We pulled every condo in Singapore that was bought and then sold again. Same home, same floor, same stack. Matched, so the gain is a real gain on a real property. Not two different homes being compared.
There are 23,863 of them where the sale happened since 2024. The middle one made $365,000. Nearly half made more than $400,000. They had held the home for about nine years.
So when somebody tells you they are sitting on $400,000, they usually are.
That is the headline number. There is a second number underneath it, and almost nobody works it out before they sell. It is what you keep after the buying costs, the borrowing costs and the selling costs come off.
Take a condo bought at $1,500,000 five years ago. Those two numbers are $500,000 and $88,342. Here is how that happens.
Start With A Real Condo, Not A Percentage
Take a condo bought in 2021 for $1,500,000. Nothing fancy. A suburban home, bought with the usual 25% down and a bank loan for the rest.
What is it worth today? We do not have to guess. Across the resale market, the middle price per square foot was $1,259 in 2021. Today it is $1,699. That is a rise of about 35%.
Apply that and the same home lands a little above $2,000,000. We will use the round $2,000,000, which is the safer end of it.
So on paper you made $500,000.
That is a genuinely good five years, and nobody should pretend otherwise. Now take the costs off it, one at a time.
The Five Costs Nobody Adds Up
There are five, and they land at different times. Which is exactly why they never get counted together.
The first one you paid on day one. Buyer's Stamp Duty is the tax you pay when you buy. On $1,500,000 it comes to $44,600. You paid it in cash five years ago and have not thought about it since.
Second is renovation. Call it $100,000. Use your own figure if you kept the receipts, and most people did not.
Third arrives at the end. Selling a condo costs 2% to the agent plus 9% GST on that fee. On a $2,000,000 sale that is $43,600.
The fourth you have been paying every month for five years. That is the bank interest, and it is the biggest one of the lot.
The fifth is the one nobody sees at all. It is interest too, but you owe this one to your own CPF. Those last two need a section each.
| Amount | |
|---|---|
| Sold today | $2,000,000 |
| Bought in 2021 | $1,500,000 |
| Gain on paper | $500,000 |
| Less Buyer's Stamp Duty | −$44,600 |
| Less renovation | −$100,000 |
| Less agent fee, 2% plus 9% GST | −$43,600 |
| Less bank interest, years 1 to 5 | −$159,779 |
| Less CPF accrued interest | −$63,679 |
| What you actually keep | $88,342 |
$500,000 becomes $88,342. The five costs took $411,658, which is 82% of the gain.
And we have not counted maintenance yet. The condo charges it for the pool, the guard and the lifts. At $400 a month that is another $24,000 over five years. The keep number drops to about $64,000.
“There were two interest bills, not one. The bank sent you the first. Nobody sends you the second.”
— Elfi Abdullah
Why The Bank Interest Is The One That Hurts
Of those five costs, three are one-off and easy to see. The stamp duty is a single painful transfer. The renovation is a contractor's invoice. The agent fee comes off the sale.
Interest is different. It arrives in 60 small pieces, buried inside a payment you think of as paying down your home.
Mostly it is not paying down your home.
On a $1,125,000 loan over 30 years at 3%, the monthly payment is $4,743. In year one, $33,429 of that was interest. Only $23,488 came off the loan. Fifty-nine cents of every dollar went to the bank and stayed there.
This is how every home loan is built. You pay interest on what you still owe. At the start you still owe almost all of it. So the early years are nearly all interest and the late years are nearly all loan.
| Year | Went to interest | Came off the loan | Interest share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | $33,429 | $23,488 | 59% |
| Year 2 | $32,714 | $24,202 | 57% |
| Year 3 | $31,978 | $24,938 | 56% |
| Year 4 | $31,220 | $25,697 | 55% |
| Year 5 | $30,438 | $26,478 | 53% |
| Years 1 to 5 together | $159,779 | $124,803 | 56% |
| Year 26, for contrast | $7,239 | $49,678 | 13% |
Read the last two rows against each other. In the first five years, 56 cents of every dollar went to the bank. By year 26 it is 13 cents.
That is the thing to understand about selling early. A home loan rewards the person who stays. Sell in year five and you have paid the expensive part. You collected none of the cheap part.
The Second Interest Bill, The One From Your Own CPF
Most people buy a condo with CPF, not cash. The deposit, the stamp duty, the legal fees, then every monthly instalment after that.
Add it up over five years and it is a lot of money out of the account. $300,000 for the deposit. $44,600 for the stamp duty. About $3,000 in legal fees. Then 60 instalments of $4,743. That comes to $632,180 of CPF money spent.
Now the part nobody explains. While that money sat in your CPF, it was paying you 2.5% a year. The day you took it out, it stopped paying.
Over five years that adds up to $63,679 of interest you never received.
And when you sell, all of it goes back. The $632,180 goes back into your CPF and it is still yours, every cent. The $63,679 goes back too, and that part was never yours. It is what your own savings would have earned if you had left them alone.
So it is a real cost. It is also not the bank interest counted twice. Two different bills, paid to two different people.
The bank interest is what you paid to borrow. The CPF interest is what you gave up by spending your own savings early.
