Published 6 August 2026
Suburban tenants pay the biggest shoebox premium. Prime tenants pay the smallest.
By Realila
Tenants pay more per square foot for a small unit everywhere in Singapore. How much more depends sharply on where it is: about 47% in the prime districts, 51% in the city fringe, and 58% in the suburbs. That ordering has held in every one of the last nine years without once crossing.
We reported the market-wide shoebox rent premium at roughly 52%, flat since 2017. That was an average across three quite different markets. Split by region, the premium runs from 47% to 58% — and the gap between them has never closed.
Key takeaways
- The shoebox rent premium is smallest in the core central region and largest outside central, and the ordering held in all nine years. The three regions
- Prime shoebox rents are the highest in dollars, at $7.02 per square foot against $5.60 in the suburbs. The premium is lowest there because prime family rents are higher still. Reading the tables
- All three premiums drifted down modestly — three to four points over nine years — with no convergence between them. What moved
- Read against the regional price finding, prime shoebox stock is the weaker half of the return on both measures. Against the price picture
Three regions, nine years
Median monthly rent per square foot, measured across the same projects at both ends of the period. Shoebox is URA's 40–50 sqm band, which ends at the same 538 sqft line as its shoebox definition. Family-sized is the 90–130 sqm bands, 969–1,399 sqft.
Core Central (CCR)
| Year | Shoebox | Family | Premium | Projects (S / F) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | $5.16 | $3.44 | +50.0% | 63 / 295 |
| 2018 | $5.16 | $3.44 | +50.2% | 67 / 312 |
| 2019 | $5.16 | $3.44 | +50.1% | 70 / 326 |
| 2020 | $4.95 | $3.36 | +47.4% | 70 / 322 |
| 2021 | $5.16 | $3.47 | +48.6% | 70 / 323 |
| 2022 | $6.19 | $4.11 | +50.8% | 70 / 318 |
| 2023 | $7.43 | $4.95 | +50.0% | 70 / 320 |
| 2024 | $7.01 | $4.76 | +47.3% | 69 / 311 |
| 2025 | $7.02 | $4.78 | +46.9% | 70 / 315 |
Rest of Central (RCR)
| Year | Shoebox | Family | Premium | Projects (S / F) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | $4.10 | $2.65 | +54.6% | 146 / 381 |
| 2018 | $4.03 | $2.65 | +51.7% | 154 / 387 |
| 2019 | $4.10 | $2.65 | +54.6% | 162 / 413 |
| 2020 | $4.13 | $2.61 | +58.2% | 159 / 397 |
| 2021 | $4.23 | $2.69 | +57.2% | 156 / 406 |
| 2022 | $5.11 | $3.19 | +60.4% | 159 / 390 |
| 2023 | $6.19 | $3.94 | +57.4% | 156 / 390 |
| 2024 | $5.99 | $3.89 | +54.0% | 155 / 391 |
| 2025 | $6.09 | $4.04 | +50.8% | 153 / 375 |
Outside Central (OCR)
| Year | Shoebox | Family | Premium | Projects (S / F) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | $3.72 | $2.30 | +61.5% | 109 / 377 |
| 2018 | $3.61 | $2.32 | +55.6% | 111 / 390 |
| 2019 | $3.72 | $2.30 | +61.5% | 123 / 406 |
| 2020 | $3.72 | $2.30 | +61.5% | 118 / 393 |
| 2021 | $3.92 | $2.42 | +61.9% | 121 / 411 |
| 2022 | $4.75 | $2.91 | +63.3% | 118 / 394 |
| 2023 | $5.99 | $3.63 | +64.8% | 119 / 408 |
| 2024 | $5.63 | $3.54 | +59.0% | 118 / 377 |
| 2025 | $5.60 | $3.55 | +57.5% | 114 / 386 |
The last column shows how many separate projects each median is drawn from — shoebox first, family second.
Reading the tables
The premium column and the dollar columns say different things, and it is easy to read one as the other.
Prime shoebox rents are the highest in Singapore. $7.02 per square foot in 2025, against $6.09 in the city fringe and $5.60 in the suburbs. A small unit in the core central region rents for more per square foot than a small unit anywhere else.
Its premium is nonetheless the lowest. That is because prime family-sized units rent for $4.78 psf, well above the $3.55 a suburban family unit fetches. Both prime lines are high; the gap between them is proportionally narrower.
So "the prime premium is lowest" is a statement about the ratio inside that region, not about the rent a landlord collects.
What moved, and what did not
All three premiums are lower in 2025 than in 2017 — CCR by 3.1 points, RCR by 3.8, OCR by 4.0. Modest, and roughly equal.
What did not move is the ordering. OCR sits above RCR sits above CCR in every single year. The lines never touch, let alone cross. Whatever sets the shoebox rent premium in each region has been stable for nine years, through a pandemic, a rental surge, and two rounds of cooling measures.
The 2022–23 surge lifted all six lines steeply — prime shoebox rent went from $5.16 to $7.43 in two years — and then all six flattened. Ratios barely noticed.
Against the price picture
Our regional price article found the opposite ends of the market a long way apart: a prime-district shoebox is worth 4.5% less per square foot than in 2017, while a suburban one gained 26%.
Put the two together and they point the same way. Prime shoebox stock has the weakest capital performance and the smallest rent premium. Suburban shoebox stock has the strongest capital performance and the largest rent premium. On both halves of what an owner earns, the same ordering appears.
That is a coherent picture rather than a contradiction, and it makes the regional finding harder to dismiss as a quirk of the sales data. Two independent datasets, collected differently, agree on which end of the market has held up.
What this does not tell you
- Yield. Rent premium is not yield. Yield needs a price as well, and we cover it market-wide in the rental yield article. A regional yield breakdown requires both a rental panel and a sale panel in each cell and is a separate piece of work.
- Net income. These are gross rents. Maintenance, property tax, agent commission, vacancy and income tax all come out first.
- Why tenants pay it. Rental contracts record the rent, not the tenant's reasoning. Anything about who rents small units and why would be inference.
- Your unit. Medians across dozens to hundreds of projects. Individual buildings, stacks and lease terms vary widely.
Method
URA non-landed rental contracts, 2017 to 2025. Market segments are URA's: CCR is the core central region, RCR the rest of central, OCR outside central.
URA reports rental floor area in 10 sqm bands rather than exact areas, so rent per square foot uses the midpoint of each band. Shoebox uses the 40–50 sqm band, which converts to 431–538 sqft and shares its upper boundary with URA's 50 sqm shoebox threshold. Family-sized uses the 90–130 sqm bands, 969–1,399 sqft. Because both sides use midpoints, the ratio between them is more reliable than either level on its own.
Each band runs on its own fixed panel: projects with at least three rental contracts in that band in both the 2017–2019 and 2023–2025 windows, so every column describes the same projects at both ends. Medians are taken across projects rather than pooled across contracts, which would let the changing mix of what was leased masquerade as a change in rent.
Coverage was checked before use: all twelve months are present in every year, and 96.5% of rental records in these bands carry a market segment. 2026 is excluded — only two months of rental data exist.
Rental data to February 2026.
Every number in this post is drawn from Realila Research and dated to when it was true. In Research you can change the period, compare segments, and drill into projects on the same data.
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