Published 12 September 2026
A 3 bedroom condo rented for S$4.20 per square foot in 2025, up 53% since 2017, and the yield is lower than it was
By Realila
A three-bedroom condominium rented for a median S$4.20 per square foot a month in 2025, against S$2.74 in 2017. That is a rise of 53% over nine years, and almost all of it happened in two of those years.
Over the same period the gross rental yield fell, from 2.99% to 2.89%. Rents rose a long way and prices rose further. 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.
In monthly terms, the median three-bedroom let for S$5,500 in 2025, across 23,074 contracts.
Key takeaways
- Rent per square foot rose 53% between 2017 and 2025, from S$2.74 to S$4.20, with the whole move concentrated in 2022 and 2023. What it rents for
- The gross rental yield is lower than it was nine years ago, 2.89% against 2.99%, despite that rent increase. Why the yield did not follow
- The OCR led on rent as it led on price, rising 61.4% against the CCR's 38.7%. By region
- The yield ordering is the inverse of the price ordering. The CCR yields least in every one of the nine years, 2.55% against the OCR's 2.97% in 2025. What the most expensive square foot returns
What it rents for
Median monthly rent per square foot, all regions.
| Year | Rent psf | Developments |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | S$2.74 | 1,133 |
| 2018 | S$2.75 | 1,172 |
| 2019 | S$2.74 | 1,211 |
| 2020 | S$2.71 | 1,170 |
| 2021 | S$2.80 | 1,239 |
| 2022 | S$3.34 | 1,192 |
| 2023 | S$4.12 | 1,195 |
| 2024 | S$4.11 | 1,179 |
| 2025 | S$4.20 | 1,197 |
Four years of nothing, then two years of everything. Between 2017 and 2021 the median moved from S$2.74 to S$2.80, a rise of 2% over four years. Between 2021 and 2023 it went from S$2.80 to S$4.12, a rise of 47% in two. Since then it has been flat.
Why the yield did not follow
A 53% rise in rent should show up in the gross rental yield. It does not.
| Year | Gross rental yield |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 2.99% |
| 2018 | 2.77% |
| 2019 | 2.70% |
| 2020 | 2.72% |
| 2021 | 2.62% |
| 2022 | 2.85% |
| 2023 | 3.30% |
| 2024 | 2.98% |
| 2025 | 2.89% |
The yield fell from 2017 to 2021, spiked in 2023 when rents jumped before prices caught up, and has fallen back since. Nine years on it is below where it started.
That is what happens when rents and prices rise together. Outside central, the three-bedroom resale market rose 62.9% per square foot over the same period, and more in some regions than others. If a landlord's rent rises by half and the price of the property rises by half as well, the yield does not move. That is roughly what happened here.
By region
Rent per square foot in 2025, and how far each region has come.
| Region | 2017 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core central (CCR) | S$3.38 | S$4.69 | +38.7% |
| Rest of central (RCR) | S$2.73 | S$4.20 | +53.7% |
| Outside central (OCR) | S$2.30 | S$3.72 | +61.4% |
The same ordering as the price note. The OCR rose most, the CCR least, and the gap between them narrowed on rent as it did on price. A CCR three-bedroom rented for 47% more per square foot than an OCR one in 2017 and 26% more in 2025.
The rest-of-central figure, S$4.20, is the same number as the national median above and a different measurement: one pools a market segment, the other pools the island.
What the most expensive square foot returns
Gross rental yield by region, and the ordering is the reverse of everything else in this series.
- Core central (CCR)
- Rest of central (RCR)
- Outside central (OCR)
| Year | CCR | RCR | OCR |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 2.62% | 2.94% | 2.92% |
| 2018 | 2.49% | 2.74% | 2.71% |
| 2019 | 2.40% | 2.68% | 2.72% |
| 2020 | 2.40% | 2.64% | 2.70% |
| 2021 | 2.21% | 2.62% | 2.64% |
| 2022 | 2.50% | 2.80% | 2.92% |
| 2023 | 2.86% | 3.28% | 3.41% |
| 2024 | 2.68% | 3.03% | 3.11% |
| 2025 | 2.55% | 2.96% | 2.97% |
The CCR yields least in all nine years, without exception. In 2025 it returns 2.55% against 2.97% outside central, a difference of 0.42 percentage points on an asset that costs 51% more per square foot.
