How to tell if an asking price is fair
There is no single fair price for an HDB flat. There is a fair range - and the skill worth having is knowing where one particular flat sits inside it.
You’ve found a flat you like. The listing says $700,000. The agent mentions that a unit two floors up sold for $720,000 last month, so this one’s a steal. Two questions land at once: is the asking price fair, and how would you even know?
Here’s the good news. Unlike almost anywhere else in the world, every HDB resale price is public record - nothing is hidden behind an agent or an estimate. Here’s the catch: that record doesn’t hand you a single “fair price.” It hands you a range, and a surprisingly wide one.
Identical flats, wildly different prices
Take the cleanest comparison you can make: one town, one flat type, one year. Tampines, four-room, 2025 - 892 sales. The median was $668,000. But the sales ran from $595,000 at the 10th percentile to $790,000 at the 90th, and even the middle half of them - the most ordinary, unremarkable flats - spanned $620,000 to $758,000.
This isn’t a quirk of Tampines. Across the 22 towns with enough four-room sales to measure, the middle 50% typically spans about 19% of the median. Quote any single recent sale as “the price” and you could be anchoring to a flat quite unlike the one in front of you.
The spread isn’t noise - it’s the flat
The range exists for reasons you can actually read. The same forces that bend prices around the MRT - floor, remaining lease, exact location, size and model - are what stretch a single town-and-type into a wide band. Floor alone is dramatic:
| Floor | Median price | Sales |
|---|---|---|
| Low (1–6) | $635,000 | 408 |
| Mid (7–12) | $680,000 | 391 |
| High (13+) | $790,000 | 93 |
Stack floor together with remaining lease and distance to the MRT and you can explain most of where any given flat lands in the range. Which turns the vague question “is this fair?” into a precise one you can actually answer.
“Fair” means placing this flat in the range
Don’t ask what’s the fair price for a Tampines four-room - there isn’t one. Ask: given its floor, its lease, its location and its condition, where in the range should this particular flat sit - and does the asking price match? A high-floor, long-lease, near-MRT, freshly renovated unit belongs up near the top, $758k and above. A low-floor, shorter-lease, further-out one belongs near the bottom, around $620k or less. The asking price is fair when it matches where the flat honestly sits - not the town average, and certainly not the single sale an agent happens to quote.
The five checks to run before you offer
- Start from the median of many, not the memory of one. Pull recent comparables - same town, same flat type, the last twelve months - and take the median. Never anchor to a single sale or the cheapest one on the listing site.
- Adjust for this flat. Move up or down from that median for floor (big), remaining lease, distance to the MRT, and size or model. These are what create the range in the first place.
- Compare dollars per square foot, not just the total. A larger flat costs more without being dearer. $psf strips out size so you’re comparing like with like.
- Keep it recent. The market moves. A 2022 comparable is a different market entirely; weight the last few months most.
- Test it against the range. An asking price above the middle band needs a reason - top floor, long lease, renovated. If you can’t find the reason for the premium, you’ve just found your negotiating room.
“Fair” isn’t a number you look up. It’s a range you read from the record, then position one flat inside. Do that, and you’ll never overpay on a story about the unit upstairs.
See what flats like yours are selling for
This Year shows recent monthly medians by town and flat type; Analysis by Town adds $psf and the near-MRT premium. Between them you can build the comparable set these checks call for.