HDB resale prices: town and lease explain 82% of the four-room spread

A four-room HDB resale flat registered in the 12 months to September 2026 changed hands at a median $630,000, but a tenth sold for $510,000 or less and a tenth for $943,000 or more 1. Town and remaining lease together account for about 82% of that spread 1.

This guide answers a question every resale buyer and seller meets early: what are flats actually transacting at, and why do two flats of the same type sell for such different sums? It uses HDB's own record of registered resale prices on data.gov.sg, 24,659 resales registered from October 2025 to September 2026 1. October 2026's registrations are still coming in, so they are left out 1.

What are HDB resale flats actually selling for?

The table gives the full range for each flat type, not only the median. The 10th and 90th percentiles mark where the cheapest tenth and the dearest tenth begin.

Source: HDB resale flat prices, data.gov.sg 1; Sightlines analysis. Percentiles use linear interpolation between deals. psf is the price divided by the floor area in square metres times 10.7639. One-room (9 resales) and multi-generation (6) flats are left out because they trade in very small numbers.

Two things stand out. First, the ranges overlap heavily. The dearest tenth of three-room flats started at $625,888, within $4,112 of the four-room median of $630,000, and the dearest tenth of four-room flats started at $943,000, above the five-room 75th percentile of $860,000 1. Flat type alone says less about price than most buyers assume.

Second, the spread is lopsided. For four-room flats, the 25th percentile sat 11.9% below the median, but the 75th percentile sat 17.5% above it, and the 90th percentile was 49.7% above it 1. The top of the market stretches much further than the bottom. The 90th percentile four-room price was 1.85 times the 10th 1.

Median psf moves less than median price. Four-room, five-room and executive flats all had a median between $581 and $614 psf, on median quanta of $630,000 to $915,000, while two-room flats, the smallest in the table, had the highest median psf at $751 1. Bigger flats cost more in total but not more per square foot.

Why is the spread so wide?

The dataset records, for every resale, the town, flat type, storey range, floor area, flat model, lease start, remaining lease and registration month 1. That makes it possible to measure how much of the spread each of these explains.

Sightlines fitted a standard statistical model to the 10,812 four-room resales, adding one factor at a time 1. At each step it measured the share of the variation in prices the model accounts for 1. This is the R-squared, taken on the logarithm of price so that it describes percentage differences. The same was done for three-room and five-room flats.

Source: HDB resale flat prices, data.gov.sg, registered October 2025 to September 2026 1; Sightlines analysis. Ordinary least squares on log price; remaining lease in five-year bands, storey range as HDB records it, floor area as a logarithm, town, model and month as categories.

Read on its own, each factor tells a different story. For four-room flats, town alone accounts for 49.3% of the variation, remaining lease alone 32.7%, storey range alone 28.1%, flat model alone 23.2% and floor area alone 0.3% 1. For three-room flats the order flips: remaining lease alone accounts for 57.3% and town alone for only 13.8% 1.

Three plain lessons follow.

• Location and lease do most of the work. Once a four-room flat's town and remaining lease are known, about four-fifths of its price relative to other four-room flats is accounted for 1.
• For four-room flats, floor area barely matters. Half of four-room flats resold were between 92 sqm and 101 sqm, and size added 1.9 percentage points once town, lease and storey were known 1. Three-room flats differ: there, floor area added 5.8 points 1.
• The month does not matter much over this year. Adding the registration month moved the four-room figure from 87.9% to 88.0% 1. That fits HDB's own Resale Price Index, which was 203.6 in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 202.4 in the third quarter of 2026, a flash estimate, so the market as a whole moved by about 0.6% 2.

The caveat is real: the factors overlap. Towns differ in how old their flats are, and high floors come with younger leases 1. Four-room flats sold on storeys 1 to 3 had a median 69.8 years of lease left, against 89.2 years on storey 31 and above 1. So the share credited to each factor depends on the order in which they are added. The model shows association, not cause. HDB's own index uses a related method; since the fourth quarter of 2014 it has been computed with a stratified hedonic regression 2.

How much does the remaining lease matter?

Raw medians by lease can mislead, because old flats cluster in particular towns. The table shows both the raw median and the figure that matters more: how each lease band sold against the median four-room flat in its own town.

Source: HDB resale flat prices, data.gov.sg, registered October 2025 to September 2026 1; Sightlines analysis. The last column is the median of each flat's price divided by the median four-room price in its town over the same 12 months 1.

The raw medians barely rise from the 50s to the 70s, and four-room flats with under 50 years left had a higher median psf than those with 50 to 59 years left 1. That is the town effect at work: of the 229 four-room flats with under 50 years left, 39 were in Toa Payoh, 37 in Marine Parade, 31 in Kallang/Whampoa and 30 in Bukit Merah 1. Measured against their own towns, the pattern is steady. Flats with under 50 years left sold at a median 34.6% below their town's four-room median, and flats with 90 years or more at 11.3% above it 1.

The same holds for other flat types. Three-room flats with under 50 years left sold at a median 11.1% below their town's three-room median, and five-room flats with under 50 years left at 16.6% below 1. Three-room flats with 90 years or more left sold 28.2% above their town's median, and five-room flats 12.2% above 1.

