Landed Prices Pull Further Ahead of Condos — and the Gap Is Widening

Landed residential prices in Singapore climbed 4.1 percent in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period last year, while non-landed private homes — condominiums and apartments — gained just 1.3 percent over the same stretch, according to Urban Redevelopment Authority flash estimates released last month. That 2.8-percentage-point divergence is the widest split between the two categories since the post-2012 cooling-measure hangover, and it is reshaping the calculus for every upgrader currently sitting on an HDB flat in Tampines or a two-bedroom condo in Bishan.

The timing matters. Mortgage rates have eased from their 2024 peak — three-month SORA dropped to roughly 2.8 percent in June — but borrowing is still expensive enough to suppress speculative volume. What is driving landed prices is not leverage. It is scarcity. Singapore has fewer than 74,000 landed homes in total, a number that has barely moved in a decade, and new supply is structurally capped by the state's land-use plan. Meanwhile, the condominium pipeline remains comparatively generous: nearly 8,200 private units are scheduled for completion island-wide before the end of 2026, including large clusters at Tengah Garden Walk and the Jurong Lake District fringe.

Where the Numbers Are Most Stark

Nowhere is the divergence sharper than in the established landed enclaves of Districts 10 and 11. On Coronation Road West, a standard inter-terrace changed hands in May for SGD 5.28 million — a new benchmark for that stretch — while a comparable 1,500-square-foot condominium unit at The Tessarine in Tanjong Rhu sat on the market for eleven weeks before closing at SGD 2.6 million, below its initial ask. Brokers at ERA Realty and PropNex both flagged a slowdown in secondary-market condo transactions above SGD 2.5 million, pointing to a buyer pool that has grown more selective after three consecutive years of price appreciation pushed median condo values to roughly SGD 1.8 million island-wide.

Good Class Bungalows tell an even starker story. The average GCB transacted price crossed SGD 1,800 per square foot of land area in the second quarter of 2026 for the first time on record, according to data compiled by Edmund Tie. That puts a modest 15,000-square-foot GCB plot in the Nassim Road cluster at a theoretical SGD 27 million. By contrast, the price-per-square-foot for a non-landed private home in the Core Central Region averaged SGD 2,650 in the same quarter — meaningful appreciation, but nothing close to the percentage gains recorded in the bungalow and terrace segment.

What This Means for Upgraders

The practical consequence for the HDB-to-private ladder is compression at the bottom and acceleration at the top. Executive condominiums remain the most accessible rung: Lumina Grand at Bukit Batok West Avenue 5, launched in late 2023, saw its resale units trade between SGD 1.35 million and SGD 1.55 million in the January-to-June 2026 window, holding steady because EC buyers are largely end-users rather than investors chasing capital gains. The Tengah township, where two new EC projects are expected to launch in the fourth quarter of this year under the Housing and Development Board's build-to-order pipeline, will test whether that stability holds when fresh supply hits.

Buyers eyeing landed homes face a harder choice. The Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty structure — 20 percent for Singapore Citizens purchasing a second property — has not been adjusted since the December 2021 round of tightening, and there is no official signal it will be. That means anyone selling a condo to fund a landed purchase is doing so in a market where the asset they want has moved further out of reach than the asset they are selling. Financial planners at several independent advisory firms are now recommending clients stress-test landed purchases against a scenario where SORA edges back toward 3.5 percent by mid-2027, a possibility that is not considered remote given global rate uncertainty.

The divergence will not reverse quickly. Unless the government releases substantial new landed-zoned parcels — something the URA's 2025 Master Plan review showed no appetite for — the supply ceiling stays intact. Condo buyers have options and inventory. Landed buyers are competing over a fixed pool, and that arithmetic tends to have only one direction.