Why Some Old HDB Flats Hold Value Longer Than Others

The HDB situation in Singapore is unprecedented, and we mean that quite literally. Singapore’s public housing system – which is partway between socialised housing and free market housing – has no clear equivalent elsewhere in the world. 

So when we face the end of the first 99-year leases, since HDB’s inception back in the 1960’s, there’s no true equivalent elsewhere to study. There is no overseas test case to lean on, no long-running historical precedent that tells us what should happen next. We are very much in uncharted waters, and perhaps nearing the end of the first great expedition. 

This makes the question of lease decay, and the impact on housing prices, a difficult one to answer without speculation. This week, we’re making an attempt to understand lease decay; it’s appropriate since the end of the Selective En-block Redevelopment Scheme (SERS) has come about, and we’re about to enter the property rush that often follows the end of Chinese New Year. 

Many older resale flats now look like they lack exit liquidity; but will prices for these old flats start to fall now? And if not, what makes them so resilient? 

First, are very old flats still holding value? 

The answer is “far better than most people assume.” We increasingly hear homebuyers ask if an older flat (sometimes even just barely 20 years old) is a “bad deal,” and even parents asking if they should sell their flat and ballot as second-timers, so they can get a newer lease flat as legacy planning. 

Now in an older article from last September, we did already analyse the issue; and in that article we highlighted that age may be overrated as a factor in flat pricing. Still, we wanted more exact details, and so did many writers. 

So in February 2026, we followed up with a more recent study for Stacked Pro readers. This time, we went over each HDB town one-by-one, and examined resale data from a 10-year period from  2015 to 2025. 

This time, we confirmed there were multiple cases where  older flats not only kept pace with newer ones, but in fact outperformed them by a wide margin. This showed up most clearly in mature estates such as Geylang, Kallang/Whampoa, and Bedok. Here, we found that cohorts of flats built in the 1980s and 1990s recorded price growth in the 30-60% range over the decade, despite having significantly shorter remaining leases. By comparison, newer cohorts in those towns typically saw price growth in the 20-50% range over the same period, and in many instances sat closer to the lower end of that band.

In a few extreme cases, the outcome was even more counterintuitive. Among 5-room flats in Geylang, for instance, the  older cohort built between the mid-1990s and early 2000s recorded price growth of more than 70% over the same period, overtaking newer 5-room flats that were built a whole decade later. These 5-room flats were not just seeing higher percentage growth, but were transacting at a higher median quantum than their younger counterparts.

Similar patterns appeared elsewhere. In Ang Mo Kio and Bishan: here we found some older 4-room flats outperforming newer cohorts, while Woodlands and Bukit Panjang saw older 3-room flats that saw meaningful appreciation despite lease decay. These cases were not universal, but quite focused on certain specific groups of flats. 

There’s also hints of this outside of the data

Consider a recent CNA report, citing the position of postwar flat owners in Tiong Bahru; these are among the oldest flats in the country. 

What’s notable here is not just the price levels cited, but the persistence of demand. Median resale prices for three-room postwar flats in Tiong Bahru rose from about $630,000 in 2015 to $780,000 in 2025, an increase of roughly 24%, despite being one of the most extreme cases of lease decay. These flats retain appeal because of factors like proximity to the city, MRT access, and entrenched amenities. There’s also the hard-to-quantify, but also hard-to-replicate, element of the neighbourhood’s social character. 

For buyers, this undercuts the assumption that lease decay will result in desperate sellers and steep discounts. In some unique locations like Tiong Bahru, there are sellers who are perfectly happy to wait till the lease hits zero; and the amount of money it takes to budge them will go far beyond what’s financially “sensible.”

There is also a broader ageing issue, which indirectly contributes to the resilience of older flats.

Simply put, lease decay is less of a worry, when the remaining lease is still more than enough. As Singapore approaches super-aged status, a growing share of buyers are no longer concerned about the “99-year timebomb.” For someone in their late sixties or seventies, a flat with 40 or even 50 years of remaining lease may already be more than what they realistically need. For these cases, the concern is that the flat continues to meet day-to-day living needs; not that the lease will run out. 

A common example, which we see on the ground, is that of Executive Maisonettes (EMs). Often when an EM is sold, the reason is not wanting to escape lease decay, or a desire to “upgrade” to another area. It’s more often the simpler issue of EMs being double-storeyed, and seniors having to climb stairs. If it weren’t for this issue, many more sellers might be rejecting offers; even generous ones. 

That said, we should add that in some conversations on the ground, older homeowners have speculated on whether they should sell and buy a newer flat (or even a private property) for legacy reasons. However, in a country where we have a near 90% home ownership rate, this motivation is not universal. 

For many Singaporeans in their late fifties or sixties, for example, their children probably already own homes of their own. So except for special cases – where children are truly reliant on inheriting the parental flat – this motive doesn’t always translate into urgency to sell an ageing flat either. 

Taken together, all of this may explain why lease decay alone may not trigger a universal sell-off, and some older flats may be surprisingly resilient in their value. 

That said, this doesn’t mean lease decay has no impact on flat prices

Setting aside certain pockets of resilience, as mentioned above, there are signs that flat prices have been affected by lease decay. The bad news, for buyers who are waiting for a discount, is that this doesn’t work as predictably as one might imagine. 

In an upcoming Stacked Pro study of this topic, we’ll reveal that price erosion from lease decay doesn’t unfold in a neat, year-by-year manner. Rather, prices can remain relatively stable across very long stretches of a flat’s lifespan, even as the remaining lease shortens. Then, when an inflection point (or tipping point) is reached, the price adjusts downward sharply. 

In other words, lease decay isn’t really a gentle slope: it’s long periods where lease decay barely seems to matter, followed by a sudden dive which happens…well, when it happens because there’s no clear predictor. In our study, the tipping point changed across each HDB town: a remaining lease that still looks acceptable in one town  may already be viewed as a liability in another. 

In parts of the Central Area and Geylang, for example, the tipping point for most flats was beyond the 80–89 years remaining lease band. By contrast, in towns like Jurong East and Tampines, flats with 70–79 years of remaining lease often continued to transact close to the town average, while in Jurong East, we noted that 5-room flats maintained their prices far later than many other HDB towns. 

If you’re a buyer or a seller, knowing where these inflection points happen is more useful than thinking of lease decay in a general sense. 

The key is to understand where these thresholds tend to fall, and how sharply prices drop once they’re crossed. This also explains why waiting for “cheap old flats” can be a tough strategy: the tipping points arrive unevenly, and not always when expected. 

So if there’s one takeaway here, it’s to be wary of rules of thumb like “you better sell before the price drops,” or “the resale flats nearby are older, so in future the owners there will want to upgrade to your newer condo.” 

It’s rarely that simple, and you need specifics. For details on this, join us on Stacked Pro for access to the two studies above; and also for further updates as we plumb deeper into public and private housing alike.