Foreign buyers of Singapore homes in figures since the 60% duty

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Kooky

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In the first three months of 2023, foreigners bought a larger share of Singapore's condominiums than at any time in five years. A few weeks later the duty they pay on a home doubled. The numbers on what followed are scattered across consultancy reports, trade press and written answers to Parliament, and they do not all count the same thing.

This guide gathers them. It describes the position as read in October 2026, and it attributes and dates every figure, because the market-share figures are consultancies' own cuts of the data and not official statistics published as such. It covers the share of private home purchases made by foreigners and by permanent residents before and after 27 April 2023, the nationalities behind the purchases, the five countries whose nationals are treated like Singaporeans under two free trade agreements, the top of the price range, the duty on homes placed in trusts, and what the Ministry of Finance has told Parliament about audits of "99-to-1" purchases. It closes with what one consultancy has said in 2026 and with the questions the published figures leave open. It describes what sources report, not what any buyer should do.

OrangeTee & Tie Research & Analytics, May 2023; ERA Singapore, 7 May 2026; Ministry of Finance, reply to Parliament of 3 July 2023. The first two figures do not share one scope.

The rule change, and where the numbers come from

One paragraph is enough for the rule, which the magazine's stamp duty guides set out in full. From 27 April 2023, a foreigner who is not a permanent resident pays Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty, or ABSD, of 60 per cent on any residential property in Singapore, where the rate had been 30 per cent since December 2021, as OrangeTee & Tie Research & Analytics recorded in a report of May 2023. The rate for a permanent resident's first home stayed at 5 per cent. The joint release of the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of National Development and the Monetary Authority of Singapore of 26 April 2023, as read for the magazine's stamp duty guide, raised the rate for a Singapore citizen's second home from 17 to 20 per cent and for a permanent resident's second home from 25 to 30 per cent; an article summary dated 27 April 2023 on the trade publication Mingtiandi's site gives the same two new rates.

The figures on who buys come from Realis, the Urban Redevelopment Authority's database of private home transactions. Consultancies download it and publish their own cuts. That is the source of most numbers in the next five sections.

Three labels matter. The first is the buyer group. "Foreigner" in these reports means a buyer who is neither a citizen nor a permanent resident; OrangeTee writes "NPR", for non-permanent resident. Permanent residents are counted apart. The second is the property type. Most series cover non-landed private homes, meaning condominium units and apartments, and leave out executive condominiums. The third is the date of the download. OrangeTee's report used data downloaded on 15 May 2023. ERA Singapore's most recent page, published on 7 May 2026, used a cut-off of 22 April 2026.

The high point before the change

The last full quarter under the 30 per cent rate was a strong one for foreign buying. According to OrangeTee's report, foreigners bought 259 condominium units in the first quarter of 2023, up 14.6 per cent from 226 in the fourth quarter of 2022 and above a five-year quarterly average of 249 units measured from the first quarter of 2018 to the fourth quarter of 2022.

Their share rose faster than their number. OrangeTee put foreigners at 6.9 per cent of non-landed purchases, executive condominiums excluded, in the first quarter of 2023, against 3.1 per cent a year earlier. It was the highest share since the first quarter of 2018, when the figure was 7.3 per cent.

The rise was concentrated at the top of the market. In the Core Central Region, the prime districts that the report treats as the luxury segment, foreign purchases of non-landed homes went from 71 units in the first quarter of 2022 to 159 in the first quarter of 2023, an increase of 123.9 per cent. OrangeTee described 159 as the highest quarterly figure since the fourth quarter of 2013, when it was 161. Foreigners' share of those luxury purchases went from 8.9 to 15.5 per cent over the same year.

ERA Singapore, in a research article of 13 June 2025, gives a slightly different figure for the same quarter: a foreign share of 15.8 per cent in the Core Central Region. Neither page explains the gap of 0.3 points. Both are shown here as published.

What the first quarters after April 2023 showed

The first numbers after the change came quickly. Mingtiandi reported on 21 July 2023 that condominium units bought by foreigners fell to 205 between April and June 2023, from 265 in the first three months of the year. That is 60 units fewer, a fall of about 23 per cent in one quarter. The article's 265 is six units above the 259 that OrangeTee had counted in May for the same quarter; it does not explain the difference.

