Singapore land records online: what SLA's INLIS and OneMap show

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Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

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Price records say what a home sold for. They do not say who owns it, what is registered against it, or which piece of land it stands on. In Singapore those questions belong to one body, the Singapore Land Authority (SLA), which keeps the land registers and also builds the national map. Several of its tools charge a fee, and they speak the language of the register: lots, folios, instruments and caveats rather than street addresses.

This guide goes through the SLA tools one by one, using what SLA itself has published on its property ownership pages, its fee schedule, its page on the national map and its geospatial site, together with two Ministry of Education (MOE) pages that explain how one OneMap query is used in school registration. All were read on 10 October 2026. For each tool it gives who runs it, what it is described as showing, what it costs where a page gives a cost, and what the pages leave unsaid. It describes the published rules; it does not say which search a particular transaction needs.

SLA, Fees for Property Registration Services, Land Titles Rules section (fees stated as inclusive of GST), page dated 17 September 2025, read on 10 October 2026.

One authority, two registers

Everything SLA sells or shows about ownership comes out of two registers that exist side by side. SLA's page on its Land Titles Registry names them: the Register of Deeds, kept for what it calls Common Law land under the Registration of Deeds Act, and the Land Titles Register, kept for titles land under the Land Titles Act. The Land Titles Search page defines the second kind: land under the Land Titles system is "registered or titles land", meaning land with titles issued.

The two registers work on different principles, and the Registry page sets the difference out. Under common law, an interest in land passes when a deed is "signed, sealed and delivered". Registering that deed is not mandatory. SLA calls it advisable for two reasons. The first is priority: where interests conflict, the deed registered first takes priority. The second is evidence: under section 4 of the Registration of Deeds Act, a deed that could have been registered and was not is not admissible in court as evidence of title.

The Land Titles system reverses the starting point. According to the same page, the Land Titles Act was introduced in 1960 to simplify conveyancing, and under it registration is mandatory to transfer an estate or interest in land.

This matters to anyone searching, because the kind of land decides the kind of search. SLA's Land Titles Search page says most records on private properties are computerised, and treats unregistered land as a separate case with its own, longer procedure, described further down.

The Registry page also lists the documents SLA issues, which are the things a search eventually points to: Certificates of Title for land sold by the State; new Certificates of Title for new landed developments; Subsidiary Strata Certificates of Title for new condominiums, flats, flatted factories and office buildings, and for flats that predate the strata legislation and are being converted to the strata system; and replacement certificates where one has been lost, destroyed or wrongfully withheld.

The tools at a glance

SLA's public-facing tools fall into four groups: a paid information service, a free view for owners, a free national map, and a physical counter. The table sets out what each is described as doing.

One of these services costs nothing and is limited to the person with the most direct interest. The Land Titles Registry page says that owners with two-factor Singpass can view titles and plan information for their private property or their HDB flat free of charge, through a service called MyProperty.

Two things follow from that sentence. The service covers both private property and HDB flats, so it is not confined to one part of the housing market. And it is tied to the owner's own login, so it is a way of checking one's own record, not a way of looking up someone else's.

The page does not list what the titles and plan information contains, whether it can be saved or printed, or how a co-owner's access works.

A fifth system, the STARS eLodgment portal, sits behind these. It is not a search tool: the Registry page names it as the electronic route for lodging documents for registration. It appears again in the section on who lodges and who searches.

INLIS: the paid search service

The Integrated Land Information Service, shortened to INLIS, is SLA's online shop for land information. SLA's geospatial site describes it as a one-stop portal for property and land information, and the Land Titles Search page says it provides map and textual information, separately or together.

That page names four products:

• Property Title Information
• Property Title Information with Survey Map
• Property Ownership Information
• Land Information, Lot Particulars

The names show the logic. Ownership information is narrower than title information. The survey map version adds the plan to the text. Lot particulars concern the parcel of land itself, and the page gives that product a particular job in searches of unregistered land.

INLIS is not only SLA's data. The geospatial site lists four public bodies that supply it. SLA provides property ownership information and survey plans. The Land Transport Authority provides road line plans and railway protection plans. The Building and Construction Authority provides borehole information. The Public Utilities Board provides utilities information. For someone looking at a site rather than a flat, that means the same portal that answers "who owns this" is also presented as the place to ask where a road line or a protected rail corridor runs.

On payment, the Land Titles Search page is brief and clear: search fees can be paid by debit or credit card or by NETS GIRO, and no subscription fee is required. A person who needs a single search pays for that search and nothing more.

What the page does not give is a price list for the four products by name. SLA's fee schedule lists charges for computerised printouts under the Land Titles Rules, set out in the next section but one, and the wording of several of those items is close to the INLIS product names. The schedule does not mention INLIS, however, and the INLIS portal itself could not be read for this guide, so the match between each product and each scheduled fee is not confirmed here. Nor does any page read describe a product that shows a property's last transacted price or a product called encumbrances; whether those figures appear inside one of the four products is an open point.

What a search needs: the lot number, not the address

The register is organised by land, not by letterbox. SLA's Land Titles Search page says a search needs the lot number together with either the survey district number or the title number. It gives the format of a reference as an example: MK18 Lot 99279M.

