What a Shrinking HDB Lease Actually Costs — Once You Stop Comparing Across Town Lines

Islandwide: median 4-room $/sqm by remaining lease

This looks like remaining lease barely matters — or even helps. It is misleading.

Median across all towns. 4-room resales, Jan 2024 – Aug 2026. Source: Resale Flat Prices, HDB.

Within one town, the discount appears

Median 4-room price per sqm by remaining lease, three towns at different price levels. Each line bends down as the lease shortens.

4-room resales since Jan 2024. Source: Resale Flat Prices, HDB.

The shape of the decline

The discount is not a straight line.

• From about 99 down to 80 years left, there is almost no difference in price per sqm — a fresh-MOP flat and a 20-year-old one hold value about equally.
• The discount starts to bite from roughly 75 years remaining, and steepens through the 60s and 50s.
• Averaged across 12 towns, a 4-room loses about S$82 per sqm — roughly 11% of its price per sqm — for every 10 years of lease gone.

How much value drops per 10 years of lease, by town

Percentage of median price per sqm lost per decade of lease, from a within-town fit.

4-room resales since Jan 2024; slope of price/sqm against remaining lease within each town. Source: Resale Flat Prices, HDB.

What it means for a buyer

• For a 90 sqm 4-room, the average town slope works out to roughly S$7,000–8,000 of value for each year of lease — so a flat with 20 fewer years left is, all else equal, around S$150,000 cheaper.
• Financing tightens with the lease. CPF can fully fund the purchase only if the remaining lease covers the youngest buyer to age 95; below that, CPF use is pro-rated, and there is no CPF at all under 20 years left.
• A shorter lease is not automatically a bad buy — a central location on 60 years can still outperform an outlying one on 95 — but you are buying a wasting asset, and the resale pool shrinks as the lease runs down.