The same Mingtiandi article carries a second and much lower figure: 56 homes sold to non-residents in the second quarter of 2023, attributed to OrangeTee. The article does not reconcile 56 with 205. Neither can be treated as the single answer.

In the prime districts the fall was steeper. ERA's article of June 2025 says the foreign share of buyers in the Core Central Region dropped from 15.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2023 to 8.4 per cent in the second. On new sales, the only figure read is a summary line: an article teaser dated 15 May 2023 on Mingtiandi's site says Singaporeans and permanent residents together accounted for 92 per cent of new private home sales, executive condominiums excluded, in April 2023. The full article was not read, so the figure is given on that basis alone.

One caution applies to every "before and after" comparison in this period. The quarter before the change was a five-year high, by OrangeTee's own description. The 205 units of the second quarter of 2023 stand 44 below the five-year quarterly average of 249, and 60 below the peak.

The share since 2023

For the longer run, the most recent figures read for this guide are ERA Singapore's. Its page of 7 May 2026 gives the foreign buyer share of transactions as 3.5 per cent in 2023, 1.4 per cent in 2024, 1.2 per cent in 2025 and 1.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2026. The page gives shares only, not the number of purchases behind them.

Read down the ERA column, the share in 2025 was about a third of the share in 2023, a year that itself included four months under the old rate. The first quarter of 2026 was higher than either of the two full years before it. ERA notes that uptick and describes the level as still well below what it was before the increase.

A second ERA figure gives the average across the whole period. In its article of June 2025, the firm says that from the second quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2025, Singaporeans and permanent residents together made up about 97 per cent of buyers of private non-landed homes across the island, executive condominiums excluded, and foreigners about 3 per cent. That period straddles the change, so it blends the higher shares before April 2023 with the lower ones after.

Permanent residents, the larger group

In OrangeTee's counts for early 2023, permanent residents outnumber other non-citizen buyers of condominiums, and the April 2023 change left their first purchase alone. OrangeTee's report puts permanent residents at 20.1 per cent of condominium purchases in the first quarter of 2023, up from 18 per cent a year earlier. Their number moved the other way: 758 units, against 845 in the first quarter of 2022, a fall of about 10 per cent.

Set beside the foreigners' 259 units in the same quarter, the permanent residents' 758 is almost three times as many. The difference between the two groups is clearest by price.

Adding the columns gives 1,183 purchases by foreigners and 4,229 by permanent residents over those five quarters. Of the foreigners' purchases, 261 were at S$5 million or more, which is about 22 per cent. Of the permanent residents' purchases, 194 were, or under 5 per cent. Seven in ten of the permanent residents' purchases, 3,062 of 4,229, were below S$2 million.

None of the sources read for this guide publishes a count or a share for permanent residents after the first quarter of 2023. ERA's long-run figure folds them in with citizens.

The nationalities in the data

Nationality figures need the same care as the others, because consultancies often combine permanent residents and foreigners of the same passport. OrangeTee's count for the first quarter of 2023 does exactly that.

The chart says who bought. It does not say who paid the foreigner's rate. For that, the same report gives the proportion of each nationality's buyers who were not permanent residents. Among Malaysian buyers it was 2 per cent, and among Indian buyers 4 per cent: almost all were permanent residents. Among mainland Chinese buyers it was 32 per cent and among Indonesians 29 per cent. Among American buyers it was 84 per cent.

On those proportions, a doubling of the foreigner's rate reaches about a third of the mainland Chinese buyers in that quarter and almost none of the Malaysian or Indian ones. Most American buyers were not permanent residents, but the next section explains why the rate does not reach them either. In the luxury segment, OrangeTee counted 111 condominium purchases by mainland Chinese buyers in the first quarter of 2023, about 10.8 per cent of 1,025 luxury sales, against 43 of 795, or 5.4 per cent, a year earlier.

After the change the order moved. Mingtiandi reported on 21 July 2023 that Americans had displaced mainland Chinese as the biggest foreign buyers of Singapore housing in the period, for the first time since 2017. It reported OrangeTee's view that Americans may continue to be among the top foreign buyers, since they are less affected by the duty. The article gives no counts by nationality, and no later ranking was found in the sources read for this guide.

