Prime-home resale losses mount even as Singapore prices rise

A 710 sq ft apartment at Marina One Residences reportedly sold for S$1.25 million in August 2026, eight years after its buyer paid S$1.83 million. The difference was S$580,000—about 32% below its purchase price, before transaction costs and taxes. It was the steepest percentage loss in Cushman & Wakefield’s reported Q3 matched-transaction study.

That sale puts a human-sized sum behind the quarter’s standout finding: 19.5% of matched private-home deals in the Core Central Region (CCR) sold below their earlier purchase prices. Yet URA’s final figures showed the region’s non-landed price index rising 0.3% over the same quarter. For owners wondering how both can be true, the answer starts with what each number actually measures.

What sits behind the one-in-five figure?

The consultancy’s study, reported on 1 November 2026, examined Q3 private-home transactions with an identifiable earlier purchase within the preceding 10 years, or 40 quarters. It matched 2,021 transactions islandwide. Of those, 93 sold at a gross loss, giving an islandwide loss-making share of 4.6%.

The CCR stood out in two different ways. First, 19.5% of the region’s matched transactions were loss-making, up from 17.7% in Q2. Second, it accounted for 49% of all loss-making transactions in the islandwide study. Those percentages answer different questions: how common losses were within the CCR sample, and where the study’s losses were concentrated.

Keeping those denominators attached matters. The finding is not that one in five Singapore private-home sellers lost money, nor that one in five existing prime-area owners is sitting on a realised loss. It describes the CCR transactions captured by this particular matching exercise. Homes that did not transact, and transactions outside its prior-purchase window, do not answer that same question.

The figures are also gross purchase-to-sale comparisons, not a complete accounting of ownership returns. C&W excluded transaction costs and taxes. Throughout this article, a gain or loss therefore means the difference between the reported purchase and sale prices—not the owner’s final financial position after all costs.

Prime-region losses were much more common—but not universal

The regional comparison gives the headline its significance. In the Rest of Central Region (RCR), 4.5% of matched transactions were loss-making in Q3, against 2.7% in Q2. In the suburban Outside Central Region (OCR), the share increased from 1.3% to 1.6%. The corresponding CCR share was 19.5%.

Calculated from those reported figures, the CCR loss share was 15 percentage points above the RCR’s and 17.9 percentage points above the OCR’s. Its own quarterly increase was 1.8 percentage points, rather than an increase of 1.8%. These are comparisons of the study’s matched samples, not estimates of any particular owner’s chances of losing money.

Islandwide, the loss-making share rose from 3.7% in Q2 to 4.6% in Q3; a year earlier, it had been 3.3%. The report described Q3’s share as the highest since Q2 2022, when 6.9% of the studied resale transactions were loss-making. So the increase was meaningful, while losses still represented a minority of matched transactions.

There was another important detail within the CCR itself: three of the five largest gains by dollar amount were also in the prime region. The same regional label therefore covered both substantial losses and some of the quarter’s biggest gains. That spread is more informative than treating “prime property” as one uniform ownership experience.

How can the index rise while a seller loses?

URA’s final Q3 release recorded a 1.4% quarterly increase in the overall private residential price index. Within non-landed housing, the CCR index rose 0.3%, the RCR index was unchanged and the OCR index rose 2.3%. These figures describe market movements between Q2 and Q3 2026.

The C&W exercise asks a different question: did a particular home sell for more or less than it previously cost? Its starting points vary from transaction to transaction because each owner bought at a different time within the study’s ten-year window. An area-wide quarterly movement and a seller’s multi-year price difference do not share either the same starting date or the same subject.

The Marina One Residences example makes the distinction concrete. Its comparison is July 2018 against August 2026: S$1.83 million against S$1.25 million. The CCR index’s 0.3% increase compares one quarter of 2026 with the immediately preceding quarter. A positive result for that short market-wide interval does not require this apartment’s sale price to exceed its much earlier purchase price.

Put another way, a rising quarterly index does not reset an owner’s entry price. The original S$1.83 million remains the reference point for that apartment’s gross outcome, regardless of the direction of the latest quarterly reading. Equally, that apartment’s loss is not a measurement of how every other CCR home moved during Q3. This is why the two findings can coexist without contradiction.

For someone considering a sale, the distinction changes the useful question. “Did the region rise this quarter?” provides market context. “What could this unit sell for compared with its own purchase price?” is the question about that owner’s gross gain or loss. The reported study addresses the latter through completed matched transactions, rather than assuming the former supplies the answer.

The biggest percentage loss was not the biggest dollar loss

At Marina One Residences, subtracting the reported S$1.25 million resale price from the S$1.83 million purchase price gives a S$580,000 gross decline. Dividing that difference by the purchase price gives approximately 31.7%, consistent with the report’s rounded 32%. The reported holding period was 8.1 years.

The largest dollar loss in the study was elsewhere: a 1,604 sq ft apartment at OUE Twin Peaks reportedly sold for S$3.88 million in August, after being bought for S$4.9 million in March 2017. That is a calculated S$1.02 million price difference, or approximately 20.8% using the displayed prices; the report described it as about S$1 million, or 20%.

These examples explain why rankings need their measure attached. The Marina One Residences transaction lost a larger proportion of its purchase price. The OUE Twin Peaks transaction lost more dollars because it began from a much larger purchase amount. Neither ranking alone tells the whole story of the size of a seller’s gross loss.

The reported largest dollar gain offers a useful contrast. A 4,704 sq ft unit at Leedon Residence changed hands for S$14.3 million in July, compared with a S$10.55 million purchase in 2017. Its S$3.75 million gross gain amounted to 35.5%. This was another CCR transaction, but with a very different purchase-to-sale result.

What this changes for an owner reading the market

The study’s most useful contribution is the transaction history behind the headline. A regional index tells an owner something about the direction of the wider market over a stated period. The matched-sale evidence shows how widely outcomes can differ when those sales are compared with their own earlier purchase prices. Both are useful, but they are not interchangeable.

There was also a softer result among sellers who did record gains. The reported median gain among profitable resale and sub-sale transactions fell to 24.8% in Q3, from a peak of 30.4% in Q2 2025. That is a separate measure from the loss-making share: it describes the middle gain within the profitable group, not the return of the entire sample.

For a prime-area owner, the clear consequence is narrower—and more practical—than a sweeping verdict on the CCR. In Q3 2026, a rising regional index coexisted with gross losses in nearly one-fifth of the region’s matched transactions, while other CCR sales produced substantial gains. The latest market direction supplied context; each home’s own purchase and resale prices determined which side of that divide its seller landed on.