One in five lost money

James Lim · CEA Reg. R063631F · PropNex Realty Pte Ltd

Nearly one in five private homes resold in Singapore’s prime districts in the third quarter of 2026 changed hands for less than the seller paid. Cushman and Wakefield, compiling matched caveats for The Business Times, counted 2,021 resales in the quarter by owners who had bought within the previous ten years, and 93 of them lost money: 4.6% islandwide, up from 3.7% in the second quarter and 3.3% a year earlier, and the highest share since 6.9% in the second quarter of 2022. The Core Central Region supplied half of those losses, with 19.5% of its resales in the red. The same quarter’s URA index rose 1.4%. Those two facts do not contradict each other. They describe a market where the average keeps climbing and a specific kind of unit, bought a specific way, keeps falling, and the Q3 tables are unusually clear about which kind.

How many sellers lost money in Q3 2026?

Roughly one in 22 across the island, and the gradient by region is the story. In the Core Central Region, 19.5% of matched resales closed at a loss, up from 17.7% in the second quarter, and the region accounted for 49% of every loss-making deal in the country. In the Rest of Central Region the share was 4.5%, up from 2.7%, and 30% of the losses. In the Outside Central Region it was 1.6%, up from 1.3%, and 20% of the losses. The other side of the ledger is thinning too: the median gain among profitable resales and sub-sales fell to 24.8%, from a peak of 30.4% in the second quarter of 2025. Wong Xian Yang, the firm’s head of research for Singapore and South-east Asia, put it plainly: with prices at historical highs and the macro picture uncertain, buyers are getting selective and resale outcomes will vary more widely from project to project.

Which condos lost the most money?

The five biggest losses by percentage and the five biggest by dollar amount were all 99-year leasehold units in the Core Central Region: four at Marina One Residences and one at V on Shenton in the Marina Bay and Shenton Way pocket, three at OUE Twin Peaks on Leonie Hill Road in District 9, and one at Cape Royale on Sentosa Cove. The steepest was a 710 sq ft unit at Marina One Residences, bought in July 2018 for $1.83 million and sold in August 2026 for $1.25 million: a 32% loss, or 4.6% a year over 8.1 years. The largest in dollars was a 1,604 sq ft unit at OUE Twin Peaks, bought in March 2017 for $4.9 million and sold in August for $3.88 million, a loss of about $1 million, or 2.4% a year over 9.4 years.

Look at what the losers have in common and the list stops looking like bad luck. All are 99-year leasehold. All sit in the prime-district pockets most dependent on foreign and investor buyers: Marina Bay and Shenton Way, the Leonie Hill stretch of District 9, and Sentosa Cove, and foreigners have paid 60% ABSD since April 2023. The two deals The Business Times dates were bought at the top of the previous prime-district cycle, in March 2017 and July 2018, and held 9.4 and 8.1 years, long enough for slides of 2.4% and 4.6% a year to compound into losses of a fifth and nearly a third of the price. The other seven carry no published purchase dates, and the Cape Royale loss cannot fit the same pattern: its developer only began selling units in 2022, so that seller was out within four years. Several are small: the worst deal in the country was a 710 sq ft one-bedder, the format our September piece on The Scotts Tower found at the bottom of the Q2 table too. And the region around them is still soft: URA’s third-quarter data had Core Central Region prices up 0.3% against 2.3% in the Outside Central Region, with CCR vacancy at 8.4%, the highest of the three regions, which is the backdrop the Orchard Boulevard tender was bid into.

Who made money, and what did they buy?

Owners who bought freehold, or bought an executive condominium, and in every deal The Business Times dates, held nine to ten years. The five biggest percentage gains in the quarter all came from Hundred Palms Residences, the EC in Yio Chu Kang, with returns of 138.9% to 163.9% over roughly nine-year holds. The best of them was a 1,055 sq ft unit bought in July 2017 for $860,000 and sold in September for $2.26 million, an 11.2% annualised return over 9.2 years. Strip out the ECs and the five best percentage gains were 83.9% to 88.1%, four of them freehold, led by a 1,410 sq ft unit at The Sea View in the Rest of Central Region: $2.18 million in October 2016, $4.1 million in September 2026, 6.5% a year. By dollar amount, the biggest winner was a 4,704 sq ft Leedon Residence unit sold in July for $14.3 million against a 2017 purchase at $10.55 million, a $3.75 million gain, and all five of the largest dollar gains were in freehold developments. Three of those five were in the Core Central Region.

The contrast is not the Core Central Region against the Outside Central Region. Three of the five largest dollar gains were prime-district homes, and Leedon Residence sits in District 10, as prime an address as any on the loss list. The contrast is tenure, size and the buyer the unit was built for. A freehold family-sized unit in a district with owner-occupier depth found a buyer at a profit after nine years. A 99-year investor-format unit in a precinct that lives on foreign demand did not. That was the finding in the Q2 table too, and it is the same test we put to every project that scores well on paper: not what the unit is worth today, but who is standing on the other side of the deal when you need to sell.

What should prime-district owners and buyers do with this?

Run the exit test on your unit →

Keep reading

Related notes.

Market Read·30 Oct 2026·9 min read

Fixed or floating? The Fed held, December is 71% priced, and the gap between the two is under a third of a point.

The Fed paused at 3.75 to 4% on 28 October with two members voting to hike, and futures put a December increase at roughly 80 to 85% on decision day, easing to about 71% by 31 October. Singapore banks moved weeks ago: fixed packages start at 1.75% for the best profiles and sit above 2% on a $500,000 loan, against floating from 1.47%. The decision, by borrower type, with the maths.

Read the piece →

Market Read·29 Oct 2026·12 min read

Five bids, $1,755 psf ppr: what the Hong Leong and TID win at Orchard Boulevard means for Orchard prices, UpperHouse and the next launch on the boulevard.

The Orchard Boulevard tender closed on 29 October with five bids and a top offer of $181.86 million from Hong Leong Holdings and TID, or $1,755 psf per plot ratio. That is 8.5% above what UOL and Singapore Land paid for the UpperHouse site a few hundred metres along the boulevard in 2024, and inside the $1,650 to $2,050 analysts expected. Here is what the number does to Orchard land, to UpperHouse’s last units, and to anyone weighing a 99-year home on the boulevard.

Read the piece →

Market Read·26 Oct 2026·8 min read

Vacancy jumped to 7.2% and rents still rose 1.3%. What URA’s Q3 data means if you rent out a condo.

URA’s final third-quarter figures show the private vacancy rate jumping from 6.4% to 7.2% as 3,559 new homes received TOP, yet rents rose 1.3%, the fastest since mid-2023, and OCR and RCR rents hit the highest levels in URA’s records. Here is why both happened at once, what the last vacancy spike did to rents, and what landlords and tenants should do before 10,132 more homes complete in 2027.

Read the piece →

All insights →