Are Singapore public homes still cheap? I crunched the data to find out!
A few weeks ago, I updated my analysis on the rising number of million dollar public homes in Singapore in 2024. Not only did we continue to see a rise in Singapore million dollar public homes since 2012, these million dollar homes were continually spreading from the central areas of Singapore to her periphery regions. Monthly million dollar public home sales were starting to up to 1–2% of overall public home sales in Singapore, which is a stark rise from the less than 1% a few years ago.
Continuing with this analysis, I wanted to update with the latest data set (downloaded on 12th March, 2024) and go beyond million dollar public homes to better understand our overall Singapore public housing market. Maybe our public homes are still cheap, and these million dollar public homes are just a minority of outlier public home sales? They only make up at most 2+% of all public home sales in any given period, right?
The Analysis
To refresh our memories, I plotted a box plot distribution of the public home prices from 2003 to present day. Public home prices were stable from 2003 to 2007, before its (1) steady increase in median prices, (2) increase in the number of positive outlier home prices and (3) an upwards shift of its price distribution from 2007 to 2013. Then, the years 2013 to 2019 saw a period of relative stability, before another spike from 2019 to our present day. The general trend seems to indicate an overall rise in public home prices in Singapore.
Heat Maps
Next, I plotted a heat map by regions (y-axis), years (x-axis) and regional median prices (cell) to identify any regional public home trends. The different accessibility and amenity provisions of different regions should impact their public home prices.
The heat map (Fig 2) shows that median public home prices rose across all regions in Singapore since 2003, with Bishan, Bukit Timah and Bukit Merah reaching median prices of 800K and above in recent years (2024 is incomplete).
Next, I do the same heat map using median prices per square feet to account for size effects, and we see similar price patterns across the regions across the years. There is an indication that the rise in median home prices is not due to the recent year sales of bigger size flats.
Lastly, I divide the median prices per square feet by their remaining lease to account for their effects on home prices. Public homes in Singapore have a 99-year lease when purchased from the government, and when the lease is up, these public homes theoretically have zero value. Hence, the lesser the remaining lease, in theory, the cheaper these homes should be.
In this updated heat map, we now see that Central Area public homes have one of the higher price ‘scores’ (these data transformations can make their interpretations confusing). In simpler terms, Central Areas public homes of the same size and same remaining lease will largely cost more than their counterparts in other areas. In short, Singaporeans are willing to pay a premium for “central” (accessible) housing.
The Central Million Dollar Question
From my million dollar analysis I found out that the Central Area has one of the most number of million dollar public homes. Yet, this current analysis shows that the Central Area doesn’t have a high median public home price (Fig 2 & 3). To investigate this further, I plotted the box plot distributions between the Central Area and Bishan (an area with high median public home prices).
This is where I found that the Central Area has had two distinct public home price groups in recent years with no outlier public home prices, whereas the Bishan area has a consistent spread of public home sale prices. This group of million dollar public homes and lower priced public homes caused the Central Area median home prices to be lower than the Bishan median prices. This could be due the presence of older public housing programmes with the newer programmes within the Central Area that is causing these two price clusters to form. In other words, our Central Area is not just all about expensive public homes after all! The existence of bimodal distributions (histograms with two distinct peaks) also reflects the trickiness of using a single metric to identify or represent a region or country’s housing market trend.
Public Home Price Groups
Moving away from median and outlier (million dollar) prices, I wanted to understand the proportion of public home prices by specific price groups instead. I am looking at just home prices, and not price per square feet or price per square feet of the remaining lease, because this would most directly show the financial burden of owning a public home in Singapore. I grouped the prices into the following: (1) <=300K (2) 300–500K, (3) 500–800K, (4) 800K-1m and (5) >1m.
I then plot a bar chart stacking the public home sales by their price groups across the years. From this bar chart, we can see the decline in public homes sold that are < SGD 300K, and a small rise in those between SGD 500K to a million dollars.
To study these changes more clearly, I plotted these price groups as a percentage of total quarterly public home sales (Fig 7). I found that in 2006, slightly more than 80% of public homes sold were < SGD 300K, and none sold were > SGD 500K ! Contrast this to 2023, where public home sales of < SGD 300K make up less than 2%, and more than 60% of public homes sold are > SGD 500K .
