. For that, the median buyer gets 474 square feet less: 1,098 against 1,572.

Both of those are floor-area medians, so this is one of the few comparisons on the page where the psf figures can be put side by side honestly: $1,457 psf against $586 psf, 2.5 times. The money is not buying space. It is buying tenure, facilities, the absence of eligibility conditions, and location — and the location part is also the reason this gap should not be read as a pure quality premium.

Inside HDB, the cheapest flat is the dearest per square foot

The price column and the psf column disagree about which flat is expensive, and both are right. A 2-room sold at a median $751 psf and a 5-room at $581 psf — yet the 5-room costs $370,944 more to buy.

A flat's lease, location, floor and fittings are worth about the same whether it has two bedrooms or five, and in a smaller flat that value is divided by fewer square feet. So psf across flat types measures size as much as it measures value, which is why both columns are published and neither is used to rank the ladder. It is the same mistake as comparing a landed psf with a strata one, in a form that looks more innocent.

What this is not

It is not one household's ladder. The single most important thing to know about the table above is that its rungs differ by where they are as well as by what they are. Landed houses stand in the dearest districts; almost no HDB flat does. So the step from one rung to the next is the price difference between two sorts of property in two sorts of place, not the cost of a family moving up. Matched pairs in the same locality would answer that question, and neither HDB's nor URA's published data supports building them.

It is also not a forecast, an affordability measure or an entry price. A median is the middle of what traded, so half of every rung sold for less — the cheapest blocks still trading are a better guide to the floor, and what a flat actually costs once stamp duty and interest are in is a better guide to what a rung demands of a buyer.

And every rung here is a national median, which is the practical form of the location caveat above: the same flat type costs materially different sums in different towns. The HDB rungs broken out by town are at Tampines, Woodlands, Sengkang, Punggol, Yishun and Jurong West — the six busiest by resales — or all twenty-six.

How it is built

• Resales only, on both halves. HDB publishes no new-flat prices, so the public side is resale by construction, and a private side including new launches would compare against a dearer market. That excluded 10,803 private transactions in the window — 39 per cent of private trade over those twelve months.
• The same twelve months on both halves, ending Oct 2026. URA's feed is a rolling five years and HDB's runs from 2017; left alone, the two halves would be medians of different stretches of market.
• Medians of transactions, not of block medians. Every other HDB figure on this site rolls up through the block, because a town is a place made of blocks. A flat type is not a place, and what a buyer asks of a rung is what one sold for. The two differ: rolled up through blocks, the cheapest town's 2-room reads $279,000 against $372,000 nationally over sales.
• Price per square foot carries its basis. Floor area for flats, land area for houses, marked in the table and never divided into each other.
• A type needs 100 resales in the window to appear. Below that a median is noise in the same typeface as a median of eleven thousand. Omitted for that reason: 1-room (10 sales), Multi-generation (nine sales), Strata Semi-detached (44 sales), Strata Detached (24 sales).
• Executive condominiums are in, and are a hybrid worth naming: sold by developers at subsidised prices with eligibility conditions, freely tradable only after their minimum occupation period. The figure here is a private-market resale price for a flat that did not start as one.

Full workings, and the rest of the stratification rules this site holds to, are on the methodology page.

Questions people ask

How much does each step up the Singapore housing ladder cost?

Over the twelve months to Oct 2026, on resales only: HDB 2-room, $372,000; HDB 3-room, $440,000; HDB 4-room, $630,000; HDB 5-room, $742,944; HDB Executive, $915,000; Executive Condominium, $1,560,000; Apartment, $1,580,000; Condominium, $1,800,000; Strata Terrace, $3,195,000; Terrace, $4,608,000; Semi-detached, $6,308,800; Detached, $12,000,000. That is 32 times from the bottom rung to the top, and the steps are nowhere near even. Among flats — HDB and private strata, which is 94 per cent of these resales — a step costs 1 per cent to 43 per cent, except the step out of public housing, which costs 70 per cent. Among landed houses every step costs at least 37 per cent. Each figure is a median of real resales with its sale count published beside it.

How much more does a condo cost than an HDB flat in Singapore?

The step out of public housing is $645,000, or 70 per cent: HDB Executive at $915,000 against Executive Condominium at $1,560,000. And it buys less floor area, not more — 1,098 square feet against 1,572, so 474 square feet smaller for $645,000 more. Per square foot that is $1,457 psf against $586 psf, 2.5 times. Both sides are medians of resales on floor area over the same twelve months, so the comparison is like for like on measurement — but not on location, because the two sorts of property sit in different parts of the island.

Why is a smaller HDB flat more expensive per square foot?

Because price per square foot runs the opposite way to price inside HDB. A 2-room sold at a median $751 psf and a 5-room at $581 psf, even though the 5-room costs $370,944 more outright. A flat's location, lease and fittings are worth roughly the same whether it has two bedrooms or five, and in a smaller flat that value is divided by fewer square feet. So a psf comparison across flat types measures size as much as it measures value, which is why this table publishes price and psf as separate columns rather than ranking on either alone.

Can you compare price per square foot between a condo and a landed house?

No, and this table does not. URA measures a flat by its floor area and a house by its land area, so the two psf figures are different quantities that happen to share a unit. A landed psf is a price for a plot, with whatever is built on it included; a strata psf is a price for interior space. Dividing one by the other produces a number that describes neither, which is why the psf column here is marked with its basis and the landed rungs are kept visually apart.

Is the Singapore property ladder really a ladder?

Not in the sense of evenly spaced rungs, and not as one shape either. The flat market — HDB and private strata, 94 per cent of these resales — climbs 1 per cent to 43 per cent a rung and spans only 4.8 times end to end, with one 70 per cent step out of public housing in it. The landed market is the opposite: every step costs at least 37 per cent and it spans 3.8 times. So the part of the market nearly everyone buys in is fairly flat, and the part almost nobody buys in keeps climbing. The more important caveat is that it is not one household's ladder at all. The rungs differ by where they are as well as what they are — landed houses stand in the dearest districts and almost no HDB flat does — so the gap between two rungs is a price difference between two sorts of property, not the cost of moving up.

What does this table leave out?

New sales and sub-sales, which is 10,803 private transactions in the window — HDB publishes no new-flat prices, so resale is the only cut that compares. Flat and property types with fewer than 100 resales in the window: 1-room (10 sales), Multi-generation (nine sales), Strata Semi-detached (44 sales), Strata Detached (24 sales). Executive condominiums are included and are worth a note: they are sold by developers at subsidised prices with eligibility conditions, and only become freely tradable after their minimum occupation period, so the resale figure here is a private-market price for a flat that did not start as one.

Citing this. Figures on this page cover the twelve months to Oct 2026, computed from 243,611 HDB resale registrations and 131,264 URA caveats, and are recomputed as both sources refresh — so quote the date you read them. Permanent link: https://www.dailystudysg.com/ladder.