Singapore property auctions in figures: listings, sales and sellers

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Kooky

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Singapore's property auctions are counted in public. Firms that run auction desks publish what happened in each period: how many properties were put up, how many were knocked down to a bidder, what they fetched, and who the sellers were. The numbers are easy to misread, because the headline figure counts listings and not properties, and because the desks themselves say that some sales are agreed away from the rostrum.

This guide describes the position as read in October 2026. It sets out who publishes the figures, how the count is made, what the annual and quarterly numbers have been since 2023, how the balance between lenders' sales and owners' sales has moved, what kinds of property appear and which of them sell, and what the auction desks say about sales by private treaty. It closes with what the published material leaves out, including the bidder's terms, which could not be read on the houses' own pages.

Listings: this guide's sum of Knight Frank Singapore's four quarterly figures for 2025 (136, 120, 132 and 134), as reported by EdgeProp Singapore between April 2025 and February 2026; ETC's own count for 2025, reported on 6 February 2026, is 529. Sales and success rate: EdgeProp Singapore, 6 February 2026.

Who publishes the numbers

Two series were read for this guide, and they come from two firms that both conduct auctions.

The first is Knight Frank Singapore's quarterly auction market update. The edition for the third quarter of 2025, published by the firm under the headline that auction activity was picking up amid easing interest rates, says its statistics cover the major real estate auction houses in Singapore and not Knight Frank's sales alone, and gives Knight Frank Auctions and Knight Frank Research as its sources. EdgeProp Singapore reports each edition when it comes out, and its reports of 3 February 2025, 28 April 2025, 29 July 2025, 29 October 2025, 6 February 2026 and 27 April 2026 supply most of the quarterly figures below.

The second is the half-yearly count by ETC, described by EdgeProp as a member of Realion Group. EdgeProp reported ETC's figures for the first half of 2026 on 28 July 2026, citing a release of 27 July, and its full-year figures for 2025 on 6 February 2026.

The two firms do not arrive at the same totals. For 2025, ETC counted 529 listings, according to EdgeProp's report of 6 February 2026, while the four quarterly totals reported from Knight Frank for the same year add up to 522. Neither article explains the gap, and this guide does not try to close it: each figure below is given with the firm it comes from.

How the count is made

Knight Frank's update for the third quarter of 2025 states the basis of its listing figure in a line that deserves more attention than it gets: the number of listings includes repeat listings and excludes properties sold outside auction.

A property that fails to sell and is offered again at the next auction is counted again. A property that is sold by negotiation, away from the auction, is not in the count at all. The success rate, as these reports use the term, is the number of properties knocked down at auction divided by the number of listings. Knight Frank's own third-quarter figures show the arithmetic: 9 properties sold out of 132 listings, which is 6.8 per cent.

A worked example, with invented figures, shows how far the two can drift apart. Assume ten properties are offered at each of three auctions in a quarter, and that they are the same ten each time, except that one sells in the room at the third auction. The count gives 30 listings and one sale, a success rate of 3.3 per cent. Measured by property, one of ten was sold, or 10 per cent. If two more of the ten were sold by private treaty during the quarter, three of the ten properties would have changed hands, and the published rate would still be 3.3 per cent.

Three years of annual figures

Knight Frank's annual figures, as EdgeProp reported them on 3 February 2025, put the number of auction listings in 2024 at 418, up 16.8 per cent from 358 in 2023. Fifteen properties were sold at auction in 2024, a success rate of 3.6 per cent, down from 6.7 per cent in 2023. Gross sales value for 2024 was S$28.7 million, which the same report described as 17.5 per cent lower than the year before. The article gave Knight Frank's ten-year average annual success rate as 5.1 per cent.

For 2025, EdgeProp reported on 6 February 2026 that 25 properties were sold under the hammer, a success rate of 4.8 per cent, and that total sales value reached S$68 million. Those results are consistent with the quarterly figures reported from Knight Frank during the year: sales of 7, 5, 9 and 4 properties in the four quarters make 25, and 25 out of 522 listings is 4.8 per cent.