So, if you want to buy a public home in Singapore in 2024 from the resale market, there is a low chance you can get it at < SGD 300K. You still have a chance of getting a public home in Singapore ranging from SGD 300–500K if you are not picky, but looking at SGD 500–800K public home prices will give you better odds of securing a public home in Singapore. The relatively good news is that public homes at > SGD 800K are still only 10% of total public homes sold in Singapore, even though this number has slowly been increasing in recent few years, while overall public home sales have remained relatively constant. While this data set spans across 17 years, so it is natural to see inflation affecting our public home prices, it is still interesting to see the extent of this price shift.
Housing Price Groups by Housing Type
Lastly, I want to do a quick look at the same stacked bar chart across different flat types: (1) 5-Rooms, ECs and Multi-Gen flats together, (2) 4-Room flats, (3) 3-Room flats and (4) 2-Room flats.
(Fig 9) Classifying 5-Room, ECs and Multi-Gen flats together, slightly more than 50% of them were sold at < SGD 300K in the early 2000s. Now, about 70% of them are > SGD 500K, and slightly more than 20% of them were sold at > SGD 800K.
(Fig 10) For 4-room public homes, more than 90% of them used to be sold at < SGD 300K in the early 2000s. By 2023, more than 60% of them are selling between SGD 500K to 800K. In fact, you cannot find any 4-room public homes that are sold at < SGD 300K from 2022.
(Fig 11) For 3-room public homes, more than 99% of them used to be sold at < SGD 300K in the early 2000s. Now, more than 85% of them are selling between SGD 300K to 500K.
(Fig 12) For 2-room public homes, more than 90% of them used to be sold at < SGD 300K in the early 2000s. However, since the early 2020s, this proportion has been shifting massively, to the point that in 2023, more than 70% of 2-room public homes are selling between SGD 300K to 500K.
Concluding thoughts
Even in 2024, there are public homes that cost < SGD 300K, even though they are only now just 2-Room and 3-Room flats. 4-Room flats can still cost between SGD 300–500K, even though a larger proportion are between SGD 500–800K. Lastly, for the larger 5-Room, EC and Multi-Gen flats, only less than 1% of them can cost < SGD 500K.
Adding on from the rise in million dollar public homes in Singapore, this analysis shows that more proportions of Singapore public homes are becoming expensive nowadays as compared to around two decades ago. There are still pockets of cheaper public homes, but they are more rare nowadays.
There are many factors that affect general public housing prices, from new infrastructure projects, population growth, growth in median household incomes, changing interest rates and housing supply crunch. All these factors contribute to the overall demand and supply of public homes in Singapore, which in turn affect the overall prices of our public housing market.
While the data does show an increase in overall public home prices, I am not saying whether these are good or bad changes. Public homes downgraders should be happy that they can cash out their public home to boost their retirement funds. Some may argue these price shifts indicate that our strong economy and high quality public homes are continually fuelling their demand and boosting public housing prices. Naturally, public home-buyers may look at this analysis and justify their displeasure on the red-hot Singapore public housing market of recent years. However, true public housing affordability studies also need to be aligned with general household incomes, and this is something beyond the scope of this analysis.
This said, since 2023, the Singapore government has worked on a series of policy interventions and public home launches to cool down our public housing market. I will follow this development and update my analysis accordingly.
All in all, I hope my analysis has provided some simple but data-driven view of our Singapore public housing market. A huge caveat for this analysis is that my analysis and interpretations are very much an art rather than science. Nonetheless, I still hope that everyone who has read till here was able to take away something from this article.
Lastly, those interested in seeing some of these interactivity charts can go to my Tableau page here, where I replicated these charts on Tableau.
Thanks to everyone who has read this post. If you are interested in analytics side projects with a social science spin, follow me on Medium or Linkedin. Some topics I have explored include (1) Singapore housing prices and the updated Singapore million dollar public home analysis, (2) accessibility of Singapore hotels, (3) Taiwan housing prices, and (4) I even built a small web app for Singaporeans to track the library books they want to borrow. I also share less technical topics, like (5) how I learned to deal with uncertainty and (6) how I end up being a freelance analytics consultant.
Lastly, I have a Substack (trying to keep that going) as well, where I share ideas on data concepts and strategies for targeted at busy business people.
