A shoebox costs $848,000 resale. New launch rarely dips below $983,000.

We have published nineteen studies on shoebox units and not one of them answered the first question a buyer asks: what does one cost?

Every measurement so far has been per square foot, because that is how you compare a small unit against a large one fairly. It is not how anyone buys. A buyer has a budget, a seller has an expectation, and both are about the total price, which the property market usually calls the quantum.

So here is that picture. The median shoebox resale in 2025 sold for $848,000. The median new launch shoebox sold for $1,268,007. That gap has grown from 13% in 2017 to 50% today.

Key takeaways

• Median shoebox resale price is $848,000 in 2025, up from $680,000 in 2017. All of that movement happened after 2020. What resale costs
• A new launch shoebox costs 50% more than a resale one. The gap was 13% in 2017. New against resale
• Even the cheapest 5% of new launches clear $983,400, above the $848,000 resale median. The whole cheaper half of the resale market has no equivalent in new stock. What a new launch costs
• On a resale at the median, a buyer needs about $235,000 in cash and duty before financing. On a new launch, $355,000. The cash you need

What a resale shoebox costs

Median transacted price, private condominium and apartment resales of 400 to 538 sqft.

Year	Median resale price	Transactions
2017	$680,000	655
2018	$680,000	701
2019	$680,000	435
2020	$640,000	630
2021	$685,000	1,304
2022	$730,000	1,191
2023	$798,000	1,064
2024	$820,000	1,137
2025	$848,000	1,217

Two things stand out.

Nothing happened for four years. The median sat at exactly $680,000 in 2017, 2018 and 2019, then fell to $640,000 in 2020. A buyer in 2019 paid what a buyer in 2017 paid.

Everything happened after that. From 2020 to 2025 the median rose 32.5%. That is the entire eight-year gain, compressed into five years.

Anyone using a pre-2020 sense of what a shoebox costs is working from a number that held still for four years and then moved by a third.

The new launch premium

The same measurement for new sales, against resale:

Year	Resale	New launch	Premium
2017	$680,000	$766,230	+13%
2019	$680,000	$813,900	+20%
2021	$685,000	$1,088,000	+59%
2023	$798,000	$1,245,393	+56%
2025	$848,000	$1,268,007	+50%

A new launch shoebox has always cost more than a resale one. In 2017 it cost 13% more. It now costs half as much again.

This is not a location effect. New launches concentrate in the central regions, so the obvious explanation is that the new-sale figure is measuring prime property. It is not. The premium holds in every region, measured separately:

Region	Resale median	New launch median	Premium
Outside Central	$800,000	$1,166,000	+45.8%
Rest of Central	$870,000	$1,384,000	+59.1%
Core Central	$1,030,000	$1,342,000	+30.3%

Transactions from 2024 onward.

The premium is largest on the city fringe and smallest in prime, which is the opposite of what you would expect if new launches were simply better located.

What a new launch shoebox costs

The full range, by region, from 2024 onward:

Region	5th	25th	Median	75th	95th	Median size
Outside Central	$983,400	$1,080,000	$1,166,000	$1,224,200	$1,405,000	517 sqft
Core Central	$1,203,083	$1,252,930	$1,342,000	$1,514,000	$1,693,800	452 sqft
Rest of Central	$1,242,000	$1,320,000	$1,384,000	$1,446,000	$1,571,160	506 sqft

Two things to read carefully here.

The cheap end of new launch still sits above the resale median. In the suburbs, where new launch is cheapest, the 5th percentile is $983,400, already above the $848,000 median resale. Nineteen in twenty new launches cost more than that. So the entire cheaper half of the resale market has no equivalent in new stock: a buyer who wants new starts above where half of resale buyers finish.

And the regional ordering inverts. In resale, prime is the most expensive at $1,030,000. In new launch, the city fringe is the most expensive at $1,384,000 and prime sits below it.