The five countries treated like Singaporeans

Two free trade agreements carry a clause that reaches stamp duty. The Ministry of Finance has explained it to Parliament twice, and its wording is worth following closely.

In a written reply of 16 September 2013, the then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, said that under the free trade agreement between the United States and Singapore, Singapore must give American nationals similar tax treatment to Singaporeans when they buy residential property, stamp duties included. Under the agreement between Singapore and the European Free Trade Association, the same treatment goes to nationals and permanent residents of Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland. The reply dates the European agreement to 1 January 2003 and the American one to 1 January 2004, and it says these are the only two agreements that give foreign individuals national treatment on taxes.

A citizen's rate depends on how many homes the citizen already owns. Take, as a worked example, a home priced at S$3 million and a buyer for whom it would count as a second residential property. At the foreigner's rate of 60 per cent the additional duty is S$1.8 million. At the 20 per cent set for a citizen's second home in the joint release of 26 April 2023, it is S$600,000. The clause removes S$1.2 million of duty in that example, and leaves S$600,000 in place.

The two agreements also differ. Both ministry replies name nationals and permanent residents of the four European countries, and nationals only of the United States. ERA Singapore's page of May 2026 words it the same way.

The ministry has published how many purchases are involved. Between 8 December 2011, when ABSD was introduced, and 31 July 2013, 252 residential transactions by foreign individuals received a remission under the two agreements: 138 up to 11 January 2013 and 114 in the months after. That was about 1.5 per cent of all transactions that attracted ABSD, and the duty remitted came to S$81.2 million. The rates for foreigners in that period, as the question put to the minister recorded them, were 10 per cent and then 15 per cent.

Ten years later the question was asked again. In a reply of 3 July 2023, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Lawrence Wong, said that from 2018 to 2022 an average of about 250 transactions a year were granted a remission under the two agreements, about 2.5 per cent of all property transactions that attracted ABSD, with about S$150 million of duty remitted a year. Dividing one by the other gives roughly S$600,000 a transaction; the same division on the 2013 figures gives about S$322,000. The reply notes that the figures vary from year to year with the market and with the rates in force. It also gives the reasoning: both agreements were signed almost twenty years earlier, before ABSD existed, and national treatment was part of a balanced package from which Singaporeans investing in those countries benefit in turn. The reply announces no review of either agreement.

The top of the market

The price table above already shows where foreign buyers weighed most before the change: a third of purchases between S$5 million and S$10 million, and 43.9 per cent at S$10 million and above, which on the shares in that table makes them the largest of the buyer groups in that band. The firm wrote in May 2023 that homes at higher prices could be the most affected, especially above S$5 million.

The arithmetic of the duty explains the expectation. On a S$10 million apartment, as a worked example, 60 per cent is S$6 million of additional duty, where the earlier 30 per cent was S$3 million.

ERA's article of June 2025 reports two consequences in the prime districts. Prices in the Core Central Region grew at a compound annual rate of 3.2 per cent after April 2023, the lowest of the three market segments the firm tracks, and, according to the same article, the number of new launches there fell after the change. The launch counts were not read for this guide.

Sentosa Cove belongs in this section, and the sources read for it are silent. None of the consultancy pages, press articles or ministry replies gives a transaction count, a price or a foreign share for the estate since April 2023. A figure for foreign buying there since the change remains an open point.

Homes placed in trusts

A year before the foreigner's rate doubled, the Ministry of Finance closed a gap that concerned trusts. Its release of 8 May 2022 introduced ABSD (Trust), a duty of 35 per cent on any transfer of residential property into a living trust, for instruments executed on or after 9 May 2022. A living trust, in the release's words, is one created by the settlor during his or her lifetime.

The release explains what had been missing. Until then, ABSD was not charged where a trust had no identifiable beneficial owner at the moment the property went in, because there was no person whose profile could set the rate. From 9 May 2022 the duty is charged on all such transfers, on top of Buyer's Stamp Duty, and the trustee pays it upfront.

A refund is then available, on three conditions that must all be met. Every beneficial owner of the property is an identifiable individual. Beneficial ownership has vested in all of them at the time of the transfer. And under the terms of the trust that ownership cannot be varied or revoked, and is not subject to any condition subsequent. The application goes to the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore within six months of the instrument being executed.

