Building age does not price a two-bedroom against a larger unit. We found three patterns that were not there.

A two-bedroom condominium in a building finished in 1996 prices against its larger neighbours the same way one finished in 2023 does. We looked for an age effect in eighteen separate cells and found nothing that holds.

That is a duller answer than the one we thought we had. We had three, and each one dissolved when we looked at it more closely. How that happened is worth as much as the result.

Key takeaways

• Across six completion eras and three regions, the price gap between a two-bedroom and a family-sized unit shows no pattern with building age. What we found
• Unlike shoebox stock, there is plenty of age variation to test: 431 two-bedroom resales from buildings finished before 2000, 898 from buildings finished since 2021. There is old stock here
• Three earlier versions of this analysis each showed a clean pattern, and each one came from how we grouped the years rather than from the market. Three findings that were not there

There is old stock here

When we ran this test on shoebox units the answer was also no pattern, but for a reason that closed the question: there was almost no old shoebox stock to compare. Fewer than 200 resales in nine years came from buildings finished before 2009.

Two-bedroom stock is not like that.

Completed	Two-bedroom resales	Projects
Before 2000	431	99
2000 to 2008	446	122
2009 to 2012	373	117
2013 to 2016	1,913	222
2017 to 2020	1,128	77
2021 onward	898	71

Every era has real volume across a hundred projects or more in the older bands. So this is a genuine test rather than a question the data cannot answer.

What we found

Nothing that holds.

The premium is a two-bedroom's price per square foot measured against a family-sized unit's, where family-sized means 1,000 to 1,500 sqft. Both are medians across projects rather than across transactions, so a few busy developments cannot dominate.

Resales from 2023 to 2025, split by when the building was finished and where it is:

Completed	CCR	RCR	OCR
Before 2000	+1.2%	-7.3%	+1.4%
2000 to 2008	-12.9%	-0.1%	+3.3%
2009 to 2012	-9.3%	-3.7%	-5.6%
2013 to 2016	-6.0%	-0.1%	+0.2%
2017 to 2020	+4.4%	-4.4%	+5.4%
2021 onward	-4.6%	-4.6%	-4.7%

Read down any column. CCR runs +1.2, then -12.9, then back to +4.4, then down again. OCR does much the same. RCR is the steadiest and still has no direction to it.

If age mattered, one of these columns would move one way. None does.

The newest row is the only one with any regularity, and it is a strange one: -4.6%, -4.6%, -4.7%. Three regions landing within a tenth of a point of each other. On 49 two-bedroom projects that is more likely to be coincidence than a finding, and we mention it because it is visible rather than because we can explain it.

Three findings that were not there

We did not arrive here directly. Three times we had a clean result, and three times it went away.

First, a price series that rose and fell. Two-bedroom psf by completion era read $1,532, $1,694, $1,700, $1,624, $1,820, $2,156. Buildings from 2013 to 2016 looked cheaper than buildings a decade older, which would be worth explaining.

There was nothing to explain. That era was an OCR supply wave: 66% of its transactions are OCR against 31% for the pre-2000 stock. Its CCR units cost more than those of any older era. The blended figure was measuring where the buildings are, not how old they are.

Second, a premium that declined with age. Blending regions, the premium read +4.4%, +3.0%, -4.8%, +0.9%, -3.4%, -6.3%. Positive in old stock, negative in new.

Same cause. The pre-2000 group is 42% RCR, where two-bedrooms happened to price above family-sized units.

Third, and this is the one worth understanding. Splitting by region and collapsing to three eras, RCR showed +3.7%, then -2.1%, then -4.5%. A clean slide in one direction, in one region, exactly what an age effect looks like.

At six eras the same region reads -7.3%, -0.1%, -3.7%, -0.1%, -4.4%, -4.6%. The oldest group is the most negative in the series, and there is no direction at all.

The three-era version had combined the pre-2000 and 2000-to-2008 groups. Their separate figures are -7.3% and -0.1%. Combined they gave +3.7%.

An average of two negative numbers cannot be positive, so combining was not simply averaging. A project only enters this analysis when it has at least three sales in a size band in the window. Widen the band of years and different projects clear that bar. The combined cell is not the two smaller cells put together; it is a different set of buildings.

That is the part worth carrying away. Where you put the boundary between one era and the next is not a presentation choice. It decides which buildings are in the analysis at all.

What this means

Age does not price a two-bedroom against its neighbours. Whatever sets the gap between a two-bedroom and a larger unit in the same building era, it is not how old the building is.

And it is not hiding behind the earlier findings either. We ran this partly to check whether the regional differences and the freehold premium were age effects wearing another label. They are not. There is no age effect to be wearing one.

A pattern that appears at one grouping and not at a finer one is a property of the grouping. We publish this because we nearly published the other version.

What this does not tell you

• Anything about a specific building. These are medians across projects within an era and a region. A particular development may price its two-bedrooms well above or below its larger units for reasons no median can see.
• How the premium has moved over time. This is a snapshot of resales from 2023 to 2025, grouped by when buildings were finished. It is not a trend, and a building finished in 2022 has no earlier history to compare against.
• Whether the newest row means anything. Three regions at -4.6%, -4.6% and -4.7% is either the market pricing recent stock consistently or a coincidence on thin counts. We cannot separate those.
• Anything about buildings whose two-bedrooms rarely sell. A project enters only with at least three sales in a size band, which excludes small developments and those where owners hold.

Method

Private non-landed resale caveats, condominium and apartment. Executive condominiums and collective sales excluded.

Two-bedroom is 700 to 900 sqft, the band used throughout this series. Family-sized is 1,000 to 1,500 sqft, matching the comparison used in our shoebox work so the two series can be read against each other.

Completion era is the year the project was finished. Regions are URA's Core Central Region, Rest of Central Region and Outside Central Region, shortened to CCR, RCR and OCR.

The window is resales from 2023 to 2025. A project qualifies for a cell when it has at least three transactions in that size band in the window. Medians are taken across projects rather than pooled across transactions, so a development with many sales does not dominate its cell.

The premium compares two-bedroom and family-sized medians drawn from each region and era, not from within a single building. Because the qualifying threshold is applied per cell, cells at different era groupings are computed over different sets of projects and cannot be combined arithmetically.

Data to 4 August 2026.