What you can actually afford. Your deposit decides it, not your salary.
Almost every first-home conversation opens with income. What do you earn, what can you service, what does the bank say. It is the wrong opening, because for most first-timers the loan is not the thing standing in the way — the deposit is. You can be perfectly capable of paying a mortgage on a property you cannot buy, and everything below follows from that.
Farhan Adenan · 30 Aug 2026 · 10 min read
- The loan is capped at 75% whichever door you use. The remaining 25% is yours, before stamp duty — and that, not your salary, is what decides what you can buy.
- What the quarter may be made of differs: entirely CPF on an HDB loan, but at least 5% cash on a bank loan, which is how an EC is financed.
- Past 30 years of tenure — 25 on a flat — or past age 65, the limit drops to 55% and the cash portion doubles. On $1.1m that is $220,000 more to find.
- Waiting helps if the deposit binds you and costs you if age or income does. The same advice cannot be right for both households.
Loan-to-value limits, minimum cash portions, servicing ratios and duty rates are as published by MAS, HDB, CPF and IRAS, current as at 30 August 2026. Worked examples are POV arithmetic on those published rates and assume no other debt and a first property — both assumptions are wrong for many households, and both move the answer against you.
Your deposit is the constraint, not your salary
You can be perfectly capable of paying a mortgage on a property you cannot buy.
Exhibit 1. A first housing loan from a bank is capped at 75% of the property’s value; HDB’s own limit is also 75%, lowered from 80% on 20 August 2024. Whichever door you use, you are finding the remaining quarter yourself, and Buyer’s Stamp Duty sits on top of it. The useful thing about that rule is that it runs backwards: divide what you have saved by roughly 0.27 — the 25% and the Buyer’s Stamp Duty together — and you have your ceiling. Source: MAS and HDB published rules, current as at 30 Aug 2026.
Almost every first-home conversation opens with income. What do you earn, what can you service, what does the bank say. It is the wrong opening, because for most first-timers the loan is not the thing standing in the way. The sum required before the first instalment is a number your salary reaches only by saving, and saving takes years.
Exhibit 2. The 25% is the same size on every door. What differs is what it may be made of. On an HDB loan the whole quarter may come from your CPF Ordinary Account, with no minimum cash. On a bank loan at least 5% of the price must be cash and no more than 20% may come from CPF — and an executive condominium is financed by a bank. For a household that is asset-rich and cash-light, that distinction decides the purchase. Source: MAS and HDB published rules, current as at 30 Aug 2026. POV arithmetic.
Put numbers on it. On a $600,000 flat the 25% is $150,000 — payable entirely from CPF on an HDB loan, or with at least $30,000 in cash on a bank loan. Buyer’s Stamp Duty adds $12,600. On an $1.1 million executive condominium the 25% is $275,000, and because an EC is financed by a bank, at least $55,000 of that must be cash; Buyer’s Stamp Duty is $28,600.
Now compare how the two sides of that move. A pay rise of 5% raises what you can service by roughly 5%. It does nothing to the $150,000 or the $275,000 already sitting between you and the keys. Meanwhile the deposit is a percentage of the price, so it rises with the market whether your savings do or not. You can become more creditworthy and no closer to buying at the same time, and it is a disorienting thing to discover.
Exhibit 3. Where the loan tenure would run beyond 30 years — 25 years for an HDB flat — or beyond age 65, MAS reduces the loan-to-value limit from 75% to 55% and doubles the minimum cash portion from 5% to 10%. On an $1.1 million purchase that is the difference between finding $275,000 and finding $495,000. Buying young is not a moral virtue; it is a financing advantage with a specific size. Source: MAS published rules, current as at 30 Aug 2026. POV arithmetic.
Two conditions attach to that rule. It assumes your loan tenure stays inside 30 years and ends by age 65 — past either, the divisor is roughly 0.46 rather than 0.27, because the loan-to-value limit drops to 55%. And it assumes at least 5% of the price is in cash if you are borrowing from a bank, because CPF cannot supply that part. Once you have the figure, check it against MSR or TDSR as well: the lower of the two answers is the real one. Do that before you look at a single listing, because it decides which of the next two sections is actually about you. Our salary-to-price table runs the same arithmetic from the income side, if you want to see both.