The values make the smallness of the room plain. Dividing the reported totals by the number of sales gives an average of about S$1.91 million a property in 2024, that is S$28.7 million over 15 sales, and about S$2.72 million in 2025, that is S$68 million over 25 sales. These averages are this guide's own arithmetic, and with so few sales a single large lot moves them: one terraced factory sold in the third quarter of 2025 accounted for S$9.1 million of that year's total, according to Knight Frank's update for the quarter.

Knight Frank expected a success rate of about 5 per cent for 2025, according to EdgeProp's reports of 3 February and 28 April 2025, and the outcome was 4.8 per cent. EdgeProp reported on 27 April 2026 that the firm was keeping a projection of about 5 per cent for 2026.

Quarter by quarter since late 2024

The quarterly series shows how uneven the results are from one three-month period to the next. In the fourth quarter of 2024, Knight Frank counted 127 listings, up 47.7 per cent on the quarter before, and two sales worth S$2.3 million, according to EdgeProp's report of 3 February 2025. The success rate of 1.6 per cent was the lowest of that year; the rate in the third quarter of 2024 had been 5.8 per cent.

Gross sales value followed the same irregular path. The reports give S$11.9 million for the first quarter of 2025, S$21.3 million for the second and S$27.4 million for the third. Those three quarters add up to S$60.6 million, which leaves roughly S$7.4 million for the fourth quarter if the full-year figure of S$68 million is taken as exact; the fourth-quarter value was not stated in the articles read, so that remainder is an inference. For the first quarter of 2026, Knight Frank's report of 27 April 2026 gave five sales and a gross value of S$10.3 million, as EdgeProp reported the same day.

ETC's half-yearly count tells a similar story from a different desk. EdgeProp reported on 28 July 2026 that ETC counted 292 listings in the first half of 2026, up 12.3 per cent from 260 in the second half of 2025 and 8.6 per cent from 269 in the first half of 2025, a total the article called the highest half-yearly number in five years. Thirteen properties were sold under the hammer in the half, for an estimated S$27.67 million. On those figures, 13 sales from 292 listings is a rate of about 4.5 per cent; the article itself did not state a rate.

Lenders' sales and owners' sales

Every report splits the list by who is selling. A mortgagee sale is put up by a lender. An owner sale is put up by the owner. The remainder is a mixed group: Knight Frank's breakdown for the second quarter of 2025, as EdgeProp reported it on 29 July 2025, listed 15 other sales made up of seven bank sales, three estate sales, three Sheriff's sales, one liquidator's sale and one receiver's sale.

In 2024 owners were the larger group. Knight Frank counted 234 owner listings and 171 mortgagee listings that year, with 13 others, according to EdgeProp's report of 3 February 2025. The mortgagee figure was already 61.3 per cent higher than in 2023. In the same report, Knight Frank expected owner listings to stay ahead of mortgagee listings in 2025.

The year went the other way. Knight Frank's auction report released on 2 February 2026 put mortgagee listings for 2025 at 312, up 82.5 per cent from 171, EdgeProp reported on 6 February 2026, and described that as the highest figure since 2019, when 630 were listed. The four quarterly figures for owner sales reported from Knight Frank in 2025, which are 43, 41, 29 and 32, add up to 145. On the Knight Frank numbers, the lenders' share of all listings rose from about 41 per cent in 2024, that is 171 of 418, to about 60 per cent in 2025, that is 312 of 522.

The first quarter of 2026 pushed the balance further. Knight Frank counted 103 mortgagee listings out of 148, up 28.8 per cent from 80 in the fourth quarter of 2025, against 30 owner sales and 15 other sales, EdgeProp reported on 27 April 2026. That is a lenders' share of about 70 per cent.

ETC's figures agree on the direction and differ on the level. For 2025 it put mortgagee sales at 62.9 per cent of its 529 listings and owner sales at 153, or 28.9 per cent, down 35 per cent from 236 in 2024, with 43 other sales, according to EdgeProp's report of 6 February 2026. For the first half of 2026 it counted 216 mortgagee listings, up 30.9 per cent from 165 in the second half of 2025, alongside 53 owner sales, down from 67 and from 86 a year earlier, and 23 others. On ETC's count, 216 of 292 listings is about 74 per cent.

