URA's Warning on Unauthorised Works Is Really About Roof Terraces, Patios and Lofts

The reports rarely start with an inspector. According to URA, as reported by The Straits Times, they usually come from fellow residents or from the estate's management corporation (MCST). Some surface during the periodic structural inspections that residential buildings go through every ten years.

The numbers are steady rather than spiking, which is what URA means by a persistent trend: 147 reports in 2024, 148 in 2025, and 116 between January and September this year. When URA looked, about 90 per cent of the suspected cases did involve unauthorised works.

Most end quietly: URA said most such works were removed after enforcement action, without going to court. But it "will not hesitate to prosecute" owners who ignore enforcement notices.

The Building and Construction Authority sees its own share. A BCA spokesperson told The Straits Times the agency investigated an average of about 50 reported cases a year of unauthorised structures in strata-titled residential developments over the past three years, and that most were assessed to be structurally safe.

Many owners feel a roof terrace or patio is theirs to build on. URA's statement gives three reasons it is not.

Structure. A mezzanine adds load to slabs, beams and columns that may not have been designed for it. Without a qualified person's assessment, URA said, that can affect neighbours as well as occupants.

Insurance and financing. A General Insurance Association of Singapore spokesperson said claims linked to unauthorised works or structural modifications may not be covered. URA added that such works can put owners in breach of the conditions attached to their property financing.

Fairness among owners. This is the subtle one. Maintenance fees and sinking-fund contributions are set by each unit's share value, which takes floor area into account. An owner who adds floor area without approval gets more space without paying more into the estate's funds, unlike neighbours who follow the rules. That is why works that add gross floor area need a 90 per cent resolution at a general meeting: URA said extra floor area for one owner affects the collective property rights of all the others.

Not everything needs a vote. URA's renovation guidelines allow one loft, designed as a furniture deck, of up to 5 sq m per unit without planning permission. Open-sided covers over a patio, roof terrace or balcony also need no URA permission, though they still need the MCST's consent. The line is walls: once a space is enclosed, it becomes floor area.

The trend has a back story, and URA wrote it down at the time. In a circular dated 11 January 2013, it changed how private enclosed spaces (PES, the private patios and gardens attached to ground-floor units) and private roof terraces are counted in condos and executive condominiums.

Until then, neither counted as gross floor area. The circular explained what that had led to: developers had provided these spaces in "disproportionately large numbers and sizes" to increase saleable area, at the expense of common greenery and communal facilities. And homeowners had added structures and covers to "internalise these semi-outdoor spaces".

So from 12 January 2013, PES and private roof terraces count as floor area, within the 10% overall budget for bonus floor area. Covers became allowed, as long as the space keeps its semi-outdoor character. Applications already granted provisional permission before that date stayed under the old rules.

Strata landed housing, the cluster houses, followed a decade later: URA's handbook says PES and private roof terraces in strata landed developments submitted from 1 June 2023 count as floor area too.

That matters for the warning. The homes with the biggest uncounted outdoor spaces are, by design, the older ones. So we checked whether our data shows it.

PropKaki's floor-plan library reads developers' brochure layouts. We can match 172,881 private non-landed units, in 1,496 developments, to a specific layout, and each layout records whether it has a PES, a private roof terrace, or a loft or duplex level.

So roughly one mapped unit in seven carries one of the spaces URA named. A unit can carry more than one, which is why the rows add up to more than the total.

These spaces cluster at the two ends of a block, as you would expect. Of 10,934 mapped ground-floor units, 74.4% have a PES. Of 16,991 mapped top-floor units, 33.0% have a roof terrace, and 29.2% are laid out as penthouses.

To be plain about what this is: it is a count of homes with the space, not of homes with works on it. A legal duplex is not a problem. A patio with an open-sided cover is not a problem. These are simply the homes where the temptation exists.

This is where the 2013 rule shows up in the data. Grouping the mapped units by the year their development was completed:

Private roof terraces all but disappear from developments completed from 2018. Lofts and duplexes thin out too. Ground-floor patios do not: they hold at about 9% in every period.

The 2013–2017 row is the interesting one. Three in four of those developments in our library have at least one roof-terrace layout, more than in the older group. That fits the timing. A development completed in those years was most likely approved before January 2013, under the rules that did not count terraces as floor area.

Our reading: the stock URA is worried about is not growing. It is an ageing cohort of homes mostly completed before 2018, passing to owners who may not know what the last owner built.

URA's caveat records do not say whether a unit has a terrace, but they do give its unit number, and so its floor. In the 12 months to 4 October 2026, there were 13,250 private non-landed resales we could place on a floor:

Together, ground-floor and top-floor units were 14.2% of resales. Not all of them have a patio or terrace, but as the floor-plan check above shows, the ground floor is mostly PES units and a third of top floors carry a roof terrace.

Each of those resales hands a new owner whatever is already built.

Comparing medians across the whole market mixes buildings. A fairer test pairs each ground-floor or top-floor resale with the other floors of the same building over the same window:

Ground-floor and top-floor units are bigger than their neighbours and sell for less per square foot. Over five years, 41.4% of paired top-floor resales were at least one and a half times the size of a typical unit in the same block.