Three doors, and what it costs to walk through each
They differ less in monthly cost than in what they lock.
| HDB flat | EC from developer | Private condominium | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Servicing cap | MSR 30% — plus TDSR 55% on a bank loan | MSR 30% and TDSR 55%, both | TDSR 55% |
| Loan | HDB or bank | Bank only | Bank only |
| Minimum cash on the 25% | Nil on an HDB loan | 5% of price | 5% of price |
| Grants | CPF housing grants, income-tested | Limited, scheme-specific | None |
| Lock | 5-year MOP (10 on Plus and Prime) | 5-year MOP, or 10 on sites tendered from 8 May 2026 | No MOP — but SSD runs 4 years |
| Renting out the whole unit | Not during MOP | Not during MOP | Permitted |
Grant quantums, income ceilings and EC eligibility conditions are revised periodically — confirm the current figures with HDB rather than working from a friend’s recollection.
An HDB flat has the lowest entry price and the widest grant support, and it is assessed under the Mortgage Servicing Ratio, which caps your monthly repayments on property loans at 30% of gross monthly income. That is a much tighter cap than the 55% Total Debt Servicing Ratio — and on a bank loan both are tested, with the lower allowance binding. Only an HDB concessionary loan is assessed on MSR alone. It is protective and it is restrictive, and which of those two words you use depends entirely on whether you were trying to borrow more. A new flat starts on a 99-year lease; a resale flat carries whatever is left of one, which is not the same purchase at all.
Grants do not reduce the price, and they do not reduce the 25%. They are credited to your CPF Ordinary Account at or near completion, so they are a source of funds towards the deposit rather than a reduction of it — which still matters a great deal to a deposit-constrained buyer. Two caveats: a grant cannot satisfy the 5% that must be cash on a bank loan, and it lands at completion rather than up front. They are income-tested and revised — and the family ceiling for the CPF Housing Grant on a resale flat moved to $16,000 on 24 August 2026, while the Enhanced CPF Housing Grant still stops at $9,000.
An executive condominium bought from a developer sits in between and is the least understood of the three. MSR applies to it as well, at the same 30% — MAS applies MSR to HDB flats and to ECs bought directly from a developer. But the loan is a bank loan, so the 75% limit and the 5% minimum cash apply. It carries eligibility conditions set by HDB, including a household income ceiling that HDB publishes and periodically revises.
A private condominium removes MSR and the minimum occupation period, and replaces them with cost. You are assessed under TDSR at 55%, you have no grants, and you may rent it out — subject to the three-month minimum lease term that applies to private residential property. What you do have is Seller’s Stamp Duty, which since 4 July 2025 runs for four years rather than three: 16% in year one, 12% in year two, 8% in year three and 4% in year four, charged on the price or the market value, whichever is higher. “No MOP” is not the same as “free to sell”.
And the plan to keep the flat and buy a condo has two obstacles, in that order. The first is not money: HDB requires you to fulfil your flat’s minimum occupation period before you and your spouse can acquire private residential property at all. Inside the MOP the plan is not expensive, it is not permitted. After it, you are a second-property buyer — for a Singapore citizen, 20% Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty, or $220,000 on an $1.1 million purchase, on top of the deposit and the Buyer’s Stamp Duty. That is a common reason the plan collapses at the arithmetic stage.
The EC argument, argued rather than asserted
You are not being paid for taking a risk. You are being paid for waiting.
The strong part is the buyer pool, and it widens twice. Under the Executive Condominium Housing Scheme Act the minimum occupation period has been five years from the issue of the Temporary Occupation Permit, after which the unit may be sold to Singapore citizens and permanent residents, and to any other buyer five years later — ten years from TOP in total, at which point it is, for buying purposes, an ordinary private condominium.
Check which schedule applies before you buy, because it changed this year. For EC sites tendered on or after 8 May 2026, MND doubled the minimum occupation period to ten years and moved full privatisation from the eleventh year to the sixteenth — that is, from ten years after TOP to fifteen — alongside a 90% first-timer allocation with a two-year priority window and the removal of the Deferred Payment Scheme. Projects on land tendered before that date keep the five-year lock. Two ECs can sit side by side with the same brochure and completely different exit rules.
