Is freehold worth the premium in Singapore?

As of Q2 2026, freehold private condominiums in Singapore traded at a median of S$2,012 per square foot, versus S$2,092 per square foot for 99-year leasehold condominiums — an island-wide difference of -3.8%. That headline figure is dominated by composition rather than tenure: the overwhelming majority of new sales are leasehold, and freehold stock is roughly a decade older on average. Compared like for like — resale only, same market segment, same completion decade — freehold transacts at a premium in 13 of the 15 segments measured, from +1.6% on the newest stock to +58.1% on the oldest. The 2 exceptions are in the city fringe, where mid-vintage freehold is typically small boutique blocks competing against large integrated leasehold developments. The premium is largest where the comparable lease is shortest, which is what should happen if what the market prices is remaining lease rather than tenure itself. 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 Q2 2026.

Like for like — the premium at constant vintage

The figure above compares every freehold sale against every leasehold sale, and two things separate those groups before tenure does. Most new launches are leasehold, so new-launch pricing lifts the leasehold side with stock that has never been resold. And freehold projects are roughly a decade older on average, so the comparison partly reports building age. Holding both constant — resale only, same segment, same completion decade — reverses the result.

Freehold median PSF against 99-year leasehold, resale transactions only, trailing 8 quarters as at Q2 2026. A cell publishes only if both sides rest on at least three distinct developments, no single development supplies more than half of either side, and the two sides are within 1.5 quarters of each other. Cells failing any of those are withheld rather than shown with a caveat. Full methodology (v2.0).

The premium is largest on the oldest stock and close to nil on the newest, in every segment. That is the pattern to expect if what the market prices is the length of the lease rather than the label on the title: on a recently completed project a 99-year lease still has most of its term to run, and the three tenure types converge. It is the same shape PropKaki measures on HDB resale in the PropKaki Curve™, arrived at from an entirely separate dataset.

The Rest of Central Region is the exception worth naming: its 2000s and 2010s stock shows freehold transacting at or below leasehold. That reading passes every quality test — it rests on roughly 200 distinct freehold developments — and the likely cause is scale rather than tenure. Freehold sites in the city fringe are small, producing boutique blocks with few facilities, while leasehold sites of the same vintage are large integrated developments. PropKaki reports the observation and names the probable cause; it does not adjust for it.

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.