Relocating from China to Singapore: pass, school, property, in that order

Most families arriving from mainland China treat the Singapore move as three errands run at the same time. Someone handles the visa. Someone views apartments at the weekend. Someone emails schools. The three are not independent. Each prices the next, and running them in parallel means the most expensive decision gets made on the least information.

The dependency runs one way. The work pass decides who may live here and on what terms. It then decides whether a Dependant’s Pass is available for a spouse and children, which decides whether a child needs a Student’s Pass at all. The child’s school route decides where the family can usefully live. Only at the end of that chain does the property question become answerable, because the buyer’s immigration status on the day the Option to Purchase is accepted fixes the stamp duty rate on the whole consideration.

There are four realistic routes and they have almost nothing in common. An Employment Pass is sponsored by an employer and scored on a points framework. The Overseas Networks and Expertise Pass is a personal pass at a high salary threshold. The EntrePass is for founders of a narrow class of company. The Global Investor Programme is an EDB investment route leading directly to Permanent Residence. Choosing the wrong queue costs a year.

The COMPASS criterion that catches PRC applicants

C3 Diversity scores the share of the candidate’s own nationality among the employer’s professionals, managers, executives and technicians. MOM awards 20 points below 5%, 10 points from 5% to below 25%, and nothing at 25% or more. Because PRC nationals are frequently the largest single foreign nationality in a Singapore firm’s professional headcount, C3 is often what decides the application. Ask the employer for its C3 and C4 position before accepting an offer, not after. C1 Salary is separate from the qualifying salary: a candidate below the qualifying salary is ineligible however the points fall.

What the EntrePass will not take

MOM publishes a list of ineligible businesses: coffee shops, hawker centres and food courts; bars, night clubs and karaoke lounges; foot reflexology and massage parlours; acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine and herbal dispensing; employment agencies; geomancy. Two of the most common business ideas brought over from the mainland fall inside that list. Check it before incorporating anything.

What the Global Investor Programme does and does not buy

The GIP leads to Permanent Residence, and PR is what moves the stamp duty rate. It does not lead to Citizen treatment: an approved applicant pays the PR rates of 5%, 30% and 35%. EDB also defines net investible assets for the Family Office Principal profile as financial assets and expressly excludes real estate. Investment conditions must be met within six months of the Approval-in-Principle letter.

The family follows the pass holder, and the threshold is the sponsor’s own salary, not combined household income. MOM requires the sponsor to hold an Employment Pass or S Pass, to earn a fixed monthly salary of at least $6,000, and to be sponsored by an established Singapore-registered company. On those terms a Dependant’s Pass covers a legally married spouse and unmarried children under 21, including legally adopted children.

Everyone else sits under the Long Term Visit Pass: a common-law spouse, unmarried handicapped children aged 21 and above, unmarried step-children under 21, and parents — parents only where the sponsor earns at least $12,000 a month. That figure most often forces a rethink for families intending to bring grandparents over for childcare.

• Family members of an Employment Pass holder who applied as an overseas intra-corporate transferee under the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services, or a free trade agreement, are not eligible for a Dependant’s Pass or LTVP except where a specific agreement covers them.
• ONE Pass and EntrePass holders have their own dependant regimes on separate MOM pages, last updated 14 March 2024. The $6,000 Employment Pass threshold does not carry across.

A child holding a Dependant’s Pass or LTVP does not need a Student’s Pass. Every other foreign child in full-time study does. ICA is clear that the pass follows admission and does not precede it: you must first be accepted into an approved full-time course. Applications go through ICA’s SOLAR+ e-Service at least two and not more than three months before the course begins, and the applicant need not be in Singapore while it is processed, though the child must be here on a valid immigration pass to complete issuance formalities. Foreign-born applicants aged 12 years and 0 days or below must submit vaccination information to the Communicable Diseases Agency.

The AEIS is a placement exercise, not an application to a school

Entry into a national school runs through the Admissions Exercise for International Students, which MOE describes as covering Primary 2 to 5 and Secondary 1 to 3 for the following academic year. Two sentences on MOE’s own page govern the entire property conversation that usually follows.

