Singapore's Government Land Sales programme: how the two lists work

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Kooky

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Every new condominium launch in Singapore that stands on State land began as a line in a list. Twice a year the Government says which plots it will put on the market, and from that moment the trade can count, roughly, the homes that will follow. The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), which describes itself as the main land sales agent, calls this the Government Land Sales (GLS) programme, and its own pages set out how it runs.

This guide follows those pages. It explains what the programme is, how the Confirmed List differs from the Reserve List, how a developer brings a Reserve List site to tender, what is published at each stage of a tender, and which deadlines attach to the land once it is sold: the project completion period, the sale deadline written into the land sale conditions for foreign housing developers, and the conditions under which a housing developer keeps the remission of Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty (ABSD). It ends with the figures of the second-half 2026 programme and the state of each site as URA listed it on 29 September 2026. Where the pages read for this guide are silent, the guide says so and stops there.

URA media release of 3 June 2026; URA Reserve List procedure; rule 3 of the stamp duty remission rules for housing developers, as published on Singapore Statutes Online.

What the programme is and who runs it

URA's frequently asked questions on general land sales give the definition in one line: the GLS programme releases State land to private developers. The same page says each programme is planned and announced every six months and that it is made of two lists, a Confirmed List and a Reserve List.

The rhythm matters as much as the content. In its release of 3 June 2026, URA said the Government will continue to monitor economic and property market conditions closely, to inform the half-yearly review of the programme. A programme is therefore a six-month statement, replaced by the next one, and a figure quoted from it always belongs to a named half-year. The programme current at the date of this guide is the one for the second half of 2026, written 2H2026 in URA's releases.

URA's general FAQ names it as the main land sales agent and sends readers to its page of current sites for the list in force. On that page, as updated on 29 September 2026, URA is shown as the sales agent for every site listed. The pages read for this guide do not describe the part played by other agencies, so this guide does not either.

The programme is not only about homes. The second-half 2026 lists hold private residential sites, a commercial site, hotel sites and what URA calls White sites, where several uses are allowed on one plot. The Town Hall Link site in Jurong Lake District is the example URA's June release describes in detail: a total potential yield of about 186,000 square metres, with a minimum of 40,000 square metres of office space, up to 1,200 private residential units and 44,000 square metres for complementary uses such as retail, hotel, serviced apartments and community uses.

Confirmed List and Reserve List: the difference

The two lists differ in one thing: who decides that a site goes to market.

For the Confirmed List, the Government decides. URA's land sales procedure page says Confirmed List sites are launched for sale at pre-determined dates and that most land parcels are sold through tenders. The current sites page shows what that looks like in practice: each site carries either a status (awarded, open for tender) or an estimated month of launch, and URA notes that the detailed sales conditions are released when each site is launched.

For the Reserve List, the market decides, within a limit the Government sets. URA's FAQ says Reserve List sites are not released right away: they are open for application, and a site goes to tender only once a developer proposes a minimum price the Government accepts. A Reserve List site that nobody applies for stays where it is. The June 2026 release shows this plainly: the hotel sites at River Valley Road and Telok Ayer Street on the 2H2026 Reserve List were carried over from the first-half 2026 Reserve List.

This is why the two unit counts of a programme are never read the same way. URA's June release words them differently itself: the Confirmed List "can yield" its homes, while the Reserve List "can potentially yield an additional" number. The first is supply on a calendar. The second is supply that exists only if a developer asks for it at a price the Government accepts, or if enough developers show interest.

One confusion is worth clearing up, and URA's FAQ does it. A "Reserve site" under the Master Plan is a plot whose specific use has not been determined. A "Reserve List site" is a plot in the GLS programme that goes to tender only if a developer proposes an acceptable minimum price. The words are close; the two things are unrelated.

How a developer triggers a Reserve List site

URA's Reserve List procedure page sets out the application in order. No application fee is payable, but the applicant first buys the site's eDeveloper's Packet, which costs S$185.30 with GST, or S$170.00 without it.

A few points of that sequence deserve more room than a step allows.

