The Current State of the Singapore Property Market (2026): What the Latest Data Shows

Up, and uneven. As of 2026Q1, private home prices are at a record: the URA Property Price Index reached 218.3, up 3.4% over the year and 0.9% in the latest quarter. But that single figure hides a market moving at three different speeds — because while private prices keep setting records, HDB resale has flattened and private rents have stopped climbing.

So there is no single "the market", there are three moving at different speeds:

Read together, the picture is a market pulling apart: private capital values still setting records, the public-housing market holding a plateau, and rents essentially flat. This is not one market, but three — moving at different speeds — and which line matters depends entirely on whether you are buying a condo, selling a flat, or renting.

The sections below take each in turn.

Still rising, and at a record. Private prices are not falling — the URA Property Price Index has climbed to 218.3, up 3.4% over the year, its highest ever. The climb has not been a straight line, as the quarter-by-quarter path below shows, but the direction is unmistakably up.

Landed homes led the market over the past year, up 6.7%, while non-landed condos and apartments rose more modestly. The latest quarter added 0.9% — a steady step, not a surge.

If you have been waiting for private prices to fall, the data has not obliged. Prices dipped once in the run shown above and then resumed climbing to a record. These are index values (2009Q1 = 100), not dollar prices, so they track how far the whole private market has moved, not the price of any one unit.

The mass-market suburbs are leading, and prime is lagging — the reverse of the usual assumption. Over the past year, non-landed prices in the Outside Central Region (OCR) rose 5.2%, while the prime Core Central Region (CCR) managed just 1.7%, and the city-fringe Rest of Central Region (RCR) was weakest at 0.7%.

Read the index levels with care — they are not prices. The OCR's index (271.4) sitting above the CCR's (158.6) does not mean a suburban condo costs more than one in the prime districts; it means the OCR has climbed far further from its 2009 starting point (base 100). CCR homes are still dearer in dollar terms; they have simply appreciated less in percentage terms.

Why the flip? Prime has been held back by cooling measures aimed at foreign and investment buyers, while genuine owner-occupier demand has concentrated in the suburbs and city fringe. The index measures momentum, not price — and right now the momentum is in the heartlands.

Rents have essentially plateaued. The URA Rental Index rose just 1.8% over the year and 0.3% in the quarter to 161.4 — a world away from the double-digit surges of a few years ago. Looking across the recent quarters, the rental line has barely moved and even dipped late in 2025 before edging back.

The cause is supply. A large wave of new private completions handed tenants more choice than they have had in years, and more choice takes the heat out of rents. For a landlord, that means the easy rental upside is behind us; for a tenant, it means the market has stopped running away from you.

Rents stopped climbing before prices did — the rental line is usually the first place a hot housing market cools, because tenants can move in months while owners hold for years. A flat rental index alongside still-rising prices is exactly what a late-cycle market looks like, and it quietly compresses gross yields for anyone buying to let.

HDB resale has plateaued while private keeps rising. HDB's Resale Price Index sits at 203.4, up only 1.2% over the year and actually down 0.1% in the latest quarter — a market that has levelled off after a long climb. The national median 4-room flat is $630,000, unchanged year-on-year.

Set against private prices still rising 3.4%, the gap between an HDB flat and a private home has widened again this year. The two indices cannot be compared in level — HDB's 203.4 and private's 218.3 are separate indices — but their direction tells the story: private is still moving, HDB has stopped.

One caveat on the medians: these are across all towns for a completed half-year, so a specific flat — mature versus non-mature estate, lease remaining, high floor — can sit far from the median. And even as the typical flat holds flat, the top of the HDB market keeps making headlines through million-dollar resales, which we break down separately. For the full town-by-town picture, see the HDB market overview.

Busier than the newest numbers make it look — because the newest numbers are always incomplete. In our records, 1,376 private sale caveats were lodged in the 30 days to 23 June 2026, against 7,860 in the prior 90 days. At first glance that looks like a collapse: barely a third of the 90-day pace crammed into the latest month.

It is not. Private sale caveats can take weeks to lodge, so the most recent 30 days is always under-counted. Read that recent dip as a crash and you would be reading a data lag, not the market.

HDB and rental data behave differently again — they arrive in monthly batches, so their recent-window counts move in steps and lag a month or two. None of this is a market signal; it is data plumbing.

The newest data is always the most misleading — recency and completeness pull in opposite directions. The discipline is simple: compare complete periods, never the raw last month. To watch live activity for yourself, browse the private residential market overview or the HDB market overview.

Prices at a record can feel like exactly the wrong moment to buy — but the long-run base rate is blunt and encouraging. Across 267,641 matched private resales, 85.3% of owners eventually sold above their purchase price, at a median gross gain of 25.8%. Most people who bought and held did fine, in cheap markets and expensive ones alike.

Three honest qualifications:

• That gain is gross — before agent commission, stamp duties, any Seller's Stamp Duty and loan interest — so the net figure is lower. It is a base rate across the whole market, not a promise for any one unit.
• Where you buy matters more than when. With OCR up 5.2% and CCR up 1.7% this year, the segment you choose shapes your outcome as much as the timing.
• Holding power beats market timing. The owners who profited are the ones who could ride out a soft patch rather than being forced to sell into one.

So the better questions are not "is the market up?" but "am I buying in a segment that is still moving, and can I hold through a dip?" Work your own numbers with the property affordability calculator and the Property Financial Planner, and weigh the buy-side trade-offs in new launch vs resale.

For most sellers, the market is still on your side. Prices are at a record, and history is friendly: 85.3% of past private resales cleared a gross profit. The catch is that the gains are uneven — where your property sits decides how strong your hand is.

What that means in practice depends on what you own:

• Selling an OCR or mass-market home? You are selling into the strongest segment, up 5.2% over the year.
• Selling prime CCR? The tailwind is gentler — up just 1.7% — so pricing to the market matters more.
• Selling an HDB flat? Resale has plateaued, so the days of naming your price and waiting are largely over.

But timing the index is only half the decision. The bigger questions are usually about your next move — whether to sell before you buy (and avoid Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty), and whether Seller's Stamp Duty still applies to you. A record price is only good news if you know what you are buying next. For the full framework, see Is Now a Good Time to Sell My Condo? and Should I Sell in a Down Market or Wait?.

Proprietary and official figures. The private Property Price Index and Rental Index (overall and by region) are URA's official quarterly statistics, read from PropKaki's database as of 2026Q1. The HDB Resale Price Index and median resale prices by flat type are HDB's official statistics plus PropKaki's matched medians over HDB resale caveats (a completed half-year, H1 2026). Transaction counts are records in our own URA and HDB caveat tables. The profitability base rate — 85.3% profitable, 25.8% median gross gain — is computed over 267,641 matched private buy-then-sell pairs.

Read the indices correctly. URA's PPI, URA's Rental Index and HDB's RPI are separate indices (each based at 2009Q1 = 100). Compare them on direction, not level, and never read an index value as a dollar price.

What we have not claimed: that these figures are a forecast — we report the trend, not a prediction of where prices go next; that any specific project, town or unit moves with the index; that the newest weeks of transaction data are complete (recent windows are under-lodged); or that the profitability base rate is a guarantee — it is gross of costs and describes the past, not your unit. Data as of 2026Q1 — verify the latest on URA, HDB and data.gov.sg. This is general information, not financial advice.