Financing is one mechanism that could sit behind this. CPF Board says buyers can use a pro-rated amount of their CPF savings if a property's remaining lease is at least 20 years but does not cover the youngest buyer until age 95 3. The amount depends on the youngest owner's age and the remaining lease 3. In CPF Board's example, two 25-year-old buyers of a flat with 65 years of lease left, priced at $550,000, can use up to $495,000 of their CPF 3. That is 90% of the price, because the lease will last only until they are 90 3. The rule applies to any buyer using CPF savings for a home whose lease does not cover the youngest buyer to age 95 3. The authority is CPF Board, whose guidance was last updated on 6 July 2026 (rules as at 9 October 2026) 3.

That rule reaches a large part of the market. For a youngest buyer aged 35, a lease must have at least 60 years left to reach age 95 (95 minus 35) 3. In the 12 months to September 2026, 7,207 resales, or 29.2% of all resales, had less than 60 years of lease remaining 1. A smaller pool of buyers who can use their CPF in full is consistent with lower prices for older flats, though the data does not prove that this is the reason.

How much is a higher floor worth?

Higher floors sell for more, but less than the raw figures suggest. The raw four-room median rose from $570,000 on storeys 1 to 3 to $1,150,000 on storey 31 and above 1. Much of that gap reflects which flats sit on high floors: they tend to have younger leases, as shown above 1.

To strip that out, Sightlines compared each four-room flat with the median four-room flat in the same town and the same five-year band of remaining lease 1. Only groups with at least 10 resales were used, covering 10,633 of the 10,812 four-room resales 1.

Source: HDB resale flat prices, data.gov.sg, registered October 2025 to September 2026 1; Sightlines analysis.

Like for like, the gap from the lowest storeys to the highest was about 12 percentage points, from -5.1% to +7.3% 1. On a $630,000 flat, that is roughly $32,000 below to $46,000 above the typical price for the same town and lease 1. A buyer weighing a low floor against a high one in the same estate can use that as a first check on whether an asking price is in line.

Does the flat model matter?

Less than its reputation, with two exceptions. On the same like-for-like basis, four-room Model A flats (7,182 resales, the bulk of the market) sold at the typical price for their town and lease band 1. New Generation flats sold at -0.2%, Improved at -1.9% and Model A2 at -2.8% 1. Premium Apartments sold at +2.8% 1.

The two exceptions: DBSS flats sold at +8.0% (150 resales), and Simplified flats at -7.3% (629 resales) 1. Neither group is large, and flat model overlaps with block and estate, so treat these as a first-line read.

A worked example: two four-room flats in Tampines

Tampines had 902 four-room resales registered in the 12 months to September 2026, with a median of $665,000 and a middle half between $620,000 and $760,000 1. Take a household weighing two four-room flats there, one with 50 to 59 years of lease left and one with 90 years or more 1.

Source: HDB resale flat prices, data.gov.sg 1; Sightlines analysis.

The arithmetic:

1. The younger flat cost $150,556 more at the median: $770,000 minus $619,444 1. That is about 24% more 1.
2. It was 11 sqm smaller: 93 sqm against 104 sqm 1. So per square foot the gap was wider, $769 against $570, about 35% more 1.
3. Floor level then adds a smaller step. Among Tampines four-room flats with 90 years or more left, the median was $740,000 on storeys 1 to 6, $780,000 on storeys 7 to 12 and $800,694 on storey 13 and above 1. Low to high, that is a gap of $60,694, about 8% 1.

So in this town, the lease decision was worth about two and a half times as much as the floor decision. The older flat buys more space for less money; the younger one buys more years, and, for many buyers, fuller use of CPF savings 3.

The example has its own wrinkle. Tampines flats with 80 to 89 years left sold at a higher median than those with 90 years or more, $800,444 against $770,000 1. Lease is not a straight line within a town: which estate, which block and which storeys happened to sell matter too.

What is left once the obvious drivers are counted?

After town, lease, storey, floor area, model and month, about 12% of the variation in four-room prices remains unexplained 1. That remainder is not small in dollars. Half of four-room flats sold within about 5% of the price the model predicts for them (from -4.8% to +4.7%), and four in five within about -9% to +11% 1.

Grouping flats more tightly tells the same story. Sightlines grouped four-room flats by town, five-year lease band and storey band, keeping the 327 groups with at least 10 resales 1. Within those groups, the middle half of prices spanned a median 8.0% of the group's median price 1. Across all four-room flats island-wide, the middle half spanned 29.4% 1. So about a quarter of the spread a buyer sees in the headline range survives a careful like-for-like comparison.

The dataset does not record the block's distance to an MRT station, the view, the facing, the renovation or the condition of the flat, or how the sale was negotiated 1. That remainder is where those things, and luck, may sit. That is the room in which an individual seller or buyer actually negotiates.

Who this does not apply to, and what would change the answer

This analysis describes resale flats registered over one year. It does not cover new BTO flats, executive condominiums or private homes. Eligibility to buy a resale flat, grants and loans depend on rules this guide does not cover.

Three things could change the answer.

• The market could move. Over this window HDB's index barely moved 2. In a year when prices rise or fall quickly, the registration month would explain more of the spread.
• The lease effect could change. If the discount on older flats reflects financing limits such as the CPF lease rule 3, a change to those limits could shift the gap between old and young flats.
• The mix could change. When younger or older flats make up more of a town's sales, its median will move with the mix, even if like-for-like prices do not.

The rule that lasts: to read any resale price, first place the flat by town and remaining lease, then by storey, and only then argue about the rest. Two flats that match on those three may still differ by about 5% either way on condition, view and negotiation, and sometimes by 10% 1. Two flats that do not match are not comparable at all.

This is general information, not financial advice. Check the current rules with IRAS, HDB, CPF Board or your bank before you commit.