Singapore private-home prices accelerate as developer sales nearly halve

Singapore’s private-home price index rose 1.4% in July–September 2026, even as the number of homes sold fell to its lowest quarterly total of the year. The Urban Redevelopment Authority’s final figures, released on 23 October, show a faster price increase than the previous quarter’s 0.5% rise—and the strongest quarterly gain since the 2.3% increase in the fourth quarter of 2024.

The surprise is in the split: developers sold 1,183 private homes, down from 2,141 in April–June, while resale transactions barely changed. For someone buying or selling an existing home, that distinction matters: the quieter headline sales total mainly describes a sharp slowdown in developer sales, rather than a similar retreat across the whole market. All these transaction counts exclude executive condominiums, or ECs.

Where did the missing transactions go?

Adding URA’s developer sales, resales and sub-sales produces 5,146 private-home transactions in the third quarter. That compares with 6,148 in the second quarter and 5,413 in the first, making July–September the quietest of the three quarters reported for 2026. These are calculated totals from URA’s published categories, rather than a separate price measure.

The quarter-to-quarter breakdown makes the change much easier to understand:

Developer sales accounted for about 96% of the overall decline, calculated by dividing their 958-unit fall by the total reduction of 1,002 transactions. Resales, by contrast, slipped just 12 units—roughly 0.3%. So the description “sales fell” is accurate, but leaves out the most useful part of the story.

The resale market also made up a larger share of completed deals: approximately 74% of third-quarter transactions, against 62% in the second quarter, calculated from the same figures. That larger share came with almost no change in resale volume; it chiefly reflects the smaller number of developer sales.

Buyers had fewer newly launched homes to consider

Developers launched 1,140 uncompleted private homes, excluding ECs, during the third quarter, compared with 1,783 in the preceding quarter. That is a calculated reduction of about 36%. Developer sales fell more sharply, by approximately 45%, over the same period.

For buyers considering a home directly from a developer, the quarter therefore brought both fewer newly released units and fewer purchases. This is a more concrete description of the slowdown than treating the total transaction decline as one broad measure of household enthusiasm.

The launch and sales figures measure different things, however. Units launched during a quarter are newly released stock; developer sales need not all come from that quarter’s launches. The figures should not be divided into a simple “take-up rate” as though they describe exactly the same set of homes.

The official data establishes that a thinner launch calendar accompanied lower developer sales. It does not allocate the sales decline between fewer choices, buyers’ willingness to commit or other influences. The useful finding is narrower: most of the lost activity was in developer sales, while existing-home transactions held broadly steady.

The price rise looked very different across homes

The islandwide increase of 1.4% was not an even lift. Landed-home prices rose 2.9%, while non-landed prices increased 1.0%. The distinction matters before geography even enters the picture: the headline combines property types whose quarterly movements differed substantially.

Within non-landed homes, URA recorded three different outcomes. Prices in the Outside Central Region rose 2.3%; those in the Core Central Region increased 0.3%; and the Rest of Central Region was unchanged. These are URA’s regional groupings, commonly abbreviated to OCR, CCR and RCR.

The gap between the strongest and weakest of those non-landed regional readings was therefore 2.3 percentage points, calculated from the published changes. That is a more useful comparison for understanding the quarter than assuming every condominium participated equally in the overall rise.

For an owner, the first relevant distinction is whether the property is landed or non-landed, followed by its regional category. A non-landed home in the RCR belongs to a segment with an unchanged quarterly index, even though the all-private-residential headline rose 1.4%. The broad headline and that owner’s segment can tell different stories without either being wrong.

Why fewer sales and faster price growth can coexist

Transaction volume counts how many homes changed hands. The price index measures price movement using transaction information and adjustments for differences between properties. They answer different questions, so a lower sales count does not mathematically require a lower price reading.

URA constructs its index using caveats, stamp-duty records and developer data. Its statistical method accounts for characteristics such as a home’s age and size, rather than simply taking the average price of whatever happened to sell during the quarter. URA describes the result as a broad indication of price trends.

That also sets the limit on what an owner can read into the increase. A 1.4% index gain is not a valuation showing that every private home became worth 1.4% more. The index is designed to track the wider market while allowing for differences in the homes represented in the data.

Taken together, the third-quarter figures resolve much of the apparent contradiction: transaction activity weakened mainly in developer sales, resale activity was almost unchanged, and price increases differed sharply by property type and region. There was no single, uniform market experience hiding beneath the headline.

More homes were completed, too

Another change was taking place alongside sales and prices. URA recorded 3,559 private-home completions, including ECs, in the third quarter, up from 1,212 in the second. Meanwhile, the vacancy rate for completed private homes excluding ECs increased to 7.2%, from 6.4%. The completion count and vacancy rate have different coverage and should be read with those definitions attached.

Those figures add an important piece to the quarter’s picture: more homes reached completion while a larger proportion of completed private homes stood vacant. They are a change in the available-home backdrop, not an established explanation for the price-index increase.

The next question is whether developer sales recover as the launch calendar changes, and whether resale activity remains steady. For now, the clearest consequence of the release is a more specific understanding of the slowdown: Singapore recorded fewer private-home deals, but the decline was overwhelmingly in developer sales—not a comparable fall in resales.