A freehold 3 bedroom condo resold for 17.4% more per square foot than a leasehold 3 bedroom in 2025

A freehold 3 bedroom resold for S$1,887 per square foot in 2025. A leasehold 3 bedroom resold for S$1,607. That is a gap of 17.4%, and it is the figure a freehold-versus-leasehold comparison usually produces.

The headline gap does not hold up once homes are compared by age and region. Compare homes of the same age in the same region and the gap runs from 9.8% below to more than 40% above depending on how old the building is. On resale transactions from 2023 to 2025, among blocks under 5 years old on the city fringe (RCR), a freehold 3 bedroom resold at S$2,087 per square foot against a leasehold 3 bedroom at S$2,215. Among RCR blocks 26 years and over, the freehold figure is 26.3% higher than the leasehold figure.

What is in this note

• What a whole-market comparison says: the headline gap between freehold and leasehold resales, year by year, with everything pooled together.
• Where the gap goes when you split by region: the same gap measured separately in core central (CCR), the city fringe (RCR) and outside central (OCR).
• Why age widens it: how old freehold and leasehold blocks are, and what the gap looks like when buildings of the same age are compared.
• Region and age together: the gap by age band within each region, one table per region, and which of those figures hold up.
• What is actually being priced: what the pattern suggests a buyer is paying for, once location and age are accounted for.

What a whole-market comparison says

Median resale price per square foot, all regions and all building ages counted together.

• Freehold
• Leasehold

Year	Freehold	Leasehold	Gap
2017	S$1,228	S$953	+28.9%
2018	S$1,290	S$1,036	+24.5%
2019	S$1,334	S$1,064	+25.4%
2020	S$1,306	S$1,048	+24.7%
2021	S$1,441	S$1,141	+26.3%
2022	S$1,571	S$1,263	+24.3%
2023	S$1,701	S$1,385	+22.8%
2024	S$1,732	S$1,507	+14.9%
2025	S$1,887	S$1,607	+17.4%

The gap has narrowed over 9 years, from 28.9% to 17.4%.

The new-launch market is a different matter and this note does not build on it. There a developer sets the price rather than a market discovering it, and the freehold figure ran 19.9% above leasehold in 2025, one island-wide figure, not split by region as the resale numbers above are. Those sales also rest on two hundred to a thousand freehold caveats a year against between thirteen hundred and three thousand leasehold caveats, so a single freehold launch moves the line.

Where the gap goes when you split by region

The same 2025 resale figures, this time within each region.

Region	Freehold	Leasehold	Gap
Core central (CCR)	S$2,301	S$2,028	+13.5%
Rest of central (RCR)	S$1,767	S$1,896	−6.8%
Outside central (OCR)	S$1,607	S$1,455	+10.4%

Splitting by region changes the gap: 17% becomes 13.5% in the CCR, minus 6.8% in the RCR and 10.4% in the OCR. Freehold blocks sit disproportionately in expensive districts, so comparing every freehold home against every leasehold home across the island is partly measuring where the homes are.

The RCR figure is negative. A freehold 3 bedroom there resold for less per square foot than a leasehold 3 bedroom in 2025. That is not an error, and the next two sections explain it.

Why age widens it

The next thing to account for is how old the buildings are, and accounting for it widens the gap rather than closing it.

Freehold blocks in this data are older than leasehold blocks, a median of 20 years against 12 years. Older buildings sell for less per square foot. So the whole-market freehold figure is being held down by the age of the homes it measures, and comparing freehold and leasehold homes of the same age removes that effect. The gap gets wider, on the same 2023-to-2025 resale window used throughout this note.

• Freehold
• Leasehold

Building age	Freehold	Leasehold	Gap
0 to 5 years	S$2,155	S$1,905	+13.2%
6 to 10 years	S$1,800	S$1,564	+15.1%
11 to 15 years	S$1,939	S$1,645	+17.9%
16 to 25 years	S$1,725	S$1,298	+32.9%
26 years and over	S$1,696	S$1,159	+46.3%

The gap widens with age, from 13.2% on the newest blocks to 46.3% on the oldest. A leasehold 3 bedroom loses value against a freehold 3 bedroom as the lease gets shorter.

Region and age together

Each table below stays inside one region and compares freehold against leasehold at five building ages, on resale transactions from 2023 to 2025. Reading down a column holds the region fixed while age varies.

Each region below also gets a second table, and it exists because of something we found while checking one figure.

The city-fringe reading for new blocks showed freehold selling below leasehold, which is odd enough to be worth verifying. It held up: those 66 freehold sales came from 27 different developments, so no single project was driving it. But running the same check across all fifteen age-by-region groups turned up two where one development was doing most of the work, both in prime districts.