An address search is offered, but it comes with a warning that the page repeats.

The lot number can also be reached from the map side. SLA's OneMap page lists a query called LandQuery, which it describes as giving land ownership and land lot numbers. The page does not say how much ownership detail that query returns, so it is described here only as SLA describes it: a route to a lot number and to land ownership on the map.

What the fee schedule charges for printouts

SLA publishes one consolidated page of fees for property registration services, dated 17 September 2025. Its Land Titles Rules section states that the fees are inclusive of GST. Item 18 of that section covers computerised information: viewing or printing the caveat index, and printouts of the different parts of a title record.

The schedule splits a title record into parts and prices each one. The whole folio printout is the dearest single item. The parts cost less: the details of the estate and the land, the details of the proprietor, the instruments already registered against the title, and the instruments lodged and still pending. Two further items, 18(b)(v) and (vi), cover other property details at S$11.00 each, and a folio printout that carries information from the Commissioner of Lands is charged at the same S$16.00 as the standard one.

Three worked examples, computed from the schedule, show how the pieces add up. They are illustrations of the arithmetic, not a statement of what any particular sale requires.

In the first, assume a searcher wants the folio printout and the caveat index for one title. The cost is S$16.00 plus S$8.40, or S$24.40.

In the second, assume the searcher wants only to know who the proprietor is and what the estate and land details are. Proprietor details at S$5.80 and estate and land details at S$4.70 come to S$10.50, which is S$5.50 less than one folio printout.

In the third, assume a fuller picture of one title: the folio printout, the caveat index, the registered instrument details and the pending instrument details. That is S$16.00, S$8.40, S$7.90 and S$7.90, a total of S$40.20.

The schedule page does not define its terms. It does not explain what a caveat is, what the Lot Base System holds beyond "current lot information" and "derivation and indices", or how the two land and ownership information items differ: item 18(j) is listed at S$5.25 and item 18(k), under the same description, at S$2.10 per page. One more item belongs to owners rather than searchers: an updated computerised certificate of title is listed at S$20.40.

At the counter: inspection, copies and official searches

Not everything is online. The Land Titles Search page says that where a property's records are not available online, the search is made at the Registry, in Revenue House on Newton Road. The Registry page adds that manual searches require a Payment Authorisation Form, and the fee page says search, microprint and photocopy fees are paid by cashless means at the SLA counter.

The procedure, as the search page gives it, runs in order:

1. Fill in the Request Form at the counter, giving the title's volume and folio numbers or the registration number of the document.
2. Inspect the title or document. The page stresses that there is only one original title, and that particulars may not be copied from it or from related documents.
3. Ask for copies if they are needed. The Registry provides photocopying, and documents held on microfilm can be requested as micrographics.
4. Return the title or document to the Counter Officer.

The fees for this are low at the entry level and rise with the degree of formality. Inspecting the land-register and current instruments is S$2.00 per person per day under the Land Titles Rules. Copies of the listed public-search documents, which the schedule says include certificates and plans, are S$1.00 a page; copies of other documents are S$4.20 per instrument; a coloured approved plan is S$8.40 a page. Having a copy certified is S$3.15 a page.

A worked example: assume one person spends a day at the counter inspecting one title and takes three pages of copies at the S$1.00 rate. The cost is S$2.00 plus S$3.00, or S$5.00. Whether certification of those pages would add to the copying charge or replace it depends on the sub-item of the schedule that applies, since the schedule says some certification fees include the cost of the copy and one does not.

Above inspection sits the official search, where the Registry issues a certificate. The schedule lists an application for an official search, and each search certificate, at S$54.25, and a final official search at S$69.55. The Register of Deeds has its own, lower scale: S$2.00 per person per day for a non-official search or inspection, and S$31.50 for an official search of each lot, certificate included.

The gap between the first bar and the last is the price of formality. On the schedule's figures a final official search costs almost 35 times a day's inspection (S$69.55 divided by S$2.00 is 34.8). The fee page does not explain what an official search certificate establishes or when a final one is used, so the difference in legal effect is not described here.

Unregistered land: a search in stages

For land that is still under the deeds system, the search is a reconstruction. The Land Titles Search page describes it as a sequence, and it is the one place where the page states how far back a title search runs: fifteen years.

The second stage exists because lots change. A parcel that was created five years ago by dividing a larger one has only five years of transactions under its own number; the rest of its history sits under the number of the parent lot. The Lot History printout, as the page describes it, follows the land back through each subdivision and amalgamation and supplies the index references for each earlier lot.

The third stage shows the limit of the online service for this kind of land. The older indexes have been turned into images and can be reached through INLIS. The current ones cannot: the page sends the searcher to the Customer Service Centre at Revenue House. A deeds search is therefore partly a desk exercise and partly a visit.

OneMap: the national map and its queries

OneMap is the other half of SLA's public offering, and it comes from the authority's mapping side. SLA's page on it, dated 4 August 2025, calls it the authoritative national map of Singapore and says SLA developed it. It is available as a web portal and as a mobile app on the two main app stores. The page gives as examples of what it answers land ownership, nearby schools and demographic data at or around a location.