What the auction desks say about interest rates

Both firms tie the rise in lenders' sales to the cost of borrowing, and both describe a delay between the two. The articles read give no interest rate figures, so the link is reported here as the firms state it, in words.

In April 2025, Knight Frank attributed the rise in mortgagee listings in the first quarter of that year to the delayed effect of high interest rates through 2023 and 2024, EdgeProp reported on 28 April 2025. When mortgagee listings fell to 64 in the second quarter, the firm linked the fall to easing rates, in comments EdgeProp carried on 29 July 2025. The figure then rose again, to 85 in the third quarter, in an update Knight Frank headlined with easing interest rates. In February 2026, Knight Frank described the rise over 2025 as a whole as a lagged result of elevated rates in 2023 and the first half of 2024, according to EdgeProp's report of 6 February 2026, which quoted the firm's head of research, Leonard Tay: "There's a direct correlation between interest rates and mortgagee sales."

ETC's explanation is close to Knight Frank's. Its head of auction and sales, Joy Tan, was quoted by EdgeProp on 28 July 2026: "The larger proportion of mortgagee-sale listings this first half of the year is reflective of tighter financing conditions." The same report carried ETC's reading of the shrinking owner list, which the firm put down to what it called a healthy resale market.

Knight Frank's outlook also carried a figure on personal insolvency. As EdgeProp reported it on 3 February 2025, the firm cited Ministry of Law data showing 4,521 bankruptcy applications from January to November 2024, against 3,986 in 2023.

What is put up: homes, factories and shops

Homes are the largest single group on the list, and close to half of it. They are not the whole of it: strata factories and shop units fill most of the rest.

Knight Frank's count for the first quarter of 2026 had 66 residential listings out of 148, or 44.6 per cent, with 42 industrial listings, or 28.4 per cent, and 31 retail listings, or 20.9 per cent; other types made up the remainder, EdgeProp reported on 27 April 2026. ETC's count for the first half of 2026 was 144 residential listings, 87 industrial and 46 retail out of 292.

Within housing, apartments outnumber houses on the lenders' list. Knight Frank's update for the third quarter of 2025 counted 43 residential mortgagee listings, 32 of them non-landed and 11 landed. Among owners the split was nearly even: 19 residential listings, 9 non-landed and 10 landed. For the fourth quarter of 2025, EdgeProp reported on 6 February 2026 that about 69 per cent of residential listings were condominiums or apartments.

Shophouses are rare in the auction count. Knight Frank recorded five shophouse listings in the fourth quarter of 2024, two in the first quarter of 2025 and one in the third quarter of 2025. Its breakdown of mortgagee listings for the first quarter of 2026 shows where the lenders' stock sits: 45 residential, 37 industrial, 17 retail, 2 office and 2 shophouse.

Retail weighs more heavily among owners' listings than among lenders'. Of the 30 owner listings Knight Frank counted in the first quarter of 2026, 14 were retail units, against 17 of the 103 mortgagee listings, according to EdgeProp's report of 27 April 2026.

On industrial property, ETC said in its release of 27 July 2026, as EdgeProp reported it, that the rise in listings was driven by strata factories zoned Business 1 and Business 2 with fewer than 30 years left on their leases.

What sells, and at what price

The properties that sell are mostly homes and factory units, and mostly lenders' stock. In the third quarter of 2025, the best quarter in the table above, seven of the nine properties sold were mortgagee sales, four residential and three industrial, and one was an owner sale, according to Knight Frank's update. In the first quarter of 2025, five of the seven sales were mortgagee sales and two were owner sales. In the first quarter of 2026, three of the five were mortgagee sales: two industrial premises and one freehold terraced house.

Prices are measured against the opening price, the figure at which the auctioneer starts the lot. The detail for the first quarter of 2025, reported by EdgeProp on 28 April 2025, is the most complete of the quarters read. The seven sales ranged from S$635,000 to S$4.1 million. Four sold at the opening price, one sold 14.7 per cent above it, and two sold below it, by 3.8 per cent and 2.9 per cent.

