In 2017 just over half of new 3 bedroom buyers with a recorded address gave an HDB address, and by 2025 under a third

Of everyone who bought a new-launch 3 bedroom in 2017 and whose address type the caveat records, 52.1% were buying from an HDB flat. In 2025 that was 28.9%.

Resale fell far less: 36.9% to 27.2%. The two crossed in 2022, and for 3 years the HDB buyer was under-represented at a new launch rather than over-represented.

What is in this note

• Who was buying: how many 3 bedroom buyers came from an HDB flat and how many from private property, in every year from 2017 to 2025, at a new launch and on a resale.
• Smaller homes, more upgraders: the HDB share across all four sizes, and why the smallest homes draw the most buyers coming out of a flat.
• Where they went: where HDB buyers kept buying and where they stopped, by bedroom count and by region.
• What new launch and resale returned: what a buyer at a new launch made against a buyer who bought a resale, over the same 9 years.

Who was buying

Share of buyers giving an HDB address, of those whose address type is recorded.

• New launch
• Resale

Year	New launch	Resale
2017	52.1%	36.9%
2018	49.7%	36.8%
2019	51.5%	33.6%
2020	46.9%	37.3%
2021	39.5%	34.8%
2022	32.3%	34.3%
2023	26.3%	29.6%
2024	28.2%	31.6%
2025	28.9%	27.2%

For 5 years the new-launch share ran well above resale. In 2022 it went below, stayed below through 2024, and in 2025 it is above again. A buyer moving out of an HDB flat used to be a good deal more likely to choose a new launch than a resale. For 3 years they were slightly less likely, and they are now slightly more likely again.

The new-launch share did not fall every year: it bottomed at 26.3% in 2023 and has risen in both years since, by 2.6 percentage points in all.

Smaller homes, more upgraders

The same measure across bedroom counts, new launch.

• 1 bedroom new launch
• 2 bedroom new launch
• 3 bedroom new launch
• 4 bedroom new launch

Year	1 bedroom	2 bedroom	3 bedroom	4 bedroom
2017	56.1%	53.6%	52.1%	50.2%
2018	61.6%	50.8%	49.7%	41.9%
2019	58.2%	51.6%	51.5%	34.1%
2020	55.1%	49.0%	46.9%	34.2%
2021	43.3%	41.5%	39.5%	31.3%
2022	41.1%	36.6%	32.3%	25.9%
2023	45.4%	35.8%	26.3%	17.9%
2024	47.3%	39.7%	28.2%	22.5%
2025	42.6%	37.7%	28.9%	23.3%

The same measure across bedroom counts, resale.

Year	1 bedroom	2 bedroom	3 bedroom	4 bedroom
2017	46.2%	40.3%	36.9%	23.7%
2018	48.3%	39.3%	36.8%	23.1%
2019	40.6%	34.2%	33.6%	18.3%
2020	46.2%	39.4%	37.3%	24.2%
2021	44.8%	38.1%	34.8%	22.6%
2022	46.6%	39.3%	34.3%	19.7%
2023	42.5%	35.3%	29.6%	19.5%
2024	40.6%	34.7%	31.6%	20.5%
2025	40.1%	33.1%	27.2%	20.3%

Read any row and the order is the same: 1 bedroom highest, 4 bedroom lowest. That holds in every year on both sides of the market, eighteen year-and-market combinations, with no exception.

2017 is the only year the four sizes moved nearly together, 5.9 percentage points between the smallest and the largest. Every year since has had them between 12 and 28 points apart, and 2018 was already 19.7 points apart, so this is not a gap that opened gradually.

The falls differ by size. 1 bedroom is down 13.5 points over the 9 years, 2 bedroom 15.9, 3 bedroom 23.2 and 4 bedroom 26.9. The larger the home, the further the HDB share fell.

Where they went

The same comparison on resale gives a different result.

Bedrooms	Resale 2017	Resale 2025	Change
1 bedroom	46.2%	40.1%	-6.1
2 bedroom	40.3%	33.1%	-7.2
3 bedroom	36.9%	27.2%	-9.8
4 bedroom	23.7%	20.3%	-3.4

4 bedroom resale has the smallest fall of the four sizes, at 3.4 percentage points, against 26.9 points for 4 bedroom new launch. So this is not a claim that HDB buyers stopped buying large private homes, only that they stopped buying them new.

By region, the new-launch fall is steepest outside central and shallowest in the core.

Year	CCR	RCR	OCR
2017	22.6%	46.8%	65.2%
2019	16.4%	46.1%	61.5%
2021	14.2%	36.3%	51.5%
2023	13.5%	24.9%	32.3%
2025	17.6%	24.6%	36.6%

Outside central went from two in three to roughly one in three, a fall of 28.6 points, and the city fringe fell 22.2 points. The core central region fell too, by 5.0 points, but it starts low and ends low, and the shallower fall reflects a low starting point rather than a different pattern. Its thinnest year is 2018, which shows 7.5% on 93 caveats recorded HDB or private out of 107 in all, and should not be read as a movement.

What new launch and resale returned

The new-launch side, the side the HDB buyer left, returned less.