There is no guaranteed place and no choice of school. Residential area is a factor "where possible", subordinate to vacancies. A family that buys a home on the assumption that the child will attend the nearest well-regarded primary school has bought an assumption. From the 2026 exercise MOE has added a prerequisite for primary applicants: the child must first sit the relevant Cambridge English Qualifications test, from July 2025 onward, and only children meeting the required score may proceed to the AEIS Mathematics test. For 2026 MOE set tests on 1, 2 and 3 September, with primary outcomes released between 17 and 21 December 2026. A second exercise, the S-AEIS, covers Primary 2 to 4 and Secondary 1 to 2 for admission in the same academic year and typically runs from January.

The international school alternative

ICA refers to the alternative track generically as Foreign System Schools and Privately-Funded Schools, and maintains a separate Student’s Pass route for them. Admission is direct to the school, then the pass follows. Neither MOE nor ICA publishes a ranked or recommended list, so any list a reader is shown comes from a commercial source and carries no government endorsement. Waiting lists at established schools frequently run longer than a relocation timeline — itself a reason to settle the school before signing a lease.

The governing statute is the Residential Property Act 1976, administered by the Land Dealings Approval Unit at the Singapore Land Authority. SLA defines a foreign person negatively: anyone who is not a Singapore citizen, company, limited liability partnership or society. A PRC national is a foreign person whether or not they hold Permanent Residence.

SLA requires no approval for a condominium unit, a flat unit, a strata landed house within an approved condominium development, or a leasehold estate in landed residential property not exceeding seven years. That is the ordinary case: a foreigner may buy a non-landed private unit without asking anyone. Approval is required for restricted residential property — vacant residential land, terrace houses, semi-detached houses, bungalows, strata landed houses outside an approved condominium development, landed property at Sentosa Cove, residential shophouses, and mixed commercial-and-residential property. SLA assesses mainland applications case by case, taking into account that the applicant should have been a Permanent Resident for at least five years and must make an exceptional economic contribution to Singapore.

• SLA states that Permanent Residents are in general allowed to buy only restricted properties not exceeding 15,000 square feet and not within a Good Class Bungalow area.
• Approval carries an owner-occupation condition. The property may be used only as a dwelling house for the applicant and family, and rental, including of part of it, is strictly prohibited.
• A five-year non-disposal condition runs from legal completion, or from Temporary Occupation Permit or Certificate of Statutory Completion, whichever is earlier, for property under construction.
• Processing takes about 30 working days. In-principle approval may be sought without a specific property in mind; details must follow within one year, with no extension.
• Contravention is an offence under section 25C: a fine of up to $200,000, imprisonment of up to three years, or both. Breach of the owner-occupation condition additionally attracts a penalty under section 25B(1) of up to three times the rental income earned, or $10,000, whichever is higher.

Public housing is closed unless the household qualifies through PR

A foreigner who is not a Permanent Resident cannot buy an HDB flat. Where the household qualifies through PR, HDB restricts it sharply: an SPR household with no Singapore Citizen applicant may buy only a resale flat on the open market, not a new flat from HDB, a resale Plus flat or a resale Prime flat. HDB’s condition is stated flatly — all applicants and core occupiers must have held SPR status for at least three years. A new Executive Condominium requires a Singapore Citizen applicant. Separately, an all-SPR flat-owning household must sell the flat within six months of acquiring a local private residential property.

IRAS charges Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty at 60% on a residential purchase by a foreigner, a rate in force since 27 April 2023, when it was doubled from 30%. The PRC is not among the jurisdictions whose nationals receive Singapore Citizen treatment under the free trade agreement remission. IRAS publishes that list exhaustively — nationals and permanent residents of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, and nationals of the United States of America — and it has not changed since 2013.

A citizen spouse does not dilute the rate

This is the most expensive misunderstanding in the file. Where parties of different profiles buy jointly, IRAS applies the highest applicable rate to the entire purchase price. A Singapore Citizen buying jointly with a PRC-national spouse pays 60% on the whole consideration, not a blended rate and not 60% on half. One relief route exists: the remission for a married couple, which requires a Singapore Citizen spouse, purchase in the couple’s names only, and — for full remission at stamping — that neither spouse owns any residential property. Upgraders use the refund path and must sell the first property within six months. IRAS grants no extension for any reason.

