Singapore‘s public-housing market demonstrates remarkable durability. Although resale activity is softening on a short-term basis, an uptick in cash from older households is sustaining prices and affecting buying habits in the interim. Savills Singapore’s latest assessment indicates a slight but financially significant price increase of 3% in 2026 in Singapore’s public-housing market. The increase is attributable largely to what researchers call “baby-boomer liquidity”; cash from lifetime savings and equity-market gains is propping up public-housing prices.
What makes this news even more remarkable is the data that supports it: Savills’ Q3 snapshot indicates that new home sales jumped from 1,212 in Q2 to 3,288 in Q3 2025, a near threefold increase, while secondary-market sales gained as well, lodging 4,116 units in sales—noting that is the largest quarterly spike in units sold since mid-2024.
The rebound is a little uneven by geography: the Outside Central Region (OCR) house sales claim the largest share of new sales, followed by the Rest of Central Region (RCR) and Core Central Region (CCR).
So how are baby boomers tightening the market’s grip on prices? Analysts point to several channels. Many older households have large housing equity and conservative savings built up over decades. With the additional benefit of recent stock-market returns, those funds are being deployed in the marketplace – either upgrading into a larger resale flat or topping up a purchase within the private sector. Savills’ Alan Cheong stated that accumulated wealth by older cohorts and strong equity markets helped support strong sales in October despite broader momentum potentially moderating.
Meanwhile, domestically, the buyer mix is also changing the demand picture. Domestic purchases dramatically increased quarter-on-quarter: the number of Singapore citizen transactions substantially increased, while both Permanent Resident and Foreign purchases increased as well – although Foreign buyer numbers remain below pre-2023 levels due to higher Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty rates. This mix highlights a crucial point: not only do investors drive today’s price momentum, but also owner-occupiers with substantial financial resources support it.
What were previously unbelievable anecdotes now sound unremarkable. Million-dollar HDB flats, which were previously a novelty, recently became a common news story about the rising price of resale flats. The rise specifically reflects the spatial scarcity of central units, as some buyers are willing to pay premium prices for both space and location. The expensive transactions underscore how resale flats are, in some sense, now competing against private purchases for buyers in a financial position to upgrade.
Nonetheless, the enthusiasm is tempered with caveats. Analysts have cautioned that while lower interest rates and strong HDB prices encourage certain households to upgrade, they may also lessen their struggles to achieve high sell-before-occupation rates at new launches in the future. Savills indicates that 80%-100% sell-out rates at new launches may become an increasingly difficult task next year, hinting that there may be a cap on developer demand as resale prices begin to climb.
The implications for buyers and policymakers are multi-layered. For sellers — especially older homeowners with equity cushions — the timing is still favourable: demand is there, and cash buyers, typically, can move quickly. For young and first-time buyers, rising resale benchmarks could exacerbate the affordability gap and possibly push some buyers even deeper into the long wait for build-to-order or sales of balance flats. Policymakers will be monitoring these trends closely for the trade-off of cooling measures against the political sensitivities of housing affordability.
In conclusion, Singapore’s housing market is being quietly rewired by demographic wealth—a generational capital hand-off that is cementing resale prices even as other components of the property cycle moderate. Expect a year of steady, rather than spectacular, gains characterised by modest headline growth driven by decades of household savings and a stock market that has transformed retirement nests into buying power.