Part of that is size. The median new prime shoebox is 452 sqft against 517 in the suburbs, so prime new units are smaller units at a higher price. That is why the per-square-foot gap is wider than the quantum gap, and it is worth knowing before reading the quantum ordering as a statement about location.

What a given budget buys

Set the regions side by side and something becomes obvious that a price-per-square-foot table can never show.

A new suburban shoebox costs more than a resale prime one. $1,166,000 against $1,030,000. A buyer with $1.1 million chooses between a brand new unit outside the central region and a resale unit in the Core Central Region, and the market prices those roughly the same.

The same holds further down. A resale city-fringe unit at $870,000 sits between a suburban resale at $800,000 and anything new anywhere.

So the practical question is not "can I afford a shoebox." It is which of those trades you want.

Where the resale market actually sits, across 2,917 transactions from 2024:

Price band	Share of resales
Under $700,000	8.2%
$700,000 to $800,000	27.2%
$800,000 to $900,000	29.2%
$900,000 to $1,000,000	17.1%
Over $1,000,000	18.3%

Just over a third of shoebox resales cleared below $800,000. Fewer than one in twelve went below $700,000.

If your budget is $700,000, you are shopping in the bottom 8% of the market. If it is $850,000, you are at the median and roughly half the market is open to you.

The cash behind the price

A budget is not a price. It is the cash you need before a bank lends anything.

At 75% financing, with buyer's stamp duty at the published schedule and $3,000 in legal fees:

Purchase price	Stamp duty	25% deposit	Cash needed
$700,000	$15,600	$175,000	$193,600
$800,000	$18,600	$200,000	$221,600
$848,000 (2025 median resale)	$20,040	$212,000	$235,040
$1,030,000 (prime resale median)	$25,800	$257,500	$286,300
$1,268,007 (2025 median new launch)	$35,320	$317,002	$355,322

You can check any price with our stamp duty calculator.

As a second property this arithmetic changes so much that it rarely happens. Additional buyer's stamp duty at 20% for a Singapore citizen adds $169,600 to a median purchase, taking the cash needed past $400,000 before the mortgage starts. Our worked example models that case in full, and every scenario in it loses money.

What this means if you are selling

The resale column read backwards is your expectation.

The median shoebox resale cleared $848,000 in 2025, up from $820,000 in 2024 and $798,000 in 2023. If you bought before 2020, the market has moved substantially in your favour on quantum. If you bought in 2021 or later, you bought into most of that move already.

The distribution matters more than the median for a seller. Nearly a fifth of shoebox resales cleared above a million dollars, and the highest in the period was $1,478,000. Those are not typical units, but they establish that the ceiling is a long way above the median.

What the record cannot tell you is where your unit sits in that spread. It shows what the format transacts at, not what yours is worth. Our repeat-sales work covers what owners actually made once they sold.

What this does not tell you

• What any specific unit is worth. These are medians and percentiles across the whole format. A specific unit's floor, facing, condition and project carry more weight than anything on this page.
• Whether a new launch premium is justified. A new unit has a full lease, no wear, and can be chosen before completion. Whether that is worth 50% is a judgment, not a measurement.
• What it rents for. Quantum is one half of an investment case. Our yield work covers the other.
• Anything about the future. Every figure here is what has already transacted.

Method

Shoebox is 400 to 538 sqft, the upper bound being URA's 50 square metre threshold. Figures are transacted prices from URA caveat data for private condominiums and apartments, excluding collective sales.

Annual medians cover resales and new sales separately, from 2017 to 2025 inclusive. Regional and distribution figures cover transactions from January 2024 onward, giving 2,917 resales and 1,619 new sales.

Cash requirements assume 75% financing, buyer's stamp duty at the published schedule, and $3,000 in legal fees. Additional buyer's stamp duty is shown at the 20% rate applying to a Singapore citizen buying a second residential property. Mortgage servicing, valuation limits and CPF usage are not modelled.

Sale data to 4 August 2026.