Buying A Private Property in Singapore

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https://www.singstat.gov.sg/find-data/search-by-theme/households/households/latest-data

In our previous article on buying a resale HDB (https://www.homeadviser.sg/post/buying-a-resale-hdb), we covered that that close to 90% of residential households own their own home in Singapore and that a good 78.6% of the households are staying in HDB flats. If you looked at the rest of the data, you would have noticed that about 21% are staying in private properties. Today’s post shall be touching on the requirements in buying a private property.

Basic requirements

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Let’s take a look at the basic requirements in buying a private property in Singapore.

a. Eligibility – Minimum is 21 years of age to own property legally in Singapore; there are exceptions to the rule but shall not be covered in this article.

b. Citizenship – Local Singaporeans are free to buy any residential property in Singapore. PRs and foreigners are not permitted to purchase vacant land, landed property or landed property in Strata Development. The only exceptions are the landed properties on Sentosa Island; however, it is still subject to approval by the Land Dealings Approval Unit Department in Singapore Land Authority.

Image by Nattanan Kanchanaprat from Pixabay

c. Financing – The maximum loan by the bank/ financial institutions is 75% of purchase price or valuation, whichever is lower. As such, the breakdown of the initial downpayment will be as follows:

c.1. First 5% of the purchase price must be in cash

c.2. Remaining 20% can be in cash and CPF, upon exercise of the purchase at the law firm.

c.3. Payment of Buyer stamp duty and additional buyer stamp duty if applicable

If the above conditions can be met, you should be on your way to buy your private property!

What is Next?

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So you have brought your private property, what are the commitments in upkeeping one? Let’s take a look.

a. Monthly Mortgage Instalment – This would be the mode of payment for your property loan.

b. Maintenance fee – this is a necessity for strata-titled private properties with a Management Corporation Strata Title (MCST). The funds would be needed to upkeep the common areas of the development. For non-strata titled private properties such as landed private property, the maintenance and upkeep would be entirely on your own.

c. Mortgage and Fire Insurance – As long as you own a property in Singapore, my opinion is that both types must be purchased to safeguard your property. After all, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

These are just the basics that I thought would be good to share, especially those embarking on their journey to find their dream home. After all, buying a property is a milestone decision; the stress and uncertainties can be reduced drastically while creating memorable highlights of the journey. I hope this article can shed some light on the uncertainties in the process of buying your first private property.

If you would like to know more about the information shared and is wondering about how this may affect you, please do leave a message at my email, homeadviser.sg@gmail.com or +6592767874.

More than happy to share more with you!

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