So each region carries both. Projects counts how many separate developments the caveats behind each figure came from. Less the largest repeats the comparison with each side's biggest contributor removed. If one development is large enough to set the figure on its own, that figure is telling you about that development rather than about the market, and removing it is how you find out. Neither number is more correct than the other; the second shows how much weight the first can carry.

One limit applies to the newest blocks in every region. New freehold condominiums are rare in Singapore, so the freehold side of the under-five-years group rests on 9 developments outside central, 12 in the CCR and 27 in the RCR. Those rows are the least reliable in each table, and nothing below depends on them.

Outside central (OCR)

Building age	Freehold	Leasehold	Gap
0 to 5 years	S$1,824	S$1,736	+5.1%
6 to 10 years	S$1,587	S$1,454	+9.2%
11 to 15 years	S$1,551	S$1,416	+9.5%
16 to 25 years	S$1,463	S$1,171	+24.9%
26 years and over	S$1,541	S$1,097	+40.4%

What each figure rests on, as caveats / projects, and the gap with the largest project removed:

Building age	Freehold	Leasehold	Less the largest
0 to 5 years	31 / 9	713 / 31	+11.1%
6 to 10 years	141 / 32	1,808 / 83	+9.3%
11 to 15 years	196 / 39	579 / 37	+3.7%
16 to 25 years	490 / 78	1,483 / 75	+22.7%
26 years and over	580 / 73	876 / 46	+38.8%

City fringe (RCR)

Building age	Freehold	Leasehold	Gap
0 to 5 years	S$2,087	S$2,215	−5.8%
6 to 10 years	S$1,746	S$1,935	−9.8%
11 to 15 years	S$1,749	S$1,772	−1.3%
16 to 25 years	S$1,637	S$1,603	+2.1%
26 years and over	S$1,654	S$1,310	+26.3%

What each figure rests on, as caveats / projects, and the gap with the largest project removed:

Building age	Freehold	Leasehold	Less the largest
0 to 5 years	66 / 27	487 / 30	−7.0%
6 to 10 years	225 / 58	607 / 37	−11.0%
11 to 15 years	426 / 126	398 / 28	−3.1%
16 to 25 years	593 / 165	577 / 42	+3.0%
26 years and over	417 / 84	480 / 30	+16.9%

Core central (CCR)

Building age	Freehold	Leasehold	Gap
0 to 5 years	S$2,796	S$2,797	0.0%
6 to 10 years	S$2,299	S$2,021	+13.8%
11 to 15 years	S$2,323	S$2,039	+13.9%
16 to 25 years	S$2,258	S$1,849	+22.1%
26 years and over	S$2,116	S$1,301	+62.6%

What each figure rests on, as caveats / projects, and the gap with the largest project removed:

Building age	Freehold	Leasehold	Less the largest
0 to 5 years	28 / 12	70 / 6	+3.1%
6 to 10 years	104 / 34	154 / 13	+1.3%
11 to 15 years	381 / 106	103 / 12	+21.0%
16 to 25 years	475 / 121	95 / 12	+16.5%
26 years and over	446 / 80	143 / 15	+32.2%

The CCR tables are printed last because they are the tables that answer the question least well. Leasehold 3 bedrooms barely exist in prime districts. Each age band there draws on six to fifteen developments on the leasehold side against twelve to a hundred and twenty-one on the freehold side, and in 2025 the whole CCR resale market recorded 201 leasehold caveats against 555 freehold caveats. Its 62.6% becomes 32.2% once the largest development is removed from each side, most of that change coming from a single 1970s estate on the leasehold side. That figure is substantially one estate's, which is why the argument here rests on the other two regions.

What holds up is the direction, and it holds in all three regions. The gap widens with building age everywhere. Outside central the oldest age group is 40.4%, and 38.8% with the largest development removed from each side, drawn from 73 freehold and 46 leasehold developments. On the city fringe, 26.3% and 16.9%.

The city fringe also shows the whole swing inside one region. Among blocks 6 to 10 years old, a freehold 3 bedroom resold 9.8% below a leasehold 3 bedroom. Among blocks 26 years and over, 26.3% above. That is a difference of 36 percentage points in one region, on the same measure over the same 3 years, and building age is what separates them.

What is actually being priced

A freehold title is a lease that never ends. A 99-year lease on a new building has almost a century left and, on the resale evidence here, prices close to a freehold home. The same lease on a building from the 1990s has around 60 years left, is approaching the point where financing terms and CPF usage rules begin to tighten, and prices well below a freehold home.

So the practical question at a viewing is not whether the title says freehold. It is how many years are left, and how long you intend to hold. A buyer taking on a 30-year-old leasehold block and planning to sell in 10 years is buying at a building age where the freehold gap is widest. A buyer of a new home, on either tenure, is buying at the ages where the gap is small or negative.

