Resale condo for own stay: what it really costs, and when you still make money

When you buy a resale condo to live in, some of the money never comes back. Stamp duty, interest, reno, MCST and the agent fee are gone once you pay them. Your down payment and the loan you've paid down come back through the sale price, as long as the sale covers the loan. So what matters most is how much the price goes up while you live there.

We looked at 1,048 owners in D16 and D19 who bought a condo or EC on resale and sold in 2025 or 2026. There's a calculator further down for your own numbers.

What you pay and never get back

Say you buy at S$1,130,000 and sell after 4.4 years. That's the median price and the median stay for owners who held 3 to 7 years.

What you pay	About
Buying: stamp duty, legal fees and a S$30,000 reno	S$62,800
Interest on a 75% loan at 2.5%	S$86,227
Owning: MCST, property tax and repairs	S$28,710
Selling: agent fee of 2% plus GST, and legal fees	S$35,200
All of the above	S$212,937

So the price has to go up about S$213,000 before you break even.

Buyer's Stamp Duty on S$1,130,000 is S$29,800, at the IRAS rates in force since 15 Feb 2023. If you're a Singapore Citizen buying your first home, there's no Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty, so we left it out.

Sell too early and you also pay Seller's Stamp Duty. If you bought on or after 4 Jul 2025, IRAS charges 16% of the selling price in the first year, then 12% in the second, 8% in the third and 4% in the fourth. Once you're past the SSD period, after 4 years, there's none. So most figures here assume you sell 4 years and a day after buying.

Did resale buyers make money?

Most did. Of the 1,048 owners, 80% sold for enough to cover every cost at 2.5% interest. At 3.5% interest, 73% did.

For the 626 who held 3 to 7 years, how much the market went up mattered far more than how long they stayed.

All 1,048 owners, by price growth a year:

Price growth a year	Owners	Made money
Under 0%	7	0%
0 to 2%	56	0%
2 to 3%	114	34%
3 to 4%	175	69%
4 to 5%	141	90%
5 to 6%	182	100%
Over 6%	373	100%

If you buy at S$1,130,000 today and sell 4 years and a day later, the price needs to grow about 4.2% a year. That's with a S$30,000 reno and 2.5% interest. Stay longer and you need less.

Project by project

Same two districts, very different numbers. These are some of the projects with at least 6 owners who held 3 to 7 years. The Bayshore, Archipelago and Urban Vista are in D16, the rest in D19. Growth is each project's median.

Project	Made money	Growth a year
The Vales (EC)	100% of 20	7.1%
A Treasure Trove	100% of 15	7.2%
La Fiesta	100% of 13	6.6%
The Bayshore	94% of 17	5.8%
Riversails	93% of 14	6.5%
Botanique at Bartley	72% of 18	5.4%
Archipelago	62% of 13	5.3%
Watertown	47% of 15	3.5%
Kingsford Waterbay	24% of 25	2.8%
Urban Vista	17% of 6	2.3%
Stars of Kovan	11% of 9	2.7%

Where prices grew slower, owners paid more for the home they lived in. These are past sales at one point in the market, not a view on any project.

What makes the difference

Reno

Reno is the cost you have the most say over, and it changes the growth you need. We count it as money spent. A good reno may help the sale price, but the records can't show by how much.

Here's the growth a year you need to break even, at S$1,130,000 and 2.5% interest.

Sell after	S$30,000 reno	S$100,000 reno
4 years and a day	4.2%	5.6%
5 years	3.7%	4.8%
7 years	3.2%	3.9%
10 years	2.7%	3.2%

Sell after 4 years and the bigger reno pushes the growth you need from 4.2% to 5.6% a year. At 5% growth, a S$30,000 reno is covered. A S$100,000 one isn't.

How long you stay

You pay the buying and selling costs once. The longer you stay, the thinner they spread.

Held for	Owners	Made money
1 to 3 years	7	43%
3 to 4 years	218	68%
4 to 5 years	195	79%
5 to 7 years	213	86%
7 to 10 years	163	82%
10 years or more	247	87%

Unit size

Bigger units did better. One-bedroom prices grew a median 3.0% a year, and 26% of 127 owners made money. Two-bedrooms grew 4.9%, with 76% of 332 making money. Three-bedrooms grew 5.8%, with 94% of 479. And 98% of the 92 four-bedroom owners made money.

How old the building was

This part covers 99-year condos only, no ECs, bought from 2019 to 2022 and held at least 3 years. People who bought in a building's first five years saw the least growth.

Building age when bought	Made money	Median growth a year
Under 5 years	54% of 90	3.8%
5 to 10 years	80% of 156	6.4%
10 years or more	94% of 110	6.6%

A building that grew fast in one stretch of its life may not do the same in the next. If you buy from an owner who did well, you're buying in later. Don't count on the same growth.

Own stay: you still had a home

Every owner here had a home for the years they held it, and paid no rent. Where the price rose slower than the costs, the gap was what they paid to live there.

Of the owners who held 3 to 7 years, 140 didn't cover their costs. The median gap was S$49,170, for sales in 2025 and 2026. That works out to about S$984 a month for the home they lived in.

Try your own numbers

The calculator starts at the median price, S$1,130,000, with 4% growth a year, a S$30,000 reno and a sale 4 years and a day after buying. Change the reno to S$100,000 and the break-even growth moves with it. The bars show where you'd end up for each year you might sell.

It assumes you're a Singapore Citizen buying your first home, so ABSD is S$0. Buyer's and Seller's Stamp Duty follow IRAS rules. Property tax is a simple yearly figure you can change. IRAS sets your home's actual annual value, and you can check it on myTax Portal.

How we worked this out

The records. URA caveat records for D16 and D19, from ERA's transaction export on 27 Oct 2026. We kept URA records only. That gives 1,048 owners who bought a completed condo or EC on resale and sold in 2025 or 2026, with 368 in D16 and 680 in D19. The export stops at 2,000 rows. D19 hit that cap, so its records cover a shorter period than D16's.

The costs. For each owner, we took the sale price and subtracted the purchase price and these costs.

• Buyer's Stamp Duty at the IRAS rates on the purchase date.
• Legal fees of S$3,000 to buy and S$2,500 to sell.
• A S$30,000 reno.
• A 75% loan over 25 years at 2.5% interest for the whole stay. We also show the share who made money at 3.5%.
• MCST of S$0.40 per square foot a month.
• Property tax at IRAS owner-occupier rates, with the annual value estimated from the project's recorded rents. For 70 owners there were no rent records, so we left their property tax out.
• S$500 a year for repairs.
• An agent fee of 2% of the sale price, plus GST at the rate on the sale date.
• Seller's Stamp Duty if they sold early enough to pay it.

For the 626 owners who held 3 to 7 years, their gain or shortfall as a share of the price correlated 0.89 with yearly price growth and 0.44 with how long they stayed.

The break-even figures use the same costs at S$1,130,000, with MCST of S$400 a month, property tax of S$1,600 a year and today's stamp duty rates.

What the records can't show.

• Only owners who sold are counted. Owners still living in their homes are not.
• Most held through the 2021 to 2025 price rise, which helped their numbers.
• Interest stays at one rate for the whole stay, though rates went up in 2022 and 2023. The 3.5% figure shows how much a higher rate matters.
• EC resale buyers gained as EC prices caught up with condo prices. Later buyers may not get the same.
• We don't count any return on the down payment, which could have earned interest elsewhere.
• The costs above are assumptions. Your own fees, reno and loan will be different.

These are past records, not a forecast and not financial advice.

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Rule figures checked against IRAS on 9 Nov 2026. Rates can change; IRAS is the authority on your own case.