Your rate is important here too, and rates moved a lot over these five years. Here is the same loan at three rates, so you can find yours. The CPF figure moves with it, because a bigger instalment takes more out of your account.
| Rate | Bank interest, 5 years | CPF accrued interest | Keep number |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.5% | $132,555 | $62,549 | $116,696 |
| 3.0% | $159,779 | $63,679 | $88,342 |
| 3.5% | $187,197 | $64,851 | $59,752 |
Now Compare It To Doing Nothing
A keep number of about $64,000 over five years is still money. The question is whether it beat the alternative. And for most of these owners, the alternative was staying in the HDB flat they sold.
So we checked what that flat did over the same five years.
The middle 4-room HDB flat went from $470,000 in 2021 to $630,000 today. That is $160,000.
No Buyer's Stamp Duty, because they were not buying. No renovation, because they were not moving. No agent fee, because they were not selling. And a far smaller loan, so far less interest.
| Bought the condo | Stayed in the HDB flat | |
|---|---|---|
| Gain on paper | $500,000 | $160,000 |
| Buyer's Stamp Duty | −$44,600 | none |
| Renovation | −$100,000 | none |
| Agent fee to sell | −$43,600 | none |
| Bank interest, 5 years | −$159,779 | far smaller loan |
| CPF accrued interest | −$63,679 | far smaller |
| Maintenance charges | −$24,000 | none |
| What you keep | about $64,000 | about $160,000 |
About $64,000 against $160,000. The condo owner ends up roughly $96,000 behind. After a bigger loan, a bigger tax bill and two renovations.
Now the other side of it, because it is not quite as one-sided as that table looks. The flat owner had a loan running too, and its interest comes off their $160,000. Over the same five years that is about $35,000, which puts them nearer $125,000. The condo owner is still behind, by about $60,000 rather than $96,000.
Either way the direction is the same. The $500,000 was never $500,000.
When somebody tells me they made half a million on their condo, I believe them. Then I ask two questions. What did you pay the bank in the first five years? And what does CPF say you owe? The room goes quiet. Nobody ever showed them the second number, let alone the third.Elfi Abdullah, Founder of EastCondos
So Was The Condo A Mistake?
No. And this is where most people read these numbers wrong.
A condo is still the best thing most Singaporeans can put into a retirement plan. It is the one big asset a normal family can borrow to own. Hold it for years and it turns into a real sum. Nothing else on the shelf does that.
But it only works if you know how to do it.
The five years above were not done wrong. They were done with no plan. Somebody borrowed to the top of what the bank would lend. Spent $100,000 on the renovation. Drained the CPF. Then sold at year five because the price looked good on paper.
Same market, same home. A different plan and the number at the end is a different number.
So do two things.
Work out your own keep number. Take the price you would sell at. Take off what you paid, and the stamp duty on the way in. Then take off the interest so far, the renovation and the agent fee. Your bank will give you the loan interest in one phone call. CPF will show you the accrued interest in the app.
Then ask the harder question, and be honest with yourself about the answer. Was this the plan when I bought the condo? Or is there a better option now that I know what those five costs really take?
The headline number is not yours. The keep number is. Work it out first, then decide.
- How much profit are Singapore condo sellers actually making?
- The middle seller made $365,000. That is across 23,863 matched sales since 2024. Same home bought, then sold again. Nearly half made more than $400,000, and 5.5% sold for less than they paid. The average hold was about nine years.
- What costs come off a condo profit when I sell?
- Five main ones. Buyer's Stamp Duty paid when you bought. Renovation. The agent fee of 2% plus 9% GST when you sell. Bank interest paid while you held it. And CPF accrued interest. That is the 2.5% your CPF stopped paying on the money you took out. On a $1,500,000 purchase held five years, those five came to $411,658. The gain was $500,000.
- What is CPF accrued interest, and is it really a cost?
- Your CPF pays 2.5% a year on the money in your account. You took yours out to buy, so it stopped. That interest never reached you. When you sell you have to refund it out of your own sale proceeds. The money you took out is still yours. The interest is not, so it is a genuine cost. On a $1,500,000 condo held five years it comes to $63,679.
- Is counting both bank interest and CPF accrued interest double-counting?
- No. They are two separate bills paid to two different people. Bank interest is what you paid a bank to lend you money. CPF accrued interest is what you gave up by spending your own savings. Leave them alone and they earn 2.5%. Both come off the same gain.
- How much interest do you pay in the first five years of a home loan?
- Take a $1,125,000 loan over 30 years at 3%. The first five years cost $159,779 in interest. That is 56 cents of every dollar paid. Only $124,803 came off the loan itself.
- Why is home loan interest highest at the start?
- Because interest is charged on what you still owe. At the start you still owe almost all of it. In year one, 59% of your payment is interest. By year 26 it is 13%. A home loan rewards the person who stays.
- Would I have made more just staying in my HDB flat?
- Closer than most people expect, and on these numbers the flat wins. The middle 4-room HDB flat rose $160,000 over the same five years. That came with no stamp duty, no renovation and no agent fee. The loan was far smaller too. Against a condo keep number of about $64,000, the condo owner is roughly $96,000 behind. Count the flat owner's own loan interest and the gap narrows to about $60,000. It does not close.
- What is Buyer's Stamp Duty on a $1,500,000 property?
- $44,600. It is charged in bands. 1% on the first $180,000, then 2% on the next $180,000. Then 3% on the next $640,000 and 4% on the next $500,000.
Your figures are not the ones in this piece. What you paid. What you owe the bank. What you owe your CPF. What you would sell at. All of it is specific to you. Putting them on one page usually takes half an hour and changes the decision.
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