Upgrading from an HDB flat to a condo got more expensive in most towns. Here's how much more
Reva compared 4-room HDB resales with 3-bedroom condo resales in 17 towns. The price gap between them widened in 16, by a median of about $55,000 across the towns, and the rise varied sharply from town to town.
Desmond Teng, founder of Reva · · 5 min read
We compared what a typical 4-room flat and a typical 3-bedroom condo sell for in 17 towns, a year ago and today. In 16 of them, the price gap between the two grew. The median increase across the 17 towns was about $55,000, but it varied a lot, from a small fall in Choa Chu Kang to about $145,000 in Toa Payoh.
The official figures point the same way. Going by HDB's early estimate, resale flat prices slipped 0.2% between July and September, the third quarterly fall in a row. Over the same months, URA's early estimate shows private home prices rose 1.4%, and condos in the suburbs rose 2.2%. Those indexes cover the whole market, not the homes we studied, but they tell a similar story.
If you're hoping to sell your flat and buy a condo, the gap is the number to watch, because it's the distance you have to cover.
How much the gap grew, town by town
Estimated change, September 2024 to August 2025 against September 2025 to August 2026. Pale bars: uncertain, because the three ways we measured it disagree on whether the gap grew.
Comparing each year's median prices on their own can mislead, because a median moves when a different mix of homes happens to sell. So we measured the price change in the same HDB blocks and the same condo projects in both years. That's closer to like for like, but it isn't the same homes: within a block or a project, the flats and condos that sold can still differ in size, floor and condition.
In the median town, 4-room flats in those blocks rose 0.5% over the year, and 3-bedroom condos in those projects rose 3.9%. A condo costs more than twice as much as a flat in every one of these towns, so a bigger percentage rise on a bigger price opens the gap quickly.
How sure we are
Because these are estimates, we tested them two other ways: by working out each year's gap directly from the same blocks' and projects' sales, and by counting only blocks and projects with at least five sales in each year instead of three.
In 13 of the 17 towns, all three ways show the gap growing. In four, the answer depends on the method, so treat them as uncertain: Toa Payoh, Bukit Panjang, Bukit Batok and Choa Chu Kang. Toa Payoh's large rise is the least certain of all. Worked out directly from each year's sales, its gap narrowed by about $78,000.
| Town | Gap a year ago (estimated) | Gap today | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toa Payoh* | $1,104,900 | $1,250,000 | +$145,100 |
| Geylang | $1,098,900 | $1,230,000 | +$131,100 |
| Queenstown | $1,036,700 | $1,139,500 | +$102,800 |
| Punggol | $990,800 | $1,078,600 | +$87,800 |
| Clementi | $1,098,000 | $1,182,600 | +$84,600 |
| Hougang | $1,057,800 | $1,131,100 | +$73,300 |
| Tampines | $951,800 | $1,015,500 | +$63,700 |
| Sengkang | $1,028,000 | $1,090,000 | +$62,000 |
| Yishun | $680,200 | $735,000 | +$54,800 |
| Ang Mo Kio | $1,232,200 | $1,280,000 | +$47,800 |
| Jurong West | $1,206,300 | $1,244,600 | +$38,300 |
| Pasir Ris | $837,400 | $872,600 | +$35,200 |
| Bedok | $1,172,400 | $1,200,000 | +$27,600 |
| Bukit Merah | $1,425,500 | $1,451,000 | +$25,500 |
| Bukit Panjang* | $1,245,100 | $1,254,000 | +$8,900 |
| Bukit Batok* | $1,024,400 | $1,028,000 | +$3,600 |
| Choa Chu Kang* | $760,400 | $755,900 | −$4,500 |
The gap is the median resale price of a 3-bedroom condo of 900 to 1,300 sq ft, less that of a 4-room flat, in the same town. Today's gap uses the medians from September 2025 to August 2026, as in our upgrade-gap study. * Uncertain: the three ways of measuring disagree. Each town's range is in the data.
What a bigger gap means for you
A bigger price gap isn't the same as a bigger loan. What you have to find depends on what your flat sells for, what goes back to your HDB loan and your CPF account, how much cash you have, and the condo's downpayment and purchase costs.
As an illustration only: in Punggol, the gap went from about $990,800 to about $1,078,600, roughly $87,800 more. If a household borrowed all of that extra amount at the 4% rate banks use to test loans, over 25 years, the monthly instalment would rise by about $460. Banks cap total debt repayments at 55% of gross monthly income, so with no other debts, that implies about $840 more income a month. It's a rough guide, not what a bank would approve.
Watch the gap in your town, not just your flat's price. A flat that rises 1% while condos rise 4% still leaves you further behind.
Work out your own numbers. Reva's check works through your flat's sale, your loan and CPF, and the condo you have in mind, and shows the cash and loan the move needs.
What else is going on
Our figures show that the gap grew. They don't show why. Two things in the wider market are worth knowing.
On the HDB side, ERA's Eugene Lim expects resale "price gains should continue to be kept in check by the influx of 13,480 MOP flats this year". That's the number of flats that became eligible for sale after their minimum occupation period, not the number put up for sale.
On the condo side, new launches on government land have been priced well above a benchmark of their land and building costs, as we found in our land-cost study. Reporting the 2.2% suburban rise, EdgeProp wrote that "Huttons Asia attributes the increase partly to higher price benchmarks set by projects such as Vela Bay". Those are new-launch prices, and we measured resales. How far one pulls the other along is more than our data can show.
How we did it
This is a town-level price comparison, not a list of homes like yours. We used 4-room HDB resales and resales of 3-bedroom condos of 900 to 1,300 sq ft in the 17 towns of our upgrade-gap study where enough blocks and projects sold in both years: September 2024 to August 2025, and September 2025 to August 2026.
For each HDB block with at least three 4-room resales in both years, we took the ratio of its two median prices, and for each condo project with at least three sales in both years, the ratio of its two median prices per square foot. A town's change is the weighted median of those ratios, each block or project weighted by the smaller of its two sale counts. Today's gap uses the study's medians; the gap a year ago is estimated by running them back through those changes. Towns needed at least 10 blocks and 3 projects; Bishan, Serangoon and Woodlands had too few. In all, 563 blocks with 5,545 resales and 169 projects with 3,156 resales. The $55,000 is the median of the 17 towns' changes, each town counted once, so it isn't the typical household's increase. Download the data, with each town's sale counts and both checks.
Sources: contains information from Resale Flat Prices (HDB), accessed from data.gov.sg under the Singapore Open Data Licence; URA private residential transactions; HDB's and URA's early estimates for July to September 2026; ERA and EdgeProp, as linked. Reva gives information, not advice, and is not a licensed estate agent or financial adviser.