Condo Selling Costs in Singapore: What Leaves Your Proceeds

Two costs separate a condo sale from an HDB one. Seller’s Stamp Duty applies far more often, because private property has no minimum occupation period to carry you past the holding period. And your bank can charge you for leaving, through an early redemption penalty and a clawback of the legal subsidy it gave you at the start.

Both are avoidable with timing rather than negotiation. Neither shows up in a percentage-of-price estimate of selling costs.

Separate the costs from your own money coming back

Deduction	What it is
Agent commission and GST where charged	Cost
Conveyancing fee and disbursements	Cost
Early redemption penalty, if in lock-in	Cost
Legal subsidy clawback, if within period	Cost
Seller’s Stamp Duty, if applicable	Tax
Outstanding mortgage	Debt repayment
CPF principal and accrued interest	Refund to your own CPF account

Only the first five reduce your wealth. The last two move money from the sale into debt repayment and into your CPF Ordinary Account.

The distinction decides what you can spend next. A CPF refund can fund eligible parts of the next purchase once it lands in the Ordinary Account, but it is not cash in a bank account, and owners aged 55 or above may see part of it directed to the Retirement Account.

Seller’s Stamp Duty is the cost HDB sellers usually escape

An HDB seller has almost always served a five-year minimum occupation period, which puts them beyond any SSD holding period. A condo owner has no such shield. Sell inside the period and the duty is charged on the higher of the selling price or the market value at the date of sale.

On a $2 million sale, under the schedule for property purchased on or after 4 July 2025:

Holding period	Rate	SSD on $2m
Up to 1 year	16%	$320,000
More than 1 to 2 years	12%	$240,000
More than 2 to 3 years	8%	$160,000
More than 3 to 4 years	4%	$80,000
More than 4 years	Nil	$0

A purchase made between 11 March 2017 and 3 July 2025 follows the earlier three-year schedule at 12%, 8% and 4%, so which rates apply turns on when you bought. The duty is also payable within 14 days of the executed sale contract, which lands weeks before completion pays you.

Our Seller’s Stamp Duty guide sets out both schedules, how the acquisition date is fixed and the payment deadline.

Redeeming a bank loan early can cost more than the interest saved

An HDB concessionary loan has no early repayment penalty. A bank package commonly does, and there are two separate charges to check.

The first is the early redemption penalty, applied to the amount repaid during the lock-in period. On an outstanding loan of $1.2 million, a penalty of 1.5% comes to $18,000. Rates and lock-in lengths are set by your package rather than by regulation, so read the letter of offer instead of assuming.

The second is the clawback of any legal, valuation or fire insurance subsidy the bank paid when you took the loan. Those subsidies usually carry a clawback period of around three years from disbursement, and redeeming inside it repays them.

Ask your bank for three things in writing before you grant an option:

1. The redemption statement, showing the outstanding principal at your expected completion date.
2. Whether you are inside the lock-in, the penalty rate and the date it ends.
3. The subsidy clawback amount and the date that period ends.

Banks also typically require notice before redemption, commonly a month or three. Missing the notice period can trigger a charge in lieu, which is a pointless cost on an otherwise well-planned sale. Our condo loan guide covers the package terms that create these charges.

Legal fees have no published scale

An HDB seller can have HDB act on eligible matters at a published rate. A private sale has no equivalent, so a solicitor sets their own fee.

Ask for a written quote that separates:

• the conveyancing fee, and whether GST is added
• the mortgage discharge and the CPF discharge work
• disbursements such as title searches, registration and lodgement fees

A quote given as a single figure is hard to compare against another firm’s. Ask for the breakdown and confirm which items are estimates rather than fixed.

Selling with a tenant in place changes who will buy

A tenancy survives the sale. The buyer takes the unit subject to the existing lease, so the tenant stays until it ends on its own terms.

That narrows the buyer pool rather than the price directly. An owner-occupier who needs to move in will not wait out eight months of someone else’s lease, so a tenanted unit is marketed mostly to investors. Fewer bidders is the cost, and it usually shows up as time on market before it shows up as a discount.

The tenant’s deposit and any rent paid in advance transfer to the buyer at completion, handled through the completion account rather than between you and the tenant. Confirm the figures with your solicitor, and check what access for viewings the tenancy agreement obliges the tenant to give. An uncooperative tenant can stall marketing for weeks.

Decide before listing whether to sell tenanted or wait for the lease to end. If you are inside a lock-in or an SSD tier anyway, waiting may cost nothing you were not already paying.

CPF, property tax and maintenance are settled at completion

If you used CPF for the purchase, the sale must refund the principal you withdrew plus the accrued interest on it, along with any housing grant used and its accrued interest. Check each owner’s figure separately, because the refunds return to their own accounts rather than to a household pot.

CPF Board states that the proceeds repay the outstanding housing loan first, then make the CPF refund. Where a sale at market value leaves too little for the full refund, the remaining proceeds are refunded and no cash top-up is required. A shortfall against the bank loan is a different matter and remains yours to fund.

Two smaller items are apportioned to the completion date rather than charged as fees:

• Property tax. IRAS bills the owner for the full year, so the completion account apportions it between you and the buyer from the completion date.
• Maintenance and sinking fund contributions. The management corporation charges by quarter, and the unused portion after completion is credited back to you through the same account.

Neither is large, and both are easy to forget when estimating proceeds. Ask your solicitor for the completion account statement rather than reconstructing it.

Read CPF Board’s refund guidance and our CPF property guide before you treat the expected proceeds as available.

Build the worksheet before you set an asking price

Run it twice, at a price you would accept and at the price you want.

Net-proceeds line	Lower case	Target case
Selling price	$_	$_
Outstanding mortgage	($_)	($_)
Early redemption penalty	($_)	($_)
Legal subsidy clawback	($_)	($_)
CPF refund, owner 1	($_)	($_)
CPF refund, owner 2	($_)	($_)
Agent commission and GST	($_)	($_)
Conveyancing and disbursements	($_)	($_)
Seller’s Stamp Duty	($_)	($_)
Estimated cash proceeds	$_	$_

Commission is negotiable and CEA prescribes no rate, so the figure on that line is a decision rather than a given. Our guide to agent fees when selling compares a fixed fee against a percentage and covers the exclusivity clause that can cost more than either.

Moving, storage, repairs and any staging sit outside the completion account and still reduce what reaches your next purchase.

Check the dates before you accept an offer

Three dates decide more of your proceeds than the price does:

1. Your acquisition date, which fixes the SSD schedule and the tier you are in.
2. Your lock-in end date, which fixes whether a redemption penalty applies.
3. Your subsidy clawback end date.

Waiting weeks rather than months can cross a boundary on any of the three. On a $2 million sale, moving from the third year to the fourth cuts SSD from $160,000 to $80,000, which no negotiation on price is likely to match.

For a comparison with the flat side of a move, our HDB selling costs guide works the same arithmetic with HDB fees and the resale application charge.

Sources: IRAS, Seller’s Stamp Duty for residential property, CPF Board, refund when selling or transferring property, IRAS, property tax for property owners, CEA, engaging a property agent.