	New launch	Resale
Pairs measured	13,800	13,234
Sold above purchase	95.25%	96.02%
Median gain	$412,275	$490,000
Median gain, per cent	30.56%	36.84%
Median hold	9.7 years	9.0 years
Median return per year	3.27%	3.97%
Median purchase price	$1,245,000	$1,250,000
Median floor area bought	1,130 sqft	1,281 sqft

For nearly the same money, a launch buyer got 151 square feet less, held it longer and made less per year. That is the trade the upgrader was taking in 2017, when half of them took it, and it is the trade fewer take now.

This is not a claim about what any of them should have done. A new launch is bought years before it exists, with a payment schedule and no rental income in between, and those are real reasons to choose a new launch that a return figure does not capture.

What this tells you

An HDB address used to be a common thing to find on a new-launch 3 bedroom caveat. In 2017 it was on 52.1% of them, of those where the address type was recorded. By 2025 it was on 28.9%.

That is not a story about HDB buyers leaving the private market. On resale the same share fell from 36.9% to 27.2%, a fall of 9.8 percentage points against 23.2 points at new launch. In 2022 the two crossed, and for 3 years an HDB buyer was less likely to be found at a new launch than on a resale. In 2025 they are slightly more likely again. The share fell in both markets, and fell much further at new launch.

The smaller the home, the more HDB buyers it draws. That holds in every year on both sides of the market, eighteen year-and-market combinations with no exception. It also holds that the larger the home, the further the share fell: 13.5 points on 1 bedroom, 15.9 on 2 bedroom, 23.2 on 3 bedroom and 26.9 on 4 bedroom.

Resale is where the contrast is sharpest. A 4 bedroom resale lost 3.4 points over the 9 years while a 4 bedroom new launch lost 26.9 points. HDB buyers did not stop buying large private homes; they stopped buying them new.

The fall also differed by region. Outside central the new-launch share went from 65.2% to 36.6%, a fall of 28.6 points, and the city fringe fell 22.2 points. The core central region fell 5.0 points, but it began at 22.6% and ended at 17.6%, so the shallower fall reflects a low starting point rather than a different pattern.

The part of the market they left returned less. A new-launch buyer made 3.27% a year against 3.97% on resale, on almost the same purchase price, $1,245,000 against $1,250,000. For that money the launch buyer got 151 sqft less floor area and held it 8 months longer. Whether that trade was worth making is a different question. A new launch is bought before it exists, with a payment schedule and no rent in between, and a return figure captures neither.

What this does not tell you

• What "N.A" means. The caveat records an address indicator with three values, HDB, private and N.A. Nothing in our sources documents what N.A denotes, so this note excludes it from the denominator rather than guessing. The Method sets out what it looks like.
• Whether the buyer was an upgrader. An HDB address at the time of purchase is not the same as selling a flat to fund the purchase. It is the closest the data comes and it is not the same thing.
• Why they left. Eight cooling-measure regime breaks fall inside the 9 years this note covers: March 2017, February 2018, July 2018, December 2021, September 2022, February 2023, April 2023 and July 2025. This note measures the change, not its cause, and nothing in our sources attributes any part of it to any one of them.
• Anything about a specific project. These are shares across hundreds of developments a year.

Method and data notes

Shares from URA caveat data for private condominiums and apartments, by the buyer's address type the caveat records (URA's 'purchaser address indicator'), split by whether the sale was a new launch or a resale.

The indicator takes three values: HDB, private, and N.A. This note reports the HDB share of those recorded as HDB or private, excluding N.A from the denominator, because N.A appears almost exclusively on new-launch caveats, 25.7% of them in 2025 against resale, which has never carried more than 2.0%, in 2019, and carries none at all in 2025. Including it would divide one side by a denominator carrying a block the other does not, which depresses the new-launch share against resale in every year for a reason unrelated to who was buying.

On the included basis the 2025 new-launch share reads 21.4% rather than 28.9%, the fall reads 21.0 percentage points rather than 23.2 points, and new launch and resale appear to cross in 2021 rather than 2022. The third option, showing N.A as its own category, gives 2017 new launch as 42.4% HDB, 39.0% private and 18.6% N.A.

Nothing in our sources states what N.A denotes. What can be measured: of the 72 projects with a new-launch 3 bedroom sale in 2025, N.A appears on 57, and on 56 of those it is mixed with HDB and private inside the same project rather than accounting for the whole of it. So it is not one developer reporting differently, and it is all but absent from resale.

Bedroom counts are those resolved from the unit's own record. Nine of the figures plotted above rest on fewer than 600 caveats recorded HDB or private, and they are named here rather than left to be found: the core central region in 2019 on 177, the core central region in 2017 on 221, the core central region in 2023 on 244, the core central region in 2025 on 375, 1 bedroom new launch in 2024 on 406, the core central region in 2021 on 479, 4 bedroom new launch in 2019 on 481, 4 bedroom new launch in 2018 on 515 and 4 bedroom new launch in 2023 on 521. The whole core central column is in that list, so read it for shape and not for level.

The return figures are matched pairs of the same unit bought and resold, with the sale completing between 1 January 2020 and 31 August 2026, computed on data as at that date, and reported in full in what 3 bedroom owners made.

This page therefore carries two vintages. The 882 buyer-address figures it measures are at 23 August 2026, the latest caveat in the corpus. The sixteen return figures it borrows are at 31 August 2026, the latest 3 bedroom resale the repeat-sales run matched.

Sale data: buyer addresses to 23 August 2026, returns to 31 August 2026.

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.