Singapore state land for homes costs 58% more than in 2016: EdgeProp

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The average price developers pay the state for residential land in Singapore rose from S$833 psf ppr in 2016 to S$1,312 in 2025, according to an analysis published by the trade title EdgeProp Singapore on 8 October 2026. That is an increase of 58% over the period, or about 5% a year, and the figures are EdgeProp's own, worked out from 63 residential GLS sites.

The climb has not stopped. EdgeProp puts the average for 2026 so far at S$1,465 psf ppr, which is about 12% above the 2025 figure. The analysis was prompted by a record: in September 2026 a site at Lorong Puntong and Sin Ming Avenue was sold for S$208.1 million, or S$1,612 psf ppr, which EdgeProp describes as a record land rate for the region it labels RCR.

For anyone who invests in new homes, or sells them, land is the first line of the sum. The interest of the analysis lies less in the headline number than in what sits behind it: where prices rose, where they did not, and which changes in the market and in the rules EdgeProp links to the rise.

EdgeProp Singapore analysis of residential GLS sites, published 8 October 2026. Prices in S$ psf ppr.

What the analysis measures

State land for housing in Singapore is sold by public tender, and EdgeProp quotes the result in dollars psf ppr. The figures of one tender show that the rate is the price divided by the floor area (GFA) the site may hold, not by the area of the plot.

A recent tender shows the arithmetic. EdgeProp reported on 1 October 2026 that an executive condominium site at Canberra Drive, in Sembawang, drew a top bid of S$163.9 million. The site may hold 18,457 square metres of floor area, which is about 198,700 square feet, and the bid therefore works out at about S$825 psf ppr. EdgeProp called that a record for executive condominium land, above the S$794 psf ppr bid for a site at Woodlands Drive 17 whose tender closed on 13 January 2026. That tender closed on 1 October 2026, after the years the ten-year series covers; it is used here only to show how the unit is read.

EdgeProp's ten-year series runs from 2016 to 2025 and rests on 63 sites. In 2025 alone the average rose 17% from the year before, EdgeProp says. The partial figure for 2026 comes with a split by region. The average so far this year is S$1,331 psf ppr in the region EdgeProp labels OCR and S$1,697 in the one it labels CCR.

The Sin Ming record sits between the two. The site is expected to yield about 140 homes and went to Eco World, a Malaysian developer, which won it against seven bids, EdgeProp says. The URA list of media releases dates the award to 18 September 2026. At S$1,612 psf ppr it stands S$97, or about 6%, above the S$1,515 psf ppr paid for a site at Berlayar Drive in August 2026, which EdgeProp names as the previous high for the region.

OCR land closed the gap on CCR land

The rise was not evenly shared. Between 2016 and 2025, EdgeProp finds, the land rate rose by 72% in OCR, by 33% in RCR and by 26% in CCR.

A second cut of the same data smooths out single years by comparing two five-year periods. In 2016 to 2020 the average OCR site cost S$741 psf ppr; in 2021 to 2025 it cost S$1,080, a rise of 46%. CCR land went the other way: the average slipped from S$1,374 to S$1,322 psf ppr, a fall of 4%. The premium a developer paid for a CCR site over an OCR one therefore shrank from S$633 psf ppr in the first period to S$242 in the second.

That narrowing is the most striking finding of the piece. On EdgeProp's numbers, an OCR site now costs much closer to what a CCR one does, while the price at which new homes sell still differs a good deal between the two, as the table below shows.

The mix of what the state sells has shifted too. EdgeProp calculates that sites in RCR and CCR made up 57% of the floor area awarded in 2026, against 42% in 2025. More RCR and CCR land in the mix lifts an overall average even where prices within each region stay put, which is one reason to read the S$1,465 figure for 2026 beside the regional figures and not alone.

Land has moved with the price of new homes

Land did not rise in isolation. EdgeProp sets its land series against what buyers paid for new homes over the same years, using the median price per square foot of new sales in each region.

Read with the land figures, the table says that in every region the selling price of new homes rose faster than the land beneath them. In OCR the two were closest, at 83% for homes and 72% for land. In RCR the distance was widest: homes up 80%, land up 33%. EdgeProp also cites the URA price index; it rose 52% between the first quarter of 2016 and the fourth quarter of 2025, a little less than the 58% for land.