The decision has no published clock. URA says only that the applicant will be informed of the outcome "as soon as possible". Nor do the pages read here give the Reserve Price, the figure against which the minimum price is judged.

The two-week step is binding in both directions. Within two weeks of acceptance, the applicant signs an agreement to submit a tender price not lower than the minimum price in the application, and pays a deposit of 3% of that minimum price. URA caps the deposit at S$5 million and accepts it by cashier's order, by electronic bank or insurance guarantee, or by bank transfer. If the applicant does not complete these steps, the acceptance lapses. URA adds that a failure for reasons unacceptable to the Government may bring additional requirements on future applications, including those of the applicant's partners or directors.

The applicant stays anonymous, and still has to compete. URA says the successful activation of the site is announced publicly and that the applicant's identity is not disclosed to the public. The site then goes to tender like any other, and the applicant holds no right to the land: the agreement obliges it to bid, at or above its minimum price, against whoever else turns up.

The deposit follows the bid. According to the procedure page, it is forfeited if the applicant fails to submit a bid, submits an invalid bid, or bids below its minimum price. It may be used as part payment of the tender deposit, including in a joint tender, and it is refunded if the applicant bids as agreed but is not the highest bidder.

A worked example, with assumed figures, shows how the cap works. Suppose a developer states a minimum price of S$120 million. The deposit is 3% of S$120 million, which is S$3.6 million, under the cap. Suppose instead a minimum price of S$400 million. Three per cent would be S$12 million, so the cap applies and the deposit is S$5 million. The cap starts to bite where 3% of the minimum price equals S$5 million, that is at a minimum price of about S$166.7 million. These prices are illustrations and not the price of any site.

A Reserve List site can also reach the market without any single application being accepted. URA's procedure page says the Government may launch a site if there is sufficient market interest, and defines it: more than one unrelated party has submitted a minimum price that is close to the Government's Reserve Price, within a reasonable period.

Three words in that sentence carry the rule. "More than one" means at least two applicants. "Unrelated" means the applications cannot come from parties connected to each other. "Close" and "reasonable period" are left open: the pages read for this guide give no margin and no number of months. The wording is also permissive. URA says the Government "may" launch the site, so two near-misses create a possibility and nothing more.

For a reader of the market, the consequence is that a Reserve List site has three possible states at any date: untouched, triggered by one accepted application, or launched because of interest from several parties. Only the last two are announced.

The tender: documents, dates and releases

Whether a site comes from the Confirmed List or was triggered from the Reserve List, the sale itself is, in most cases, a tender, and it starts with the same document.

URA's land sales procedure page says the detailed sales conditions are released in the eDeveloper's Packet. The packet contains the Conditions of Tender, the Technical Conditions of Tender, the Form of Tender or Application Form and other relevant documents. It is sold on the One-Stop Developers' Portal, access needs a Singpass or Corppass login, and the page lists payment by Mastercard, Visa or eNets. The price is the S$185.30 with GST already mentioned.

The packet is where the terms specific to a site are found. The lease tenure, the length of the project completion period, the tender deposit and the payment schedule after award are not stated on the general pages read for this guide; URA's release of 29 September 2026 points instead to the packets, which it describes as containing the details and conditions of tender, and to an annex of site particulars.

That release is a useful specimen of how a tender is opened. On 29 September 2026, URA released two sites under the 2H2026 programme. The East Coast Road site, on the Confirmed List, can potentially yield about 85 residential units, and its tender closes at 12 noon on 3 December 2026. Counted from the release date, that leaves 65 days for developers to prepare a bid. The Serangoon North View site, which can potentially yield 235 residential units, was made available for application under the Reserve List on the same day: no closing date, because no tender exists until the site is triggered.

URA's FAQ lists three kinds of release for a GLS site: the release of the site, the closing of the tender and the award of the tender. They appear on URA's news pages. A site therefore produces public information at three moments, and the status column of the current sites page moves in step: an estimated month, then "open for tender", then "awarded".

Reading a tender result

The pages read for this guide say where results are published and what the record holds, and that is enough to read one with care.

