We checked 63,000 exits. Here's who loses money.
It's the forum argument that never dies: "property always makes money" vs "my friend lost $300K". Both are true — they just lived in different districts. We matched every unit bought-and-sold over five years. The pattern is brutal, and brutally useful.
- Across 63,354 matched five-year exits, 88% of sellers left with a gain — the "property always wins" crowd is mostly right…
- …until you reach the core: District 1 sellers lost money 57% of the time, with a negative median return.
- The suburbs are near-bulletproof: D28 96.7% · D19 95.5% · D20 95.3% profitable.
- The pattern in one line: the further from Orchard, the safer the exit — the exact opposite of what "prime = safe" intuition says.
POV matched-pair model: same unit bought and later sold within the five-year window, URA caveats to 15 Jul 2026. Profit before interest, taxes and fees.
The report card — all 26 districts, ranked
Find your district. Then find where you thought was "safe".
| District | % exits profitable | Exits (5y) | Median annualised |
|---|---|---|---|
| D28 Seletar / Yio Chu Kang | 96.7% | 2,321 | +4.2% |
| D19 Serangoon / Punggol | 95.5% | 12,235 | +3.5% |
| D20 Bishan / AMK | 95.3% | 2,082 | +3.5% |
| D13 Potong Pasir | 94.9% | 2,031 | +3.1% |
| D27 Yishun / Sembawang | 94.8% | 3,731 | +4.5% |
| D18 Tampines / Pasir Ris | 94.7% | 6,270 | +3.5% |
| D22 Jurong | 94.3% | 1,540 | +3.3% |
| D03 Queenstown | 93.6% | 2,661 | +3.0% |
| D26 Mandai / Upp Thomson | 93.3% | 311 | +3.5% |
| D05 Clementi / West Coast | 93.0% | 3,495 | +3.5% |
| D21 Bukit Timah (Upper) | 92.0% | 1,744 | +3.2% |
| D15 Katong / Marine Parade | 90.6% | 3,961 | +2.9% |
| D23 Bt Batok / Hillview | 90.1% | 4,358 | +3.1% |
| D14 Geylang / Eunos | 90.5% | 3,629 | +2.7% |
| D17 Changi / Flora | 89.3% | 1,605 | +2.3% |
| D25 Woodlands | 89.2% | 1,759 | +3.7% |
| D12 Balestier / Toa Payoh | 88.4% | 2,115 | +2.1% |
| D16 Bedok / Upp East Coast | 85.8% | 2,662 | +2.0% |
| D10 Bukit Timah / Holland | 85.7% | 2,674 | +2.2% |
| D11 Newton / Novena | 82.8% | 1,207 | +2.2% |
| D08 Little India / Farrer Pk | 82.7% | 767 | +2.2% |
| D07 Bugis / Beach Rd | 82.1% | 402 | +1.5% |
| D04 Harbourfront / Sentosa | 73.0% | 774 | +1.3% |
| D09 Orchard / River Valley | 71.9% | 2,077 | +1.3% |
| D02 Tanjong Pagar / CBD | 65.2% | 466 | +0.5% |
| D01 Raffles Place / Marina | 43.4% | 477 | −0.3% |
Median annualised = middle seller's per-year return before costs. Highlighted = the three districts where selling at a loss is a statistical anomaly.
Why the map inverts every instinct
Prime pays prestige. The heartland pays back.
The suburbs win because their buyers never stop coming. D19 logged 12,235 exits — a quarter of the national total — because it sits on Singapore's deepest upgrader conveyor: HDB families crossing into their first condo. Demand there is structural, renewed every year by MOP flats, not sentiment. D27 and D28 add a second engine — decades of underpricing now correcting through new MRT lines and launches.
The core loses because its buyers are optional. Nobody needs to buy in D01. Its demand is foreign capital, sentiment and yield arithmetic — all of which switch off in bad years and did: cooling measures aimed squarely at foreign buyers (60% ABSD) landed hardest exactly where those buyers shopped. Sellers who bought the 2007 or 2013 peaks in the core spent a decade underwater; the median D01 exit still loses money today.
Sentosa deserves its own sentence: D04's 73% hides the island itself, long the single most reliable place in Singapore to lose seven figures. Trophy assets trade on ego, and ego pays retail.
How to actually use this table
Three moves, depending on which side of it you're on.
Buying to live, want safety: the top third of the table is your friend. In D19/D20/D27/D28, history says your exit takes care of itself — 19 of 20 sellers leave whole. Pay for the district's conveyor belt, not its glamour.
Hunting upside in the core: the table is your entry discipline, not your veto. D9's 72% means the quarter who lost bought high — mostly at launch premiums in frothy years. Core property bought below its last cycle's prints has historically been the exception that wins. The rule: in the core, the price you pay is the whole trade.
Already holding in the bottom third: your district's number is a base rate, not a verdict — unit-level entry price dominates. Get the actual comparable file before deciding to hold or fold; median stories hide winning units, and we run those files daily.
"Do people lose money on property?" Yes — in very predictable postcodes.
- The base rates: suburbs ~95% win, city-fringe ~85–90%, core 43–72%. Singapore property is two different asset classes wearing one name.
- The mechanism: structural upgrader demand vs optional capital. Buy conveyors, not chandeliers — unless the chandelier is genuinely cheap.
- The discipline: in the top of the table, time forgives entry prices. In the bottom, nothing does.
Want your unit's actual exit odds?
District base rates are the start. I'll pull your project's own matched exits, your entry price against its history, and the honest hold-or-sell math. Twenty minutes.
The decay curve: what your 99-year lease actually loses, decade by decade
The exit record by lease decade — from triple digits to 49% — and the freehold twist nobody expects.
Nobody brags about D28. It has Singapore's best exit record — 96.7% profitable
96.7% of 2,321 five-year exits profitable — the best record in Singapore. Why boring wins.
Methodology & honesty notes. Exit records from POV's matched-pair model: the same unit bought and later sold within a five-year window, built from URA caveat data to 15 Jul 2026 (n=63,354 pairs). Profit measured before interest, taxes and transaction fees — net-of-all-costs profitability is lower everywhere, and materially lower where gross margins are thin. District medians conceal unit-level variance; the article says so where it matters. Historical base rates are not predictions. POV Realty and Farhan Adenan are not the marketing agents for any project or listing referenced, and nothing here is financial advice — it's a starting point for your own due diligence, which is exactly how we'd use it.
Farhan Adenan · CEA Registration R068636D · Senior Associate Division Director, Huttons Asia Pte Ltd (Estate Agent Licence L3008899K).