What comes back is the difference between the trust rate and the rate of the beneficial owner with the highest applicable rate. As a worked example at the 2022 rate: a S$3 million home goes into a trust whose only beneficial owner is a permanent resident with no other home, rated at 5 per cent. The trustee pays 35 per cent, or S$1,050,000, at the outset. If the three conditions are met, the refund is 30 per cent, or S$900,000, and S$150,000 stays paid.

Three limits should be kept in view. The 35 per cent is the figure of the May 2022 release and is no longer the rate. The joint release of the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of National Development and the Monetary Authority of Singapore of 26 April 2023, as read for the magazine's stamp duty guide, raised the rate for entities and trusts from 35 to 65 per cent from 27 April 2023, and notes that the separate trust rate had applied from 9 May 2022 until 26 April 2023. The refund conditions and the worked example above follow the 2022 release; they were not re-read against the 2023 one. The 2022 rule is not retrospective. And it does not cover trustees of collective investment schemes, trustee-managers of business trusts or trustees for housing developers, who fall under other headings. None of the sources read publishes how many homes have been placed in trusts or how much ABSD (Trust) has been collected or refunded.

Audits of "99-to-1" purchases

The other route the ministry has addressed in Parliament involves two buyers and a very small share. The Senior Minister of State for Finance, Chee Hong Tat, described it in a reply of 21 April 2023.

The power in the third step is section 33A of the Stamp Duties Act. Where the Inland Revenue Authority finds tax avoidance, it recovers the duty and may add a surcharge of 50 per cent of the additional duty payable. The April 2023 reply adds that there is no statutory time limit on stamp duty audits, and that whether a given case is avoidance depends on its facts. It put the scale at about 0.5 per cent of private residential transactions from 2018 to 2021.

A worked example shows the sums. Assume a S$2 million home, a first buyer whose own additional duty is nil, and a second buyer for whom the home is a second property rated at 20 per cent, the citizen's second-home rate from 27 April 2023. On the 1 per cent share, worth S$20,000, the duty is S$4,000. Assessed as one joint purchase, it is 20 per cent of S$2 million, or S$400,000. The additional duty payable is S$396,000, a 50 per cent surcharge on it is S$198,000, and the two together come to S$594,000.

The results came a year later. In a reply of 7 May 2024, Mr Wong said the authority had reviewed 187 such cases as of April 2024 and found 166 to involve tax avoidance, which is about 89 per cent of those reviewed. About S$60 million in ABSD and surcharges was to be recovered from them, an average of about S$361,000 a case. About 10 of the 166 showed suspected involvement of a property agent and were with the Council for Estate Agencies. The 2023 reply had set out that route: agents who promote or facilitate such arrangements are referred to the council under its Code of Ethics and Professional Client Care, with financial penalties or suspension of registration among the possible outcomes.

Neither reply breaks the cases down by the residency status of the buyers. The ministry describes the arrangement by the buyers' ABSD profiles, not their passports, so the published figures cannot say how many of the 166 cases involved a foreigner.

What is being said for 2026, and what stays open

The only consultancy statement dated 2026 among the sources read is ERA Singapore's, published on 7 May 2026. It says foreign demand has stayed subdued since the higher rate took effect, that the 1.8 per cent share of the first quarter of 2026 is still well below the level before the increase, and that foreign buyers are likely to take a measured, long-term approach. It offers no numerical forecast. The same firm argued in June 2025 that Singapore may need to reassess the rate for foreigners, and suggested a design that separates speculative investment from genuine housing need. That is the firm's position. No change to the rate has been read in any official source used here.

No outlook from another consultancy could be read for this guide, so no view is attributed to any.

Four questions stay open on the published record as read in October 2026. The purchases and share of permanent residents since April 2023 are not broken out. No nationality ranking later than the second quarter of 2023 was found. The number and value of treaty remissions since the rate reached 60 per cent have not been published since the reply of July 2023, which stopped at 2022. And the figures for Sentosa Cove are missing altogether.

The 60 per cent rate is the headline, but the counts published for the quarter before it show more permanent residents than other non-citizen buyers, and they are rated differently.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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