First, closing and award are separate events with separate releases. A list of bids at the close of a tender is not a sale. The current sites page marks a site "awarded" only once the award has been made, and the pages read here do not state how long the Government takes between the two, nor the grounds on which a tender is evaluated.

Second, the Reserve Price is not on these pages. A reader can see what developers bid; the level the Government required is not given.

Third, URA's FAQ points to two places for history: the Past Sale Sites Data page, for past sale prices and site details, and URA Space, its map service. A result is best read against earlier sales recorded there, for sites of comparable use, size and plot ratio. The current sites page gives the two measures for every site, the area in hectares and the gross plot ratio (GPR): 0.55 hectares and a GPR of 1.6 at East Coast Road, for instance, against 0.60 hectares and 5.6 at Marina Gardens Lane.

Fourth, for a site triggered from the Reserve List, one bid is already known to exist before the tender opens: the applicant has agreed to bid at least its minimum price and loses its deposit if it does not. The identity of that applicant is not published.

After the award: the completion period and its extension

Land bought under the programme comes with a project completion period, which URA abbreviates PCP. Its length for a given site is in that site's conditions; the general FAQ covers what happens when a developer cannot keep it.

According to the FAQ, GLS sale conditions issued since 1 May 2000 no longer carry a liquidated damages clause for late completion. A developer that needs more time applies to the land sales agent to extend the completion period, and the extension has a price: an extension premium, expressed as a percentage of the tendered price per annum. The rate is 8% for the first year, 16% for the second, and 24% for the third and each later year. URA's footnote says the rates may be revised from time to time.

A worked example, on an assumed tendered price of S$300 million and whole years of extension. The first year costs 8% of S$300 million, which is S$24 million. A second year costs 16%, or S$48 million, bringing the total for two years to S$72 million. A third year costs 24%, or S$72 million, and the total for three years is S$144 million. The FAQ does not say how part of a year is charged, so the example assumes full years.

The scale is rising by design: each year of delay costs more than the one before. It is the mechanism that links a tender award to a date by which homes must be finished.

Foreign developers and the two-year sale deadline

URA's FAQ deals separately with foreign housing developers, because a different regime applies to them outside the programme.

In general, the FAQ says, a foreign developer buying vacant residential land must apply for a qualifying certificate from the Controller of Residential Property at the Singapore Land Authority, with security equivalent to 10% of the land price, and has up to five years to complete the development. On an assumed land price of S$200 million, that security would be S$20 million.

Residential land bought under the GLS programme is exempt from the qualifying certificate requirement. In its place, URA says, the land sale conditions require foreign housing developers to sell all dwelling houses within two years from the date of the Temporary Occupation Permit (TOP). The deadline is thus a term of the land sale itself, and it runs from the permit, not from the award.

The ABSD remission clock for housing developers

A second set of deadlines comes from stamp duty law and applies to the purchase of residential land by a housing developer. It is found in the stamp duty remission rules for housing developers published on Singapore Statutes Online. The page read for this guide showed the text of the rules without their title or number, and its latest amendment note is dated 6 February 2023, so this guide names the rules by their subject and cannot confirm that no later amendment exists. What follows is rule 3 as that text gives it; it concerns instruments executed on or after 8 December 2011 for the transfer on sale of residential property to a qualifying developer for housing development, and, from 9 May 2022, to a trustee for such a developer.

The amount remitted depends on the date of the instrument. Under rule 3(1A), for instruments executed on or after 16 December 2021 the remission is, in most cases, 35% of the consideration. It was 25% of the consideration for instruments executed from 6 July 2018 to 15 December 2021, and the full ABSD before 6 July 2018.

The remission is conditional. Rule 3(2) lists what the qualifying developer must do:

1. obtain a housing developer's licence within two years, if it does not already hold one, and the licence must authorise housing development on the property;
2. commence the development within two years;
3. complete the development and sell all the units within five years;
4. within two years, provide the licence, any approval of the Controller under the Residential Property Act 1976, and other documents the Commissioner requires;
5. within five years, provide a Temporary Occupation Permit or a Certificate of Statutory Completion;
6. give a written undertaking, on the date the instrument is executed, to comply with all of the above.

