Low Floor vs. High Floor: What Transaction Data Reveals About the Premium

Higher-floor units almost always come with a price premium, but whether that premium is justified is less clear once you look at resale performance. While buyers often assume higher floors will hold or even grow their value, the data shows this isn’t consistently the case. In fact, there are projects where higher-floor units lag behind their lower-floor counterparts, particularly when ground-floor units offer strong alternatives. 

In this analysis, we break down actual transactions across several developments to see where paying more for a higher floor hasn’t translated into stronger resale returns, and what this means for buyers weighing the trade-off.

A quick explanation of low floor and higher floor units

For this analysis, transactions are grouped by floor level: units on the fifth floor and below are classified as low floor, while units on the 6th floor and above are classified as high floor. We considered transactions from 2014 through June 2025, including only developments with at least 10 transactions in both the low- and high-floor categories.

Let’s start with the basics: how profitable have low-floor units been compared to their higher-floor counterparts?

From here we can see that, on the whole, the ROI between the two are so close that the difference is negligible. But this is an overall snapshot that doesn’t tell us too much, and now we’re going to zoom in on the exceptions.