Is freehold worth the premium in Singapore?

As of Q1 2026, freehold private condominiums in Singapore traded at a median of S$2,187 per square foot, versus S$2,142 per square foot for 99-year leasehold condominiums — a freehold premium of 2.1%. This is the PropKaki Gap™, Singapore's quarterly named measure of the freehold vs leasehold price differential for private non-landed condominiums, computed by PropKaki from every URA caveat in the rolling 5-year transaction window.

PropKaki Gap™ — latest quarter

All figures are median transacted PSF on strata floor area, from URA private residential caveats (Apartment + Condominium only, excluding ECs and landed). As of Q1 2026.

PropKaki Gap™ — last 8 quarters

What does the freehold premium actually mean?

Singapore's freehold vs leasehold debate is one of the most persistent questions in local property — and one of the hardest to answer with data, because most published comparisons are project-level or anecdotal. The PropKaki Gap is an island-wide, quarterly, apples-to-apples PSF comparison computed from every recorded transaction, not a cherry-picked case study.

Freehold condominiums are disproportionately concentrated in the Core Central Region (CCR) — Districts 9, 10, 11, and the city fringe. Most new government land sales are 99-year leasehold, so the freehold supply is essentially legacy stock from pre-1990 developments and estate sales. This means the Gap captures both a genuine tenure premium and a locational premium — buyers in Districts 9/10 pay more per square foot for reasons beyond just tenure.

For project-level tenure comparisons — comparing a freehold and a leasehold project in the same district — PropKaki's PIE valuation tool provides a tenure split at the postal code level. The island-wide Gap is most useful as a macro indicator of how the market's relative valuation of freehold vs leasehold shifts over time.