The View | Critics of Singapore’s property cooling measures miss bigger picture
It is easy to be critical of Singapore’s seemingly never-ending property cooling measures. Since 2009, the government has intervened at least 15 times in an effort to take the heat out of the city state’s residential real estate market. Despite this, average prices of second-hand private properties as well as those built by the Housing…
It is easy to be critical of Singapore’s seemingly never-ending property cooling measures. Since 2009, the government has intervened at least 15 times in an effort to take the heat out of the city state’s residential real estate market. Despite this, average prices of second-hand private properties as well as those built by the Housing and Development Board (HDB), Singapore’s public housing authority, keep hitting new highs.
Even historically cheap suburban areas are no longer a “budget substitute” for the core central region. Some districts in the outside central region have witnessed price gains of 40-60 per cent in the past decade, according to Singaporean property editorial platform Stacked Homes.
Signs that the cooling measures – which include tighter restrictions on mortgage lending, higher taxes and measures to discourage property flipping – have delivered diminishing returns are abundant.
In August, new private home sales more than doubled to 2,142, the highest volume for August since data on developers’ monthly sales became available in 2007, according to data from OrangeTee. Moreover, primary sales in the first nine months of this year exceeded the number of transactions for the whole of 2022, 2023 and 2024.
In the public housing system – which houses about 80 per cent of Singaporeans, most of whom are owner-occupiers – prices of second-hand flats have risen for 22 straight months, the longest growth streak ever recorded. Furthermore, the number of HDB flats resold for at least S$1 million (US$780,000) in the first nine months of 2025 reached 1,243, up from 750 in the same period last year and accounting for 6 per cent of total HDB resale transactions, according to PropNex data.
Concerns about the effectiveness of the cooling measures have intensified. Part of the problem is that Singapore’s housing market has grown accustomed to the government’s repeated attempts to rein in speculative demand.
