PropNex Says Private Prices Will Rise 3–4% This Year. We Checked What H1 Actually Delivered

There is a genre of property commentary that survives entirely on being impossible to be wrong about. Prices will be “supported”. Demand will be “selective”. The market will be “resilient but cautious”. Nobody can mark that to market, which is precisely the point of writing it.

PropNex did something different in its half-year results statement, and it deserves credit for it before we go anywhere near the arithmetic. It named a number — private home prices up 3 to 4 per cent for the whole of 2026 — attached to a well-defined public index, with a deadline of 31 December.

That is a forecast with a spine. It can be wrong, publicly, in about four months.

And because we hold the URA index it is measured against, we can do something more useful than repeat it: we can work out what the rest of the year has to look like for it to land.

The full set of numbers, as reported by The Straits Times from the results statement released on 13 August:

Read the volume rows carefully, because they cut against the mood of the headline. New home sales are forecast below 2025. Private resales land roughly at 2025. HDB resales, roughly at 2025. On volumes, this is a forecast of a flat-to-softer year — ST notes H1 was already softer than H1 2025, on a steep drop in new launches.

So the optimism is concentrated almost entirely in the price line. Chief executive Kelvin Fong framed it as prices still rising, at a slower rate than the year before, supported by owner-occupiers and confidence in well-located projects.

Now the check. We hold URA's Property Price Index for private residential property, and its last eight quarters look like this:

The full-year 2026 change is measured from the 2025Q4 level of 216.4. As at 2026Q2 the index is 219.4 — up about 1.39 per cent over the first half. In the latest quarter alone it rose 0.5 per cent, and it is +2.9 per cent against the same quarter a year earlier.

So: half the year gone, roughly 1.39 per cent banked.

Working from 216.4 at the end of 2025 and 219.4 today, the required second half falls out directly:

This is the finding, and it is more interesting than either “PropNex is right” or “PropNex is wrong”.

The bottom of the range is very reachable. Getting to +3% needs the second half to run at roughly +1.6%, only slightly ahead of the +1.39% the first half already delivered. On current momentum that is an unremarkable ask.

The top of the range is a different proposition. Getting to +4% needs about +2.6% in six months — close to double H1's pace — in a year where the same forecast has new home sales falling below 2025. Prices accelerating while volumes soften is not impossible, but it is a specific claim about a market where fewer, better-located projects carry the index.

Our reading: treat 3 per cent as the forecast and 4 per cent as the optimistic edge of it. If you see the range quoted as “up to 4 per cent”, that is the least likely end being used as the headline.

A single islandwide number hides where the movement actually is, and here the regional split is stark:

Over the year, the suburbs have carried the market almost single-handedly: +3.9 per cent in the OCR against +0.5 and +0.6 in the two central regions. Landed housing, reported islandwide, is up 7.0 per cent year-on-year — the strongest segment of all.

But look at the quarter-on-quarter column, because it points the other way. In 2026Q2 the CCR rose 1.8 per cent while the RCR fell 1.2 per cent and the OCR was flat. One quarter is not a trend and we would not build a thesis on it. It is, however, the first thing we would want to see confirmed in the Q3 print — because a forecast that needs an accelerating second half needs something to accelerate, and the region with the most room to re-rate is the one that has moved least over the year.

Rents, for completeness: the rental index is at 162.5, up 0.7 per cent on the quarter and 1.7 per cent on the year — rising, but more slowly than prices.

PropNex points to several supports, and they are worth separating by what they actually do.

Mortgage rates are the genuine price lever. ST reports fixed two-year housing loan rates now range from about 1.4 to 1.7 per cent a year, well down from their 2023 peaks. That directly changes what a household can borrow, and it is the most plausible mechanism for an accelerating second half.

The 15-month wait-out removal, effective 28 July for private owners buying non-subsidised HDB resale flats without an HDB loan, is better understood as a mobility measure than a price one. PropNex's own framing supports this: it expects the change to release more private resale homes onto the market while lifting demand for larger HDB flats. That adds private supply and HDB demand — helpful for volumes, ambiguous for private prices.

The ABSD remission changes extend completion-and-sale timelines for large collective sale sites: to six years for sites yielding at least 700 but fewer than 1,400 units, and to seven years for mega sites of at least 1,400 units, both from 5.5 years. Developers pay 40 per cent ABSD upfront and recover 35 per cent on meeting the timeline. This affects developers' appetite for land in 2026 and their exposure years later. It is close to irrelevant to this year's resale prices.

One more figure worth noting: Singaporeans and permanent residents accounted for 98.3 per cent of new non-landed private home purchases in H1 2026. Whatever is moving this market, it is domestic.

On URA's index the answer for the year so far is settled rather than speculative: private residential prices rose from 216.4 at the end of 2025 to 219.4 in 2026Q2, about 1.39 per cent, with the latest quarter up 0.5 per cent and the year-on-year figure at 2.9 per cent.

So the open question is not direction but pace. PropNex's 3–4 per cent full-year range needs roughly +1.6 to +2.6 per cent across the second half. The lower end is close to a continuation of H1; the upper end needs a clear acceleration.

The caveat is that the growth has been narrow — +3.9 per cent year-on-year in the OCR against +0.5 and +0.6 per cent in the two central regions. An islandwide forecast can be met while a large part of the market goes nowhere.

We do not make timing calls, and anyone who does on the strength of a half-year results statement is selling something.

What we would point out is which numbers are actually decision-relevant. Fixed two-year rates at roughly 1.4 to 1.7 per cent, down substantially from 2023 peaks, change your monthly commitment and your borrowing capacity — that is concrete and it is yours to compute. A national index moving 3 or 4 per cent does not tell you anything about the specific unit you are considering.

It is also worth registering that PropNex's own volume forecasts are for a flat-to-softer year: new home sales below 2025, private resales and HDB resales roughly at 2025 levels. Sub-sale activity — a proxy for speculation — is expected to stay low, and 98.3 per cent of new non-landed private purchases in H1 were by citizens and PRs. That is a picture of a market led by people buying somewhere to live, which is context for your decision, not a recommendation about it.

The news — the forecasts, the policy details, the mortgage rate range, the 98.3 per cent figure and PropNex's own results all come from The Straits Times (13 August 2026), reporting the company's H1 2026 results statement, linked below.

The data — the Property Price Index levels, the eight-quarter trend, the rental index and the CCR/RCR/OCR splits are PropKaki's own cut of URA index data, current to 2026Q2. These are URA's published indices on a 2009Q1 = 100 basis.

The arithmetic — the required-H2 table is ours. It is straightforward compounding from the 2025Q4 base of 216.4 to the index level implied by a 3 and 4 per cent full-year rise, then expressed as the change needed from the current 219.4. We show the working so it can be checked, and we state our assumption about the index basis in the reality-check above rather than burying it.

The news:

• The Straits Times — Lower mortgage rates, policy changes to support Singapore property market in 2026: PropNex, 13 August 2026.

The data:

• PropKaki's cut of URA index data — Property Price Index and Rental Index for private residential property, by market segment, current to 2026Q2 (2009Q1 = 100).

This is commentary by the PropKaki Editorial Desk on reporting by The Straits Times of PropNex's H1 2026 results statement. The forecasts and company figures belong to PropNex and that newsroom; the index analysis, the arithmetic, the framing and the opinions are ours.

It is opinion and general information, not financial, property or investment advice. Forecasts are not outcomes, the most recent index quarter may be revised, and our required-H2 calculation rests on a stated assumption about which index the forecast is measured against. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any property.

Published 20 August 2026.