The rules also keep longer periods for older purchases: for instruments executed on or before 1 June 2020, three years and six months to commence, six years and six months to complete and five years and six months to sell; for those executed between 2 June 2020 and 7 May 2021, two years and six months to commence and five years and six months to complete. Where the land is held by a trustee, rule 3(2D) to (2F) requires the trustee to ensure the developer meets the conditions and to give its own written undertaking.

A worked example, on an assumed consideration of S$300 million under an instrument executed in 2026: 35% of S$300 million is S$105 million of duty remitted at purchase, on the undertaking that the project starts within two years and that every unit is built and sold within five.

The second-half 2026 programme in figures

URA announced the 2H2026 programme on 3 June 2026. It holds nine Confirmed List sites and 13 Reserve List sites, and the whole programme can yield 9,200 private residential units, 188,100 square metres of gross floor area of commercial space and 970 hotel rooms.

The Confirmed List is made of eight private residential sites and one White site. It can yield 4,745 private residential units, of which 735 are executive condominium (EC) units, leaving 4,010 other private homes, and 83,350 square metres of commercial space. The Reserve List is made of eight private residential sites, one commercial site, two White sites and two hotel sites, which can potentially yield a further 4,455 private residential units, 104,750 square metres of commercial space and all 970 hotel rooms. The two residential figures add up to the 9,200 of the programme.

Adding the two Confirmed Lists of the year gives 9,320 units for 2026, which URA's release describes as more than 50% higher than the ten-year annual average, without giving that average.

The release also places the programme inside the wider pipeline. URA said the total pipeline of private housing, EC included, would rise to around 61,000 units from around 57,000. Its footnote splits the figure: about 42,000 units with planning approval, and about 19,000 from GLS sites and awarded en-bloc sites that do not have planning approval yet. Around 32,000 unsold units could be released for sale in the next two years or so, the release said. URA gave two reasons: to cater to the resilient demand for private housing and keep the property market stable and sustainable, and to advance the development of Jurong Lake District and cater to medium-term office demand.

Where each site stood on 29 September 2026

URA's page of current sites, last updated on 29 September 2026, is the working document. It lists 14 entries under the Confirmed List and 13 under the Reserve List. That is more Confirmed entries than the nine sites of the 2H2026 programme. The page does not explain the difference: it does not say which programme each entry came from, and it does not give unit estimates per site. This guide's reading, which the page does not state, is that it also carries sites from earlier programmes; its one clue is the entry at Lorong Puntong and Sin Ming Avenue, noted as having been called Lorong Puntong in the first-half 2026 programme.

The Reserve List entries follow the split of the June release: eight residential sites, the commercial site at Punggol Walk, the White sites at Marina Gardens Crescent and Woodlands Avenue 2, and the two hotel sites. Two residential sites, Chuan Grove and Plymouth Avenue / Dunearn Road, were not yet ready for application at the date of the page: October 2026 is the month in which URA expects to release their detailed conditions of sale, after which a developer can apply.

What the lists tell people who sell homes

For anyone whose work depends on new launches, the programme is the earliest dated signal available, and each part of it answers a different question.

The Confirmed List answers "what is coming, and roughly when". A site with an estimated launch month will, if the calendar holds, have a tender closing date, then an award, then a completion period running. The four residential sites estimated for November and December 2026 are at the very start of that sequence.

The Reserve List answers "what could come". Its 4,455 potential homes in the second half of 2026 are a ceiling, and the announcement of a triggered site is itself information: it says a developer was ready to commit to a price the Government found acceptable.

The deadlines answer "by when must it be sold". The remission rules give a housing developer five years from the purchase instrument to build and sell every unit, and the land sale conditions give a foreign housing developer two years from the Temporary Occupation Permit. Neither tells a buyer what any developer will do with its prices; both explain why a project has a calendar that does not depend on the mood of the market alone.

A Confirmed List site is a date in the diary. A Reserve List site is a question put to developers, and only their answer turns it into homes.

The figures in this guide are those of one half-year. The Government reviews the programme every six months, and the next announcement replaces the lists described here.

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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