Part of that gap is measurement. URA's 2013 circular describes PES and roof terraces as part of the private strata area sold to buyers, so an open terrace is counted in the square feet a buyer pays for, even though it is not indoor space. Spread the price over an area that includes open air, and the PSF falls. Ground floors carry other trade-offs too, such as privacy, which our data cannot separate.

In our view, this is the root of the temptation. The owner paid for every square foot of that terrace, so walling it in feels like using what they bought. URA's point is that walls turn it into floor area nobody approved.

URA's warning covers strata-titled homes generally, and that includes landed homes on strata title: the terraces, semi-detached and detached houses in cluster developments that share land and facilities under an MCST. Their patios and roof terraces fall under the same logic.

URA caveats record 10,028 sales of strata-titled landed homes since 1995, covering 5,518 distinct homes. In the 12 months to 4 October 2026 there were 275 such sales, 12.3% of the 2,244 landed sales on record in that period:

For cluster housing, URA's handbook now builds the answer in: PES covers are approved upfront in the development application, and homeowners pick from approved designs with MCST clearance. Where an estate has no such approved menu, an improvised enclosure is, in our view, the likeliest to cross the line.

This is the part of URA's statement most buyers will not expect. In its words, as reported by The Straits Times: "It is the responsibility of property owners to take steps to rectify or regularise unauthorised works, including in cases where the works were already in place when they purchased the property."

So the enclosed terrace that made a penthouse feel bigger at the viewing becomes the new owner's to deal with. URA set out two routes:

• Remove it.
• Seek approval to keep it, where the law allows. If the works added floor area, that means first getting a 90 per cent resolution at the estate's general meeting, then a qualified person applying to URA. If approved, the extra floor area may attract a land betterment charge if the development's total floor area already exceeds what was paid for.

Meanwhile, insurance claims linked to the works may not be covered.

Our view, and it is a view rather than advice: if you are buying a ground-floor unit, a penthouse, a loft unit or a cluster house, treat any enclosed outdoor space or added mezzanine as a question, not a feature. Ask the seller whether it was approved, ask the MCST whether it consented, and ask your lawyer how to protect yourself before you commit. A space that cannot legally stay is not space you are buying.

Every number in this piece describes homes that have a patio, a roof terrace or a loft. None of it says how many of those homes have been built on. URA's 148 reports in 2025 are tiny next to the 24,397 mapped units with one of these spaces, and we would not read the gap as either reassurance or alarm. Reports come from neighbours and inspections, so most works are probably only found when someone looks.

Other limits: the floor-plan library is a large sample, not the whole private market, so its shares should not be multiplied out. Completion year stands in for approval year around the 2013 rule. And recent caveats are still being lodged, so 12-month counts are a floor.

Two kinds of numbers, kept apart.

From the reporting and URA: the case counts, examples, fines, agency comments and the quote on buyers' responsibility come from The Straits Times' report of URA's 11 October statement. The 2013 change comes from URA's circular URA/PB/2013/01-DCG; the loft allowance, covers and strata landed rules from URA's guidelines, linked below.

PropKaki's own data, as of 4 October 2026:

• Unit features come from PropKaki's floor-plan library: brochure layouts flagged for a PES, a private roof terrace or a loft/duplex layout, matched to 172,881 condo and EC units in 1,496 developments. The completion-year table leaves out 21,093 mapped units in developments not yet completed or with no recorded completion year.
• Resales by floor use URA resale caveats for private non-landed homes, with the floor read from the unit number. "Top floor" is the highest floor recorded in caveats for that building; blocks with under three floors on record are shown separately. 8,867 caveats with no readable unit number are excluded.
• The same-building comparison uses the median of at least three other-floor resales in the same building and window.
• Strata landed figures use URA caveats for terrace, semi-detached and detached houses whose type of area is strata.

Prices are transacted, gross, and per square foot of URA strata area.

The news:

• The Straits Times: URA flags "persistent trend" of suspected cases of unauthorised works in residential units, 11 October 2026.

The rules:

• URA: Circular URA/PB/2013/01-DCG, Revised Guidelines for Private Enclosed Spaces and Private Roof Terraces, 11 January 2013.
• URA: Renovating strata-titled residential property.
• URA: Development control handbook, strata landed housing: private enclosed spaces and private roof terraces.

The data:

• PropKaki floor-plan library (brochure layouts) matched to PropKaki's condo unit map and development directory.
• PropKaki analysis of URA private residential caveats, resale and all sales, to 4 October 2026.

This is commentary by the PropKaki Editorial Desk on reporting by The Straits Times. URA's statement, the case counts and the quotes belong to that reporting and to the agencies; the floor-plan and transaction analysis, the framing and the opinions are ours.

It is opinion and general information, not legal, financial or property advice. Nothing here says any particular home or development has unauthorised works. If you are planning works, or buying a home that has had them, check with your MCST, a qualified person and your lawyer, and with URA and BCA where approvals are needed.

Published 20 October 2026.