What this tells you

A freehold 3 bedroom resold for 17.4% more per square foot than a leasehold 3 bedroom in 2025: S$1,887 against S$1,607. That is the number a straight freehold-versus-leasehold comparison produces, and most of it is not about the lease.

Freehold blocks are not distributed like leasehold blocks. They are older, with a median age of 20 years against 12 years, and they sit in different parts of the island. A pooled comparison measures those differences alongside tenure.

Hold the region fixed and the gap changes shape. In 2025 it was 13.5% in core central (CCR), 10.4% outside central (OCR), and minus 6.8% on the city fringe (RCR), where freehold 3 bedrooms resold for less per square foot than leasehold 3 bedrooms.

Hold the age fixed as well and the pattern becomes consistent. On blocks under 5 years old the gap is small or absent: 5.1% outside central, zero in core central, and minus 5.8% on the city fringe. On blocks 26 years and over it is large: 40.4% outside central and 26.3% on the city fringe. The direction holds in all three regions: the gap is small or negative on new blocks and large on old blocks, wherever the building is.

Core central shows the widest old-block gap at 62.6%, and it is the one figure here that does not hold up. Remove the single largest development and it falls to 32.2%. The leasehold side of that group is 15 developments against 46 outside central and 30 on the city fringe, so the comparison is thin on one side rather than across the board. Outside central and the city fringe carry the finding.

So what a freehold buyer pays extra for is not visible on a new building and is substantial on an old building. On new blocks the two tenures price within a few points of each other in every region, and on blocks past 26 years the freehold 3 bedroom costs a quarter to two-fifths more per square foot. A lease loses value as it shortens, and most of that loss arrives late.

What this does not tell you

• Your specific lease. The oldest band here runs from 26 years to 55 years. Two leases in the same band can be nearly 30 years apart.
• What a developer charges. This note measures the resale market. At new launch a developer prices freehold above leasehold directly, by 19.9% in 2025 island-wide, and that is a different question on a different market.
• What owners made. This measures price per square foot at a point in time, not return. The equivalent question for 2 bedrooms is answered in the investment note.
• Why the city fringe is negative on newer blocks. The measurement is clean and the cause is not visible in transaction data. Which freehold projects launched there, and where, would leave the same footprint.
• Landed homes, or any other size. Private condominiums and apartments only, 3 bedroom units only.

Method and data notes. Sale data to 1 September 2026.

Medians of URA caveat data for private condominiums and apartments, 3 bedroom by resolved bedroom count, collective sales excluded, resales and new sales counted separately. Regional figures use the market segment recorded on the caveat, which for 282 developments differs by one segment from the segment on the development's profile. Building age is the year of sale less the development's completion year. All gaps are computed from unrounded medians and rounded once for display.

Tenure is classified by the length of the lease rather than by the transaction record's two-value freehold-or-leasehold field. A 999-year lease is freehold in everything but the paperwork, and the transaction record files it as leasehold. The 2 bedroom note on the same question uses that transaction field instead, and there the headline premium decreased from 34.4% to 7.9% while the premium at equal building age still ran from 8.6% to 34.3%. This note reads each development's own tenure string and counts any term of 900 years or more as freehold, along with anything recorded as freehold outright. The boundary is not a convention: the lease terms present in the data run 33, 60, 97, 99 and up to 110 years, then nothing at all until 929, so any cut point inside that gap gives the same answer. Above the gap the recorded terms run from 929 to 999, with three developments recording 9,999. 2,707 of the 64,522 resale and new-sale transactions in this window move from leasehold to freehold on this basis, and one development in the whole register matches neither pattern.

The region-and-age tables would read differently on the old two-value basis. The largest change is CCR blocks 26 years and over, where 69 caveats move to the freehold side and the gap goes from 28.4% to 62.6%, because homes on very long leases were holding the leasehold median up. Outside central, the same band moved far more caveats (158) and the gap barely shifted, 40.7% to 40.4%: the homes reclassified there split closely enough between freehold and leasehold that neither side's median moved much. Four of the age-by-region groups contain no such homes at all and read identically on both bases, which is one way of checking that the reclassification did what it claims.

The number of sales behind each figure varies widely. The smallest rests on 28 freehold caveats from 12 developments, in new CCR homes, and several others sit under 110 caveats. The finding rests on the pattern repeating across fifteen age-by-region groups, so no single group carries it.

One analysis is not published here. Homes on leases of 900 years or more are counted as freehold in this note, and separating them out again to see whether they price nearer freehold or nearer a true 99-year lease is something the instrument behind these figures cannot currently do. It is recorded as owed work.

Sale data to 1 September 2026.

30 October 2026. This note placed homes in market segments by postal district. URA places them by planning area, which moves about one in seven private sales between regions. The figures by region here use the earlier segments and differ from what the same records give now. How regions are set: How we measure prices and sales.