A flat Q4 slows HDB resale price momentum to 2.9% growth in 2025: flash data

[SINGAPORE] Resale prices of public housing flats were flat in the fourth quarter of 2025, bringing the full-year increase to 2.9 per cent, flash estimates from the Housing & Development Board (HDB) released on Friday (Jan 2) showed.

The HDB market booked its fourth straight quarter of slower price growth in Q4, following a 0.4 per cent rise in Q3. Year on year, the government’s resale price index change was also lower than the 2.6 per cent recorded for the same period in 2024.  

For the whole of 2025, the full-year increase of 2.9 per cent was less than a third of the 9.7 per cent growth in the year before. It was also the slowest price growth since 2019, when resale prices inched up 0.1 per cent.

In a year when there was a major boost in fresh supply into both the HDB Build-To-Order (BTO) sector and the private new-launch market, demand shifted from the resale market, analysts observed.

Resale volume fell in Q4 to its weakest quarterly level in almost six years. Q4 transactions dropped 18.8 per cent year on year to 5,129 units, from 6,314 units in Q4 2024, the lowest quarterly sales since Q2 2020, when 3,426 resale units were transacted during the pandemic, said Propnex head of research and content Wong Siew Ying. 

This brought full-year resale volume to 26,042 units, 9.8 per cent lower than 2024’s 28,876 units.

The last time the annual resale volume decreased was in 2023, when it fell 4.2 per cent – less than half the current rate of decline, HDB noted.

Bumper crop of SBF

Notably, the HDB released 10,252 units in two batches of Sales of Balance Flats (SBF), more than six times the 1,588 units released in 2024, said Mohan Sandrasegeran, SRI head of research and data analytics. This gave homebuyers a wider range of “ready or near-ready” flat options, easing demand pressures in the resale market. 

Realion (OrangeTee and ETC) Group chief researcher and strategist Christine Sun noted that 2025’s BTO and SBF exercises drew over 110,000 applicants in total, marking a three-year high. This was up from around 82,000 applicants in 2024 and 80,000 applicants in 2023. 

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In Q4 alone, more than 30,000 applicants applied for a BTO flat, resulting in “a very quiet October for the resale market”, Lee Sze Teck, Huttons Asia senior director of data analytics, pointed out. 

“Some buyers may have considered the private project launches in October and November 2025, in which entry prices were very close to a resale HDB flat in the vicinity,” he added. 

Wong suggested that “rising price resistance among prospective buyers and the moderation in HDB resale prices of late (could have reduced) the urgency to act among homebuyers”.

That said, she highlighted that certain segments still enjoyed strong demand, supporting sales of million-dollar resale flats. 

In the fourth quarter of 2025, there were 351 resale flats transacted at or over S$1 million, down slightly from Q3’s 480 units. 

These flats changed hands at an average price of S$1.17 million, up 2.3 per cent from the previous quarter’s S$1.14 million. 

In total, the full-year tally of million-dollar resale flats jumped more than 50 per cent to 1,594, over 2024’s record high 1,035 units, noted Wong. 

Of the million-dollar deals, two were three-room terrace flats, 664 were four-room flats, 557 were five-room flats, and 368 were executive flats; three were multi-generation flats. 

More than nine in 10 of these units (91.3 per cent) were in mature estates such as Toa Payoh (302 transactions), Bukit Merah (216) and Queenstown (173). The remaining units (around 8.7 per cent) were in non-mature estates. 

Still, ERA key executive officer Eugene Lim highlighted that most resale flats remained affordable, with about 73 per cent of transactions priced below S$750,000 in Q4. 

Million-dollar resale flats accounted for just 6.9 per cent of all transactions in the quarter, he added, and over half of these deals involved newer flats aged 15 years or less. “This reflects ongoing demand for newer HDB homes in centrally located, mature estates.” 

Mixed price growth

Nicholas Mak, Mogul.sg’s chief research officer, added that price growth in Q4 was mixed, with executive resale flats seeing the biggest bump of 1.6 per cent to S$915,000.

The median price of two-, four- and five-room flats remained unchanged at S$375,000, S$630,000 and S$740,000 respectively. Among three-room flats, the median price fell 1.6 per cent to S$443,000. 

In 2026, Wong expects resale volume to range from 26,000 to 27,000 units. Supply is going to rise, with some 13,500 flats reaching their five-year minimum-occupation period – up nearly 69 per cent from 2025’s 8,000 units. 

This could lead to more “premium flat transactions”, especially as mortgage rates ease amid healthy income growth and population growth, said Sun. “All these factors are likely to soften the market impact from the supply surge and help prevent significant price corrections.” 

She predicts that resale prices will grow 2 to 4 per cent in 2026, on a par with the 2.9 per cent increase in 2025, but lower than the decade-long average of 5.1 per cent from 2016 to 2025. 

In February, HDB will launch about 4,600 Build-To-Order flats in Bukit Merah, Sembawang, Tampines and Toa Payoh, as well as around 3,000 units in a Sale of Balance Flats exercise.

“If the income ceiling for BTO flats is raised in 2026, more will qualify to apply for a BTO flat,” said Lee. “The reduced BTO supply in 2026 and 2027 may not be able to meet demand. Some buyers will gravitate to the HDB resale market.” 

HDB said it will “continue to monitor” the property market and “adjust its policies as necessary to promote a stable and sustainable property market”.