One project gives the relationship a face. Vela Bay, a 515-unit development at Bayshore, sold 72% of its units at launch at an average of S$2,886 psf, EdgeProp reports. Its site was won in March 2025 at S$1,388 psf ppr, so the land rate equals about 48% of the average launch price. One is a land rate and the other a selling price, so the comparison is a rough one.

Who is buying, and how much is left unsold

Two demand-side findings stand out. The first is about the buyers. In 2016, EdgeProp finds, 67% of private home purchases were made by buyers with an HDB address. By 2025 the share had fallen to 41%. Buyers with a private address spent more: their median purchase in 2025 was S$2 million, against S$1.73 million for buyers with an HDB address, a difference of S$270,000.

EdgeProp sets this shift in the buyer base beside the rise in land prices, in an analysis of what has driven that rise; it is not presented as a forecast.

The second finding is about stock. EdgeProp estimates that bids rose by about 4% to 5% for every 10% fall in the number of unsold new homes. Unsold stock is down 9% so far in 2026, according to the same analysis.

Fewer bids, bigger partnerships, fewer collective sales

Higher prices have not come from fuller tender rooms. The average state site drew between 7.9 and 13.3 bids in the years 2016 to 2018, EdgeProp calculates. Since 2022 the yearly average has not gone above 6.2.

What has grown is the size of the groups behind each bid. The winning bid was backed by an average of 1.3 to 1.7 developers in 2016 to 2019, and by 2.2 so far in 2026. Developers are sharing sites, and the risk that comes with them, more often than they did a decade ago.

The other route to land, the en bloc deal, has faded. EdgeProp counts 38 such deals in 2018, the peak of the decade, of which 35 were struck before the cooling measures of 6 July 2018. It counts four in 2019, 11 in 2021 and two in 2023.

State tenders have filled the space. GLS sites supplied under 30% of the residential floor area developers acquired in 2017 and 2018, by EdgeProp's count, and at least 69% in every year from 2022. When one seller provides most of the land, each tender matters more to a developer who wants to keep building, which may help to explain why prices can rise while the number of bidders falls.

One developer has just set out what it plans to commit at home. EdgeProp reported on 2 October 2026 that City Developments Ltd plans S$5 billion of new investment over its 2027 to 2029 financial years, 60% of it in Singapore, which is about S$3 billion, and that the group has about 2,200 homes in its current launch pipeline in the city-state.

The ABSD clock on developers

Part of the story is a charge on developers known as ABSD, and EdgeProp's analysis recalls how it has grown. In 2018 the rate rose from 15% to 30%, of which 25 percentage points can be remitted if every unit in the project is sold within five years. From December 2021 the rate has been 40%, with 35 points remittable on the same condition. In both versions, five points are paid whatever happens.

The five-year deadline applies whatever the size of the project. The Sin Ming site, with its 140 or so homes, and the larger partnerships behind winning bids can both be read with that deadline in mind, though that reading is this article's and not a finding of the analysis.

EdgeProp also notes that GFA harmonisation applies to sites launched from 1 September 2022, a date that falls inside the ten-year series. It is a reason to treat any ten-year comparison, this one included, as a guide to direction more than a precise yardstick.

The sites that will test the trend

The next readings will come quickly. On 29 September 2026 URA released two more residential sites, according to its list of media releases: East Coast Road, on the Confirmed List, with about 85 homes, and Serangoon North View, on the Reserve List, with about 235. The East Coast Road tender closes at noon on 3 December 2026. The same list records the award of a site at New Upper Changi Road on 4 September 2026.

The URA page of current GLS sites, last updated on 29 September 2026, sets out what is open and what is due before the end of the year.

Each result will add a point to EdgeProp's series. The questions the analysis leaves open are the ones those tenders can answer: whether the average for 2026 holds near S$1,465 psf ppr once the year is complete, whether the OCR average stays above S$1,300, and whether the gap between CCR and OCR land, already down to S$242 psf ppr across the last five full years, keeps closing. The launch dates for November and December are URA's estimates and may move.

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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