Building Homes for Generations
Most property advice in Singapore is a recommendation with the working hidden. This practice does it the other way round: the rules first, with the authority and the effective date attached, then the arithmetic, and only then a view. If the numbers say wait, they say wait.
Where the work is
The move from an HDB flat to private property is the largest leveraged decision most Singaporean families make. It is modelled here before it is recommended — CPF refund with accrued interest, the binding constraint on the new loan, and the timing that decides whether ABSD is payable or refundable.
Work through the stamp dutyInherited property, probate sequencing, and buying in trust for a child. These are the transactions where a wrong assumption is expensive and irreversible, and where most general property advice runs out.
Read the executor roadmapWhat a foreigner or Permanent Resident may actually buy, what it costs once 60% ABSD is included, and how a purchase completes when the buyer is in another country and signing under a Power of Attorney.
See the overseas deskMaster Plan 2025 read properly — plot ratio, growth-node timelines and the honest lag between an announcement and anything a homeowner can bank. Plus school proximity, measured against the bands MOE actually uses.
Read the Master Plan guideKnowledge Hub
Ten guides, a little over 34,000 words, each one checked against IRAS, CEA, HDB, MAS, URA, MOE or the statute itself on 2 August 2026. Where a commonly repeated figure could not be traced to a primary source, it is flagged as unverified rather than repeated.
PR & foreign ownership
Every ABSD rate in force, how IRAS actually counts your properties, and the remissions that exist — with the arithmetic shown.
16 min read
PR & foreign ownership
What the Residential Property Act lets a foreigner or permanent resident buy without approval, what needs SLA approval, and the full cash arithmetic.
16 min read
Decoupling & 99-1
How a part-share transfer works, why a 1% interest counts as a whole property for ABSD, and the statutory provision IRAS uses to reassess arrangements it considers contrived.
15 min read
Planning & land use
Master Plan 2025 was gazetted on 1 December 2025 and is the plan in force. Most property commentary is still quoting the 2019 one. Here is what the map actually says, and what it cannot tell you.
18 min read
Trusts & legacy
ABSD (Trust) is 65%, payable in cash within 14 days of execution, and refundable only if three conditions are met. One drafting choice destroys the refund entirely.
14 min read
Estate & probate
What a personal representative has to do, in order, before an inherited flat or condominium can be marketed — the grant, the transmission, and the two stamp duty traps.
15 min read
For parents
Proximity to a primary school moves prices in Singapore, and it is also the single most misstated fact in property marketing. Here is what MOE actually publishes, and a distance check that is honest about its own margin of error.
Primary One planning
Enter a six-digit postal code, or a block and street name. The result is a straight-line estimate against the MOE-published 1km and 2km bands — read the caveat below before you let it influence an offer.
Every Singapore Citizen is processed before any Permanent Resident, regardless of distance. A citizen living outside 2km ranks ahead of a PR living 200 metres away.
A child admitted on distance priority must live at the registered address for at least 30 months. MOE states that where this is not met it will transfer the child to a school of its sole discretion, with no parental choice.
Indicative only — not an official MOE measurement. Distances shown are straight-line estimates between approximate coordinates. MOE calculates Home-School Distance as the shortest distance from any point on the school's land boundary to your home's building outline, using its own GIS data — a method that typically returns a shorter distance than the figure shown here. Properties near a 1km or 2km threshold may fall in a different band under MOE. Always verify with the official OneMap School Query tool and MOE before making any property decision. Distance confers priority within a balloted pool; it never guarantees a place.
Contains information from the General information of schools dataset accessed from data.gov.sg and geocoded via OneMap (Singapore Land Authority), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0.
Case study vault
CEA requires every testimonial and every performance claim on a salesperson’s advertising to be genuine, attributable and substantiable. Plenty of agent websites carry composite quotes and round-number track records that would not survive being asked for evidence. This one will publish case studies when there are transactions documented well enough to withstand that question, and clients who have consented in writing to their story being told.
Until then, the work is visible in a different form: the Knowledge Hub sets out the actual rules, with the arithmetic shown and every figure attributed to the authority that issued it. That is checkable today.
Ask about a comparable situationIn preparation
Ask for it directly
For existing owners
A written position on what you currently hold: where the CPF accrued interest stands, what Seller's Stamp Duty exposure remains, what the next purchase would cost in ABSD at your profile and count, and whether doing nothing is the better answer.
For a specific project
Detailed floor plans with the stack-by-stack read that matters: facing, afternoon sun, lift lobby proximity, the difference between two units with identical square footage and very different liveability.
Complimentary
Portal estimates are a regression on stale data. I audit them against actual caveat-lodged transactions, adjust for floor level, facing, stack and lease decay, and tell you where the algorithm is wrong — in either direction.
Common questions
All three, in a specific order. Joel Goh (Goh Jian Kern, Joel) is the salesperson you engage, CEA registration R055731I. He is part of the JNA Real Estate team. The licensed estate agent — the party to the estate agency agreement — is PropNex Realty Pte. Ltd., licence L3008022J. JNA is a team name, not a separate licensed agency.
Search the CEA Public Register at cea.gov.sg using the registration number that must appear on every piece of a salesperson’s advertising. It will confirm the registered name, the estate agent they work under, and the licence number of that agency. If a number is missing from an advertisement, that is itself a breach.
Because they move. ABSD rates were last revised on 27 April 2023, Seller’s Stamp Duty on 4 July 2025, and Master Plan 2025 replaced the 2019 plan on 1 December 2025. A property article with undated numbers is unusable within a year, so every rate here names the issuing authority, the effective date, and the date it was last checked.
No. An initial conversation, a stamp duty computation, and an affordability position are not chargeable. Commission arises only on a completed transaction and is set out in the estate agency agreement before any work begins, as CEA requires.
That is usually the better time to talk. Most of the expensive mistakes in Singapore property are timing mistakes — a sale completed a month too early, an ABSD remission window missed by weeks, a decoupling done in the wrong order. Those are decided long before anyone views a property.
Not “what is on the market”. The constraint — the CPF refund, the MOP date, the ABSD count, the co-owner who has not agreed yet. That is where the answer is.