IRAS’s own worked example: a foreigner buys a unit at a market value of $2 million; 60% of $2,000,000 is $1,200,000 of ABSD. That sits on top of Buyer’s Stamp Duty, which runs up to 6%. Moving from foreigner to Permanent Resident on a first property takes the same purchase from 60% to 5%. Nothing else in the transaction is worth a fraction of that.

The State Administration of Foreign Exchange administers an annual individual facilitation quota equivalent to USD 50,000 per person per year, for both settlement and purchase of foreign exchange. Unused quota does not carry forward. SAFE is explicit that USD 50,000 is a facilitation threshold rather than an absolute ceiling: below it an identity document suffices, and above it conversion may still be processed on genuine supporting documents for a permitted purpose. Overseas property purchase is not a permitted purpose.

The restriction is not merely a condition attached to the quota. SAFE’s Chongqing Branch frames it as a capital account prohibition: overseas property purchase by a resident individual is a capital account transaction, and a domestic individual is not at present permitted to convert domestic renminbi and remit it out for that purpose. SAFE also states the consequence on the way back in — where property overseas has been acquired by that route, the sale proceeds cannot lawfully be remitted into China. Any client contemplating an eventual exit needs that said to them before they buy.

The Individual Foreign Exchange Purchase Application Form carries express prohibitions an agent should be able to recite: no false declaration; no false supporting documents; no lending one’s own quota to assist another person; no borrowing another person’s quota to split a purchase; no use for the closed capital account items listed; no participation in money laundering, tax evasion or underground banking. The individual must complete and sign it personally, and banks are prohibited from filling it in, signing it, or omitting the step. Breach places the individual on SAFE’s watch list, with loss of the facilitation quota for that year and the following two years.

What does exist

QDII is a portfolio channel operated through licensed managers. It is not a mechanism for taking registered title to a specific home in one’s own name. Beyond it, two situations do not engage the quota at all. Money already lawfully held outside mainland China — from overseas employment, an offshore business, an earlier lawful remittance, an inheritance, or assets held before emigration — is outside SAFE’s remit. And a foreign-currency mortgage from a bank outside mainland China, serviced from offshore income or assets, involves no conversion or remittance of renminbi; that route answers to the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s loan-to-value limits and the 55% total debt servicing ratio, not to SAFE.

1. 01Fix the pass route

   Decide between Employment Pass, ONE Pass, EntrePass and the Global Investor Programme on the thresholds above. If it is an Employment Pass, ask the employer for its COMPASS C3 and C4 position in writing.

2. 02Confirm the family passes against the sponsor’s own salary

   Check the $6,000 Dependant’s Pass threshold and, if grandparents are coming, the $12,000 LTVP threshold, against the sponsor’s fixed monthly salary alone.

3. 03Settle the school before settling the address

   For a national school, sit the Cambridge English Qualifications test where required and enter the AEIS. For an international school, apply directly and obtain a written offer. The Student’s Pass goes to ICA through SOLAR+ two to three months before the course begins.

4. 04Lease first, in the area the school actually places you

   A tenancy costs a fraction of the stamp duty on a wrong purchase, and preserves the ability to move once placement is known.

5. 05Resolve funding through lawful channels, in writing

   Establish where the money is and get it advised on in both jurisdictions. If it is already offshore, document the provenance for the conveyancing solicitor’s source-of-funds checks.

6. 06Price the purchase at the status you will hold on the day

   Run the stamp duty at 60% unless Permanent Residence has already been granted. If an application is pending, the purchase should either wait or be priced at 60%.

7. 07Check the property class before making any offer

   Non-landed private is unrestricted. Anything landed needs SLA approval, and SLA advises obtaining it before entering into a contract. Budget 30 working days.

Run in that order, the property decision is the easiest in the file. Run in the usual order, it is the first decision made and the only one that cannot be undone.