That is not a defect in the market. A prime three-bedroom is bought for reasons a yield does not measure, and its rent is high in absolute terms, S$7,500 a month against S$4,500 outside central. But a buyer choosing on income alone is choosing the wrong end of the island.
What this does not tell you
- Net yield. This is gross. Maintenance, property tax, agent fees, vacancy and income tax all come out of it, and they take more from a low yield than a high one.
- Your specific unit. These are medians across more than a thousand developments. Floor, facing, furnishing and lease timing move a rent more than the region does.
- Whether rents keep rising. Two flat years follow the 2022 to 2023 jump. Nine years is a record, not a forecast.
- What a landlord made. Yield is income against price at a point in time. What an owner actually made depends on what they paid and when, which is a different question.
Method and data notes. Rental data to 1 July 2026 and sale data to 1 September 2026.
Rents are medians of URA rental contract data for private condominiums and apartments, three-bedroom, by contract commencement date. Rent per square foot uses the midpoint of the contract's recorded floor-area band, since URA publishes rental areas in bands rather than exact figures. Prices are medians of URA caveat data on the same population. Gross rental yield is annualised rent over price, computed within the instrument rather than by dividing two published medians.
Four constructions describe three-bedroom rent in this corpus and they are not interchangeable. The national series above pools every qualifying project in each year, with no fixed panel. The regional series pools within a market segment, per year. A fixed-panel series also exists, holding the same 1,213 developments across all nine years, and it gives a national rise of 49.6% rather than 53.4% because the panel's composition differs from the market's. The monthly figure quoted in dollars pools every contract with no minimum cell size. This note uses the unpanelled national series and the per-year regional series throughout, and says so here because the four answer different questions and only three are comparable.
The rent series rest on more than a thousand developments nationally and several hundred in each region. The yield figures rest on fewer, because a yield needs a development that both sold and rented in the same year: 460 to 467 rent developments against 329 to 391 sale ones nationally, and between 62 and 225 paired developments regionally.
Rental data to 1 July 2026 and sale data to 1 September 2026. The national gross rental yield by year was measured at an earlier snapshot, 1 June 2026, and is cited here rather than re-derived.
More from Realila
- Four ways to measure whether Singapore property prices went up, and why they disagree by 18 points
Median price per square foot says private condominium prices rose 45.9% between 2017 and 2025. Hold the mix of what sold constant and it says 47.2% or 51.5%, depending on whose basket you hold constant. Repeat sales, tracking the same units sold twice, says 33.5%. Four measurements of one market over nine years, 18 percentage points apart, and composition explains barely a tenth of it.
- Buying a 2 bedroom at launch beat buying the same condo later in 128 of 228 developments, and lost in most of the OCR
For two-bedroom condominiums, the buyer who bought in the launch year beat the buyer who waited one to four years for the same building in 128 of 228 developments on gain, and in 126 of 218 on return on the money put in. The advantage is a central-region one. In the CCR and RCR the launch buyer was ahead on both measures and by 6 to 23 percentage points a year on return; in the OCR the later buyer won more developments than the launch buyer, 49 of 90.
- A resale 2 bedroom condo returned more on the money put in than a new launch in every year from 2017 to 2021
For two-bedroom condominiums bought between 2017 and 2021 and resold from 2022, a resale unit returned more on the capital committed than a new launch bought in the same year, in every one of the five years and at every interest rate tested. At 2.5%, resale returned 11% to 15% a year and new launch 5% to 9%. In the CCR, new launches returned nothing or less on the money put in. Rent from the first month, paid at once against paid progressively, is most of the difference.
Every number in this post comes from Realila Research, dated to when it was true. For now we publish research notes from the platform to answer the community's questions; the platform itself opens to the public later.
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