We Ranked Singapore’s Best Rental Condos — Then We Checked Whether The Rent Covered The Costs. Here’s What We Found.

None of Singapore’s highest-yielding condominiums actually pay for themselves. It’s an astounding conclusion, but one that we found ourselves facing after our analysis as part of this ongoing series on the rental market in Singapore.

Based on our research, when property tax, maintenance fees, and a mortgage are added to the equation, each of the top 10 projects highlighted in this series still needs a monthly top-up from its owner. This ranges from as little as $237 per month to as much as $2,036 per month, based on our calculations.

In this article, we’ll offer our findings to explain how we came to this conclusion. 

The first article in this series ranked each qualifying condominium by its gross rental yield. That article found that unit type mattered more than the condo’s location, while land tenure helped to explain the weakest performers on our list. We also explained that a strong yield did not rule out strong capital growth.

Then, in our second article last week, we narrowed the coverage of gross-yield, showing that older 99-year leasehold projects could out-yield newer ones because their purchase prices have cooled relative to rents. This was not because of the age of the condo.

Now we take a step back, to try and uncover what a landlord is actually left with once the recurring costs of ownership are taken into account.