Outside central, a freehold 3 bedroom condo costs 40% more per square foot than a leasehold one once the building is over twenty-six years old

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

It does not survive a closer look. Compare homes of the same age in the same region and the gap runs from 9.8% below to more than sixty per cent above depending on how old the building is. Among blocks under five years old in the core central region, the CCR, a freehold three-bedroom resold at S$2,796 per square foot and a leasehold one at S$2,797. Among CCR blocks more than twenty-six years old, the freehold figure is 62.6% higher than the leasehold one.

The rest of the three-bedroom picture is on the three-bedroom condo guide: what it costs, what it rents for, what it yields and how big it is.

Key takeaways

• Comparing every freehold resale against every leasehold resale gives a gap of 17.4% in 2025, down from 28.9% in 2017. What a whole-market comparison says
• Where the homes are explains part of it. Within a single region the gap runs from 13.5% in the CCR to minus 6.8% in the RCR. Where the gap goes when you split by region
• Building age explains most of what is left, and not in the direction you would expect. Freehold blocks are older, so comparing freehold and leasehold homes of the same age makes the gap wider rather than narrower. Why age widens it
• Among blocks more than twenty-six years old, the gap is 40.4% outside central and 26.3% on the city fringe, each drawn from dozens of developments on both sides. The CCR's 62.6% rests on far fewer buildings. Region and age together

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 nine 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. Those sales also rest on two hundred to a thousand freehold caveats a year against between thirteen hundred and three thousand leasehold ones, 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%

Seventeen per cent becomes 13.5%, minus 6.8% and 10.4%. 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 three-bedroom there resold for less per square foot than a leasehold one 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 here the obvious expectation is wrong.

Freehold blocks in this data are older than leasehold ones, a median of twenty years against twelve. Older buildings sell for less per square foot. So the whole-market freehold figure is being held down by the age of the stock it measures, and comparing freehold and leasehold homes of the same age removes that drag. The gap gets wider.

• 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 rises with age, from 13.2% on the newest blocks to 46.3% on the oldest. A leasehold three-bedroom loses value against a freehold one as its lease runs down, which is what a lease does.

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 and lets age vary.

Two extra columns appear in these tables, and they exist because of something we found while checking one figure.

The city-fringe row 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 cells turned up two where one development was doing most of the work, both in prime districts.

So the tables carry both. Projects counts how many separate developments the caveats in a cell 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 row 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	Caveats	Projects	Leasehold	Caveats	Projects	Gap	Less the largest
0 to 5 years	S$1,824	31	9	S$1,736	713	31	+5.1%	+11.1%
6 to 10 years	S$1,587	141	32	S$1,454	1,808	83	+9.2%	+9.3%
11 to 15 years	S$1,551	196	39	S$1,416	579	37	+9.5%	+3.7%
16 to 25 years	S$1,463	490	78	S$1,171	1,483	75	+24.9%	+22.7%
26 years and over	S$1,541	580	73	S$1,097	876	46	+40.4%	+38.8%

City fringe (RCR)

Building age	Freehold	Caveats	Projects	Leasehold	Caveats	Projects	Gap	Less the largest
0 to 5 years	S$2,087	66	27	S$2,215	487	30	−5.8%	−7.0%
6 to 10 years	S$1,746	225	58	S$1,935	607	37	−9.8%	−11.0%
11 to 15 years	S$1,749	426	126	S$1,772	398	28	−1.3%	−3.1%
16 to 25 years	S$1,637	593	165	S$1,603	577	42	+2.1%	+3.0%
26 years and over	S$1,654	417	84	S$1,310	480	30	+26.3%	+16.9%

Core central (CCR)

Building age	Freehold	Caveats	Projects	Leasehold	Caveats	Projects	Gap	Less the largest
0 to 5 years	S$2,796	28	12	S$2,797	70	6	0.0%	+3.1%
6 to 10 years	S$2,299	104	34	S$2,021	154	13	+13.8%	+1.3%
11 to 15 years	S$2,323	381	106	S$2,039	103	12	+13.9%	+21.0%
16 to 25 years	S$2,258	475	121	S$1,849	95	12	+22.1%	+16.5%
26 years and over	S$2,116	446	80	S$1,301	143	15	+62.6%	+32.2%

The CCR table is printed last because it is the one that answers the question least well. Leasehold three-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. Its 62.6% becomes 32.2% once the largest development is removed from each side, most of that change coming from one 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 rises with building age everywhere. Outside central the oldest row 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 six to ten years old, a freehold three-bedroom resold 9.8% below a leasehold one. Among blocks more than twenty-six years old, 26.3% above. Same region, same measure, same three years, thirty-six points of difference, 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 one. The same lease on a building from the 1990s has around sixty years left, is approaching the point where financing terms and CPF usage rules begin to tighten, and prices well below.

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 thirty-year-old leasehold block and planning to sell in ten years is entering the steep part of this curve. A buyer of a new home, on either tenure, is not.

What this does not tell you

• Your specific lease. The oldest band here runs from twenty-six years to fifty-five. Two leases in the same row can be nearly thirty 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, 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 two-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, three-bedroom units only.

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

Medians of URA caveat data for private condominiums and apartments, three-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. 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 over twenty-six years old, 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. Four cells 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.

Cell sizes vary widely. The smallest rests on 28 freehold caveats from 12 developments, in new CCR stock, and several others sit under 110 caveats. The finding rests on the pattern repeating across fifteen cells and three regions, not on any single cell.

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.