Is now a good time to buy?
Everyone wants to buy at the bottom. A decade of HDB resale prices says the bottom is almost impossible to spot in advance - and that for most buyers, timing the market matters far less than which flat they pick.
It's the question behind every viewing: buy now, or wait for prices to cool? Nobody wants to sign just before a fall, or discover they missed the low by a month. It's a fair worry - so it's worth asking what the actual record does, and doesn't, reward.
The decade in one line
Since 2015 the median HDB resale flat has climbed about 55%. But it didn't rise in a straight line. Prices drifted down through the cooling-measure years, bottomed out around 2019, then turned and climbed hard from 2020 onwards:
The dips are slow and shallow - there's no bottom to catch
The scary word is "crash", but the record doesn't contain one. The worst stretch in the whole decade was a 12% slide spread over six years - from a 2013 peak to a 2019 low - as successive cooling measures leaned on the market. That's not a cliff you time; it's a slow drift you'd only recognise well after the fact. By the time 2019 clearly looked like the bottom, it was 2021 and prices were already up double digits.
Put the other way round: across the past decade, a flat cost more a year later about two times in three. Waiting for a better price more often meant paying a higher one.
If you're moving within HDB, timing mostly cancels
Here's the part the "buy at the bottom" instinct misses. If you're selling one HDB flat to buy another, you transact on both sides of the same market. A hot market that inflates the flat you're buying also inflates the one you're selling; a soft market discounts both. For upgraders, downgraders and relocators, the overall price level largely nets out - what actually matters is the gap between your sale and your purchase, not whether the whole market is high or low that year.
And waiting has a cost
In each of the last three years the median rose roughly 5% to 7% - about $30,000 a year on a $500,000 flat - and that's before the rent you'd pay while you wait. To come out ahead by holding off, you'd need a dip that's both deeper and faster than anything the past decade delivered outside that one slow patch. Possible; just not something the record has often handed to people who waited.
What matters more than the moment
The things you actually control move your outcome more than the cycle does. The specific flat - its location, remaining lease and floor - swings the price far more than a year of market drift, as the MRT guide and the lease guide both show. How long you'll hold smooths out whichever point in the cycle you entered. And paying a fair price for the flat you choose is squarely in your hands, in a way the market's turning points never are - which is exactly what the fair-price guide is for.
A decade of prices doesn't reward market-timing: the dips are too slow to catch and too shallow to matter. The lever you actually control is the flat you choose and the price you pay for it.
What this means for you
How to think about timing
- There's rarely a clean bottom to catch. The one real soft patch in a decade was a gentle 12% drift over six years - obvious only in hindsight.
- Waiting usually costs. Prices were higher a year later about two times in three, and the last three years each added 5-7%.
- If you're moving within HDB, the level largely cancels between your sale and your purchase - focus on the gap between the two, not the market mood.
- Pick the flat, not the moment. Location, lease and a fair price move your result more than trying to time the cycle ever will.
One honest caveat: none of this is a forecast. The past decade's moves don't guarantee the next one's, and this guide is a read of history, not advice to buy or wait. The point isn't that prices will keep rising - it's that timing is genuinely hard, and there are better things to spend your energy on.
See the whole decade for yourself
The Overview charts median price by flat type and transaction volume across the years, so you can watch how the market has actually moved rather than guess at it.