The second part of the argument is compounding, and this is where most versions of it overreach. The mechanism is real and simple: growth is applied to the purchase price, so a larger entry produces a larger gain at the same rate. Assume 3% a year for ten years, and assume it applies equally to both. An $1.1 million property grows by about $378,000; a $550,000 property grows by about $189,000. The larger base ends roughly $189,000 ahead — on $550,000 more capital. At the same rate both return 34.4%, so this is not an argument that the larger asset is a better investment. It is an argument that a bigger number times the same rate is a bigger number.
Now the caveat, because it is doing all the work. That figure is not a finding about the market. It is arithmetic on an assumption — that both assets appreciate at the same rate — and if the cheaper asset grows even slightly faster, the gap narrows or reverses. It is also gross of everything: stamp duty, interest, maintenance, agent fees and the CPF refund. Treat this comparison as an assumption rather than a market result, including when we present it.
So an EC is right for you if you comfortably meet HDB’s eligibility conditions, expect to stay put for the whole minimum occupation period — five years on projects from sites tendered before 8 May 2026, ten years on anything after — are buying somewhere to live rather than something to let, and have enough margin above the monthly payment that the lock is an inconvenience rather than a trap. First-timers are not the only ones eligible — if you have bought public housing from HDB before, you may still buy an EC, but you will pay a premium to the Board on top of the price.
Who an EC is genuinely wrong for. It is wrong if there is any real chance you need to sell or relocate inside the MOP — five years on the older projects, ten on anything tendered from May 2026 — because you cannot, and the restriction is statutory rather than negotiable. It is wrong if you were counting on rental income, because you cannot rent out the whole unit during the MOP. It is wrong if your household income is close to the ceiling and rising, because eligibility is tested when you apply, not when you would like it to be. And it is wrong if MSR is what binds you — a single-income household capped at 30% may find the EC it qualifies for on paper is not the EC it can comfortably carry.
Waiting is two decisions, and only one of them is bad
Which description fits you decides whether another two years helps or costs.
“Buy now” is the industry’s default answer, and it is unreliable because waiting does two opposite things depending on which constraint is binding on you.
If your constraint is the deposit, waiting raises your ceiling. Every month adds cash savings and CPF Ordinary Account contributions, and the OA rate is reviewed quarterly against a pegged rate but floored at 2.5% a year, which is where it has been sitting. Since the deposit is what stands between you and the purchase, a household that saves consistently for two more years genuinely can buy more, not less — provided prices do not run faster than the savings.
If your constraint is income or eligibility, waiting lowers your ceiling, and it does so mechanically. Loan tenure shortens as you age, and once it would run past 30 years — 25 for a flat — or past age 65, the loan-to-value limit falls from 75% to 55%, as Exhibit 3 shows. For an EC, the income ceiling is a moving target you may cross in the wrong direction — a household whose income rises past it does not become better placed to buy one, it becomes ineligible. Grant eligibility is similarly income-tested.
One condition attaches to the deposit-constrained case, and it is easy to skip. Waiting only raises your ceiling if you actually accumulate. Wait two years and save nothing and you have not bought optionality — you have spent two years, and if prices moved you have gone backwards. Waiting is a plan with a monthly figure in it, or it is not a plan.
So the question is not whether to wait. It is which of those two descriptions fits you. If you are thirty-two and short of a deposit, and your neighbour is forty-eight and near an income ceiling, the two of you should be given opposite advice — and anyone giving you both the same advice is not reading your file.
Buy right, wait smart, exit well — and what each one hides
The three-step framing is sound. It is also where the quiet costs get left out.
Buy right is usually explained as choosing the property that will appreciate most. In practice it means choosing the property you can still hold in a bad year — after a rate rise, a bonus that does not arrive, or a job change. The MSR and TDSR caps tell you the maximum. They are not a recommendation, and the gap between the permitted number and the comfortable one is where most regret lives.
Wait smart is presented as patience. Five years of a minimum occupation period is not patience; it is a restriction, and it applies whether or not the wait is working for you. What genuinely compounds during it is loan principal, which you repay whether the market moves or not — and that is the part worth counting, because it is the part you control.
Exit well hides the largest surprise of the three. When you sell, the sale proceeds first clear the outstanding loan, and then you must refund to your CPF account the principal you withdrew plus the accrued interest it would have earned had you left it there. Only what remains is cash in your hand. A sale that looks like a substantial gain on paper can return far less than expected, and the difference is not a fee anyone charged you — it is your own money going back where it came from. Add Seller’s Stamp Duty if you are inside four years, and the exit you modelled and the exit you get are different numbers. Our district exit data shows how differently that lands by location.
