HDB Lease Decay In Woodlands Is Accelerating — With One Flat Type Seeing Faster Declines

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been examining the effects of lease decay across HDB estates. We found that the pattern of price movements are not uniform – ageing flats can retain value for far longer in some HDB towns, and they’re not always the ones you expect.

For example, we’ve seen that in the Central Area, price premiums for flats in the Central Area eroded at a more noticeable pace, whereas the prices of older flats in Jurong East proved more resilient.

This week, we turn our attention to Woodlands. We’ll examine the effects of lease decay of three- to five-room flats in this northern region, since they’re the ones that meet our minimum thresholds for analysis. Here’s what we found.

Our Methodology

We analyse HDB resale transactions by town and flat type. Transactions are grouped into lease bands (e.g. 90–99, 80–89, etc.) that show remaining leases.

Lease bands are based on how many years are left at the time of sale, so flats move between bands as they age. We do this to ensure we’re not tracking the same flats over time; what we want to see is how buyers price flats at each lease stage in each period.