What does $1.5m buy in a 3 bedroom condo?

At $1.5m, a 3 bedroom buyer today gets a resale unit, outside central in 87.0% of sales. Spend $500,000 more and the size falls, from 1,152 sqft to 990 sqft; what buyers get instead is younger, more central homes and better odds of a new launch.

What is in this note

• What $1.5m and $2m buy today: size, price per square foot, building age and region at the two price points.
• The sub-$1m 3 bedroom has nearly vanished: sales under $1m in each year since 2017.
• $1.5m then and now: the same price band in 2017 and in the last 12 months.

What $1.5m and $2m buy today

Band	Median size	Median psf	Resale age
$1.5m (n=460)	1,152 sqft	$1,308	19 yrs
$2m (n=746)	990 sqft	$2,000	12 yrs

The extra money also buys younger resale homes: the typical resale unit at $2m is 12 years old against 19 years at $1.5m. New launches make up 3.9% of the $1.5m band (18 of 460) against 32.0% of the $2m band (239 of 746).

Band	CCR	RCR	OCR
$1.5m (n=460)	3	57	400
$2m (n=746)	8	257	481

Region mix moves the same way. At $1.5m, 87.0% of transactions are outside central (OCR); at $2m that falls to 64.5%, with the difference landing almost entirely in the city fringe (RCR): 12.4% at $1.5m against 34.5% at $2m. Core central (CCR) stays under 2% either way, at 0.7% and 1.1%.

The sub-$1m 3 bedroom has nearly vanished

Year	Sales under $1m
2017	975
2018	547
2019	296
2020	406
2021	505
2022	143
2023	45
2024	27
2025	14
Now (trailing 12 months)	11

The fall was not steady. Sales dropped from 975 in 2017 to 296 in 2019, then partly recovered to 406 in 2020 and 505 in 2021, below 2018's 547 and about half of 2017's 975. From 2022 sales fell again and have not recovered: 143, then 45, then 27, then 14, and 11 in the trailing 12 months. A 3 bedroom under $1m is close to gone, not shrinking.

These are nominal dollars, not adjusted for the broader rise in 3 bedroom prices since 2017: the median 3 bedroom sold for $1,420,000 in 2017 and $2,320,000 now, so much of this collapse is prices moving past $1m, not the segment disappearing.

$1.5m then and now

The same nominal price band, $1.4m to $1.6m, compared across 2017 and the trailing 12 months.

Period	Median size	Region mix	Resale age
2017 (n=1,323)	1,152 sqft	3.2% CCR / 61.3% RCR / 35.5% OCR	13 yrs
Now (n=460)	1,152 sqft	0.7% CCR / 12.4% RCR / 87.0% OCR	19 yrs

The median size has not moved: 1,152 sqft in 2017 and 1,152 sqft now. In 2017, 36 of the 1,323 transactions in the band measured exactly that size, a genuine cluster on one standard layout. Today only 5 of 460 do: the median still lands on the same size, but far fewer units in the band actually measure it.

Period	P25	P50	P75
2017 (n=1,323)	1,023 sqft	1,152 sqft (36 exact)	1,346 sqft
Now (n=460)	947 sqft	1,152 sqft (5 exact)	1,249 sqft

The quartiles around that median both fell: the 25th percentile from 1,023 sqft to 947 sqft, the 75th from 1,346 sqft to 1,249 sqft. The band has fewer large units than it did in 2017; the typical unit only looks unchanged because the median happens to land on the same recurring layout in both periods.

New launches were 664 of the 1,323 transactions in 2017, 50.2% of the band; now they are 18 of 460, 3.9%. Region mix reversed: RCR held 61.3% of the band in 2017 against OCR's 35.5%; now OCR holds 87.0% against RCR's 12.4%. Resale age rose from 13 years to 19 years.

What this tells you

Spend more today and the extra money buys younger resale homes and a better chance of a new launch, concentrated in the city fringe, not more space. Hold the same $1.5m over time, as prices have risen, and it buys less on every count: the new-launch option has nearly disappeared, the region mix has flipped from city-fringe-led to almost entirely outside central, the resale homes on offer have aged, and the band now holds fewer large units than it did 9 years ago.

What this does not tell you

• What any single unit is worth. The figures are medians of what sold in each band. Floor, facing, condition and renovation are not in the transaction record.
• What a buyer can borrow or must pay upfront. The bands are set by price. The loan, stamp duty and cash a household needs to buy in them are not modelled here.
• Prices adjusted for inflation. Every comparison with 2017 is in nominal dollars.
• What is for sale now. These are completed sales, not listings. A band with few sales can still have homes on the market, and its share of new launches depends on which projects were selling in each window.
• Freehold against leasehold. The bands mix the two, and tenure is not separated here.

Method and data notes

3 bedroom condominiums and apartments only, floor area 200 to 6,000 sqft, collective sales excluded. Region is the transaction's own market segment. "Today" is the trailing 12 months to 2026-09-28, with sales recorded to 20 September 2026; "2017" is the full 2017 calendar year; the national price comparison uses the same two windows. Band edges: $1.5m is $1,400,000 to $1,600,000; $2m is $1,900,000 to $2,100,000; the sub-$1m series counts transactions under $1,000,000 outright, not a band. Resale age is contract year minus the project's completion year, computed on resale transactions only: a new launch has no meaningful age at sale, so mixing the two would understate the age of the resale homes actually being resold. Percentiles are interpolated between the two nearest sales where needed.

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.