Later quarters leaned further towards discounts. Of the nine sales in the third quarter of 2025, six were below the opening price and three above it, Knight Frank's update says. The premiums were small, at 6.8 per cent, 3.3 per cent and 2.2 per cent. The largest discount the report detailed was on a residential unit sold on behalf of a management corporation for S$4.0 million, which Knight Frank gave as 14.7 per cent below an opening price of S$4.7 million. Of the first half of 2025, Knight Frank said most properties sold had gone at a discount or at the opening price, EdgeProp reported on 29 July 2025.

The largest sale found in the reports was the three-storey terraced factory of the third quarter of 2025, an owner sale at S$9.1 million against an opening price of S$8.5 million. EdgeProp's report of 6 February 2026 gave the price as S$9.08 million and called it the largest of 2025 by absolute price. Among homes, a four-bedroom apartment sold by its owner for S$7.7 million at the opening price in the second quarter of 2025, and a landed home in a Sheriff's sale fetched about S$7.6 million, 1.3 per cent above its opening price. The two EdgeProp reports that mention the house differ slightly on whether S$7.6 million was the opening price or the sale price.

Knight Frank's managing director for auction and sales, Tan Tee Khoon, summed up the pattern in the firm's report of 27 April 2026, as quoted by EdgeProp: "successful transactions hinge on pricing realism and asset quality rather than distressed urgency."

Sales by private treaty, outside the count

The success rate describes the room. The auction desks say plainly that the room is not where every sale is made.

In EdgeProp's report of 3 February 2025 on the results of 2024, Knight Frank's head of auction and sales, Sharon Lee, was quoted on the gap between bids and asking prices: "the bid-ask gap is often resolved with transactions that are concluded after the auction by private treaty." Knight Frank's update for the third quarter of 2025 said more properties had sold both before and during auctions, and outside auctions, including several industrial units.

Private treaty is offered as a method of sale in its own right. Knight Frank's auctions page, as read in October 2026, describes it as a separate option negotiated directly with buyers, in contrast to the auction, where the page says contracts are exchanged immediately and the sale follows the auction terms with a fixed completion timeline.

What none of the reports read provides is a number. Knight Frank's update states that listings exclude properties sold outside auction, and the reports do not give how many properties were sold that way or for how much.

The published success rate counts hammers, not deals: the desks say that some of what they sell is agreed outside the room, and they do not publish how much.

In the room, on the phone and on the app

Knight Frank's auctions page, as read in October 2026, announced the firm's next auction for 22 October at 2.30pm at its own office premises. The page says its auctions are held live with an auctioneer and streamed online at the same time, so that a bidder may attend in person or remotely. It lists four ways of bidding: live, online, by telephone and by proxy.

The online route runs through the firm's own bidding application, which the page says is used to register attendance, follow the auction and place bids remotely. EdgeProp reported on 6 February 2026 that the application was launched in 2025 and that two properties were sold through it that year. One was an apartment in a Sheriff's sale, which the article said sold at a premium of 19.3 per cent over its opening price.

On the bidder's obligations, the page goes no further than the outline already given: contracts are exchanged at once, and completion follows a fixed timeline. It does not state the deposit payable when the hammer falls, the length of the completion period, or whether the buyer pays any commission to the auction house. The page refers to the auction terms, which were not available to read.

What the published figures do not show

Several questions a bidder, a seller or an agent might bring to these numbers are not answered by the material read for this guide.

• The bidder's terms. No auction house page read for this guide states a deposit percentage, a completion period or a buyer's commission.
• Repeat listings. The reports do not say how many listings are repeats, so the number of distinct properties behind the 522 listings of 2025 is unknown.
• Interest rate levels. The firms link mortgagee listings to borrowing costs in words. The articles read carry no rate figures against which to test the link.
• Other auction desks. ERA's auction page could not be read, and no figures from ERA or PropNex were found in the reports used here.
• Two counts for one year. Knight Frank's quarterly figures add up to 522 listings for 2025, a sum made for this guide, and ETC gives 529. The reports do not explain the difference.

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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