Who this affects
Two first-time buyers, one arithmetic, opposite advice.
If the deposit binds you
Another two years of saving may genuinely buy you more
Every month adds cash and CPF Ordinary Account contributions, and the OA rate is floored at 2.5% a year. Since the quarter you must find is what stands between you and the keys, consistent saving raises your ceiling in a way a pay rise does not.
The condition is that you actually accumulate, and that prices do not run faster than you do. Waiting with a monthly savings figure in it is a plan. Waiting without one is just two years.
If your age binds you
Waiting is expensive, and it compounds against you
Once the loan tenure would run past 30 years — 25 on a flat — or past age 65, the loan-to-value limit drops from 75% to 55% and the minimum cash portion doubles. On an $1.1 million purchase that is $220,000 more to find.
And on an EC the income ceiling runs the wrong way: a household whose income rises past it does not become better placed to buy one, it becomes ineligible. Eligibility is tested when you apply, not when you would like it to be.
Divide what you have saved by 0.27. That is your ceiling — then check it against the servicing caps.
- Work backwards from what you have saved, not forwards from what you earn. Dividing by 0.27 covers the 25% and the Buyer’s Stamp Duty together — but only inside 30 years of tenure and to age 65. Past either, divide by 0.46.
- The three doors differ in what they lock, not in what they cost monthly. An HDB loan lets the whole quarter come from CPF; a bank loan — and therefore every EC and every condominium — does not.
- Waiting is not one decision. It raises the ceiling of a deposit-constrained household that actually saves, and lowers the ceiling of one constrained by age or an income ceiling.
Want the honest version of your number?
The arithmetic above assumes no other debt, a first property and a standard income shape. Those three assumptions are wrong for most people, and the direction they are wrong in is always the same one. Send us your rough position — what you have saved, what is in your CPF Ordinary Account, whether your income is fixed or variable, and roughly when you would want to move. We will work through what you can actually buy today, what waiting two years would change in either direction, and which of the three doors your situation fits. Sometimes the answer is that you are closer than you thought. Often it is that the number is smaller than the one you were shown, and you would rather learn that now than at valuation.
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5% on the day, 20% within ten weeks, and a unit chosen in twenty minutes. The full sequence.
How to check us: every limit, ratio and duty rate here is taken from the publishing agency’s own record — MAS, HDB, CPF and IRAS — and every dollar figure is arithmetic on those rates, shown in full so you can reproduce it. Where a figure rests on an assumption, the assumption is stated in the same sentence.
- Monetary Authority of Singapore — loan-to-value limits, minimum cash portions, MSR and TDSR
- Housing & Development Board — HDB loan conditions, CPF housing grants, MOP and EC eligibility
- CPF Board — Ordinary Account interest rate and the housing refund with accrued interest
- Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore — Buyer’s, Additional Buyer’s and Seller’s Stamp Duty rates
- Ministry of National Development — Executive Condominium Housing Scheme changes, 8 May 2026
Dataset — Loan-to-value limits, servicing ratios, grant conditions and duty rates as published by MAS, HDB, CPF and IRAS, current as at 30 August 2026. Dollar figures are POV arithmetic on those rates.
Methodology & honesty notes. Every limit, ratio and duty rate here is quoted from the publishing agency and is current as at 30 August 2026. Worked examples use a $600,000 flat and an $1.1 million executive condominium and assume no other debt, a first property, and a standard income shape; other debt reduces what you can borrow, and a variable income is assessed more conservatively. The compounding comparison in the EC section is arithmetic on an assumed 3% a year applied equally to both assets — it is not a finding about the market, it is gross of stamp duty, interest, maintenance, agent fees and the CPF refund, and it reverses if the cheaper asset grows faster. Grant quantums, income ceilings and EC eligibility conditions are revised periodically and are situation-specific; confirm your own entitlement with HDB. Nothing here is financial advice, and POV Realty is not an agent for HDB.
Farhan Adenan · CEA Registration R068636D · Senior Associate Division Director, Huttons Asia Pte Ltd (Estate Agent Licence L3008899K).