Five things buried in 311,424 transactions through 2025 that most buyers never see · Source: data.gov.sg + OneMap
In 2012, exactly two HDB flats crossed $1M. In 2025, it was 1,593 - one in every sixteen sales.
The million-dollar flat went from statistical anomaly to a routine Tuesday. The first was a Queenstown executive in July 2012 at exactly $1,000,000; the current record is $1.66M for a Queenstown 5-room (June 2025, floors 22–24). And the million-dollar capital isn't where you'd guess - it's Toa Payoh, whose post-2008 high-rise builds near the city now dominate the leaderboard.
Click a year to explore its breakdown
The priciest 4-room flats aren't the ones with the most lease left - they're the ones nearest an MRT.
Sort 2025's 4-room sales by remaining lease and one band jumps out: flats with 80–85 years left sell for a median ~$830K - more than flats with a decade more lease remaining. Lease clearly isn't setting the price. Location is. Remaining lease is really flat age in disguise, and age tracks where HDB was building: those 80–85y flats mostly went up around 2006–2010, a wave of prime, near-MRT infill in mature central estates (Toa Payoh, Queenstown, Bukit Merah) that today sit ~340m from a station. The bands on either side are far-flung Sengkang and Punggol, ~700m–1.1km out. Look within a single town, where location holds steady, and price only eases down gently with lease - roughly $3,600 a year.
Median 2025 resale price of 4-room flats by remaining-lease band. The figure at right is each band's median distance to an MRT, echoed in the bar shade (darker = nearer). The 80–85y band sits ~2.5× more central than its neighbours and about half as far from a station - the spike is location, not lease.
A floor-28 flat outprices a floor-2 one by 89% - but that's new central towers vs old walk-ups, not just height.
Height genuinely lifts price - a better view, more light, less street noise. But most of that 89% gap ($570K on floors 1–3 up to $1.08M above floor 28) isn't the floor itself; it's what's up there. HDB only began building 25- to 40-storey blocks in the last 15 years, almost all in newer, central developments. 4-room flats above floor 28 were built around 2014 and sit 86% in central towns; down on floors 1–3 they date to ~1997 and are just 18% central. You're not comparing one flat at two heights - you're comparing a new central tower with an old suburban walk-up. A like-for-like storey premium is real, but far gentler.
Median 2025 resale price of 4-room flats by storey band. The year at right is each band's median build year, echoed in the bar shade (darker = newer). Floors above ~13 are almost all post-2010 towers, so higher floors are mostly newer - and mostly central - flats, not just higher ones.
Everyone knows prices surged after COVID. Nobody mentions that Central Area fell.
From 2021 to 2025, the median Singapore town gained ~30%. Toa Payoh gained 68%. But the boom was wildly uneven: prime-adjacent Clementi (+11%) and Marine Parade (+10%) barely moved, and Central Area actually declined 8% - its 2021 median was inflated by a wave of premium flats hitting their 5-year mark, a mix that later normalised. The lesson: town-level "averages" can move on composition, not just demand.
The boom rewarded space: 3-room flats grew 29% in 13 years while executives grew 46%.
Index every flat type to 100 in 2012 and the gap is unmistakable - the lines move together until 2020, then fan out. Post-COVID demand chased space: families upgrading, working from home, multi-generation living. The humble 3-room - the most affordable entry point - appreciated at barely 60% the rate of an executive flat. For buyers, that's a double-edged finding: 3-rooms are the relative bargain of 2025, but history says they also climb slowest.