Buying a resale flat, step by step

The resale journey looks daunting, but it is really a fixed sequence of gates. Here is the whole path - from the eligibility letter to the keys - with what each step costs and how long it takes.

Buying a resale flat is less a leap than a queue of checkpoints, each with its own paperwork and its own clock. Miss the order and you stall; know it, and the whole thing is surprisingly predictable. Three fixed clocks set the pace of everything else:

End to end, budget roughly three to four months from starting your eligibility letter to collecting keys. Here is each gate in order.

1. Get your HFE letterup to ~21 working days

   Everything starts here. Apply for the HDB Flat Eligibility (HFE) letter through the HDB Flat Portal. In one assessment it confirms whether you can buy, the CPF housing grants you qualify for, and how much HDB housing loan you can take. If you intend to take an HDB loan, sellers cannot even grant you an option until your HFE letter is valid. Taking a bank loan instead? Get an In-Principle Approval from the bank in parallel. See the grants you may get while you wait.

2. Work out your real budgetdo it now, not later

   With your loan and grant amounts known, settle on a price ceiling you can actually support - and know what the purchase truly costs beyond the price. Run your income and savings through the affordability calculator, and read what a resale flat really costs to buy so the fees and cash portions hold no surprises later.

3. Find a flat and check the priceas long as it takes

   Shortlist, view, compare. This is the open-ended part - it takes as long as it takes. Before you make an offer, sanity-check the asking price against what similar flats have really sold for, using recent medians by town and flat type and the method in how to tell if an asking price is fair.

4. Get the Option to Purchasevalid 21 days

   Agree the price and the seller grants you the Option to Purchase (OTP). You pay an option fee of up to $1,000, in cash, and the OTP is valid for 21 calendar days - your window to commit or walk away.

5. Request the valuation$120 fee

   Once you hold the OTP, submit a Request for Value to HDB if you are using CPF or a loan (a $120 fee). This is where cash over valuation shows up: if the valuation comes back below your agreed price, the gap must be paid in cash - so know it before you exercise.

6. Exercise the OTPwithin the 21 days

   Ready to proceed, you exercise the option: sign it and top up the option fee to a deposit of up to $5,000 in total, in cash. At this point you are contractually committed to the purchase.

7. Submit the resale applicationboth parties

   You and the seller each submit your portions of the resale application on the HDB Flat Portal, with supporting documents and a resale application fee (about $40 to $80 depending on flat size). Your Buyer's Stamp Duty falls due within 14 days of exercising the option - budget to pay it in cash and reimburse from CPF. The stamp duty calculator gives the figure.

8. The 8-week wait, then completion~8 weeks

   HDB's acceptance of the resale application starts an 8-week clock. Through the portal you endorse the documents HDB prepares and pay the remaining fees online. Approval follows, then a completion appointment - where the balance is settled and the keys are finally yours.

The money, in the order it falls due

Costs do not all land at once. They arrive in a set sequence, and the early ones are the cash ones:

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