The page lists six features:

• Journey Planner, with walking routes.
• Nearby amenities, a finder for what is around a point.
• Bus Explorer, with bus stops, bus services and arrival times.
• LandQuery, for land ownership and land lot numbers.
• SchoolQuery, for nearby school information.
• DroneQuery, for areas suitable for flying drones.

Three of these bear on property. The amenities finder and the journey planner answer the everyday questions of a viewing: what is nearby and how long the walk is. LandQuery is the bridge to the register described earlier. SchoolQuery has a formal role that the next section explains.

The page states no charge for any of this and describes the information as kept up to date in a timely way, without giving a schedule. It does not name a query for HDB flats or a property query as such, does not list which agencies supply the map's layers, and carries no statement of limits.

SchoolQuery and the distance that counts for Primary 1

Most map measurements are for convenience. One of OneMap's is official. In a written parliamentary reply published on 4 February 2025, MOE stated that the home-school distance category shown on OneMap SchoolQuery is the measurement it uses for Primary 1 registration when balloting is required.

MOE's page on distance and priority admission, last updated on 14 May 2025, shows why the category matters. When a school has more applicants than places, priority goes by citizenship and by home-school distance category, in this order: Singapore Citizens within 1 km; Singapore Citizens between 1 km and 2 km; Singapore Citizens beyond 2 km; then Permanent Residents in the same three bands. The category is that of the address used for registration.

The parliamentary reply explains where the measurement comes from. SLA's system computes the distance using the latest information that a Qualified Person submits to the Building and Construction Authority on behalf of the property's developer or owner. The reply also gives the calendar: users are told that the distance information is updated every year by June, and Primary 1 registration runs from July to August.

That timetable has a consequence for anyone reading a category months ahead. A result seen on the map in, say, January is the result of the last annual update, and another update is due before the next registration opens. The reply was given in answer to a Member of Parliament's question about whether categories shown on the service had been wrong. MOE said it had not found any error or glitch in how SLA computes the categories, that the approach had been applied consistently, and that members of the public with questions about a change of category could approach MOE.

MOE's distance page adds a condition that outlasts the search. A child admitted through distance priority must live at the registration address for at least 30 months from the start of the registration exercise, which for the 2025 exercise was 1 July 2025. The page says the count starts differently for new and resale homes: for a new property, from when the family moves in; for a resale property, from the start of the child's Primary 1 term. If the requirement is not met, MOE may transfer the child.

Neither MOE page describes the method of measurement itself, such as the points between which the distance is taken, and the SchoolQuery page returned no readable text when opened for this guide.

Searching and lodging: the public and the professionals

SLA's pages do not divide users into "public" and "law firm" by name. The division shows up in what each kind of user does and how each pays.

Searching is open on a pay-per-use basis. The search page says INLIS takes card or NETS GIRO payment with no subscription, and the counter takes cashless payment for searches and copies. Nothing on the pages read restricts a title search to a professional.

Lodging is a different activity. To change the register, a document has to be lodged, and the Registry page gives two routes: manually, using the approved form, or electronically through the STARS eLodgment portal. The fee page says registration fees are paid through Interbank Giro, and that an application for a Giro account takes about two weeks. The pages read do not say who is entitled to lodge through the portal or whether a private individual can open such an account, so the point is left there.

The lodging fees on the schedule give a sense of what passes through that route. Under the Land Titles Rules, registering one of the listed instruments, which the schedule says include a transfer, a mortgage, a charge, a lease and an easement, is S$68.30. The same kinds of instrument for an HDB flat are S$38.30, which is S$30.00 less. Lodging or extending a caveat is S$64.45, a figure the schedule says includes the cost of notice, and withdrawing one is S$49.15.

A worked example: assume a caveat is lodged against a title and later withdrawn in full. On the schedule's figures the two steps cost S$64.45 plus S$49.15, or S$113.60 in registry fees. That excludes any professional fee, which the schedule does not cover.

The schedule also prices things going wrong. An instrument that is not in order attracts an additional fee of S$38.00, and a request for written grounds when registration is refused is S$254.85.

What the published pages leave open

Several questions a reader might bring to this subject could not be answered from the pages read on 10 October 2026.

• Product prices by name. The price of each of the four INLIS products is not on the pages read, and the INLIS portal could not be opened. The fee schedule's item 18 is the nearest published list, without a stated link to the products.
• Last transacted price and encumbrances. No page read describes an SLA product under either name.
• What each product contains. The fields in a Property Title Information or Property Ownership Information result are not listed.
• OneMap's property features. Only the six features above are named on SLA's page. No HDB-specific or property-specific query is described, and no usage terms were read.
• How school distance is measured. The source of the data and the update month are published; the geometry is not on the pages read.
• Who may lodge electronically. The portal is named; its users are not.
• Page dates. Each SLA page carries its own "last updated" date, from 28 May 2025 to 17 September 2025 on the main site, while the site's footer showed 5 October 2026. The fees quoted here are those on the page as read, and the page gives no effective date for them.

A price record tells you what was paid. The register tells you who holds the land and what is lodged against it, and that answer has a tariff.

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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