Alexander Linton is a British chartered accountant based in Singapore and the founder of Rumavi, a commission-free property and relocation advisory covering Asian markets. His full breakdown of Singapore’s 60 percent foreign buyer stamp duty covers exemptions, exit maths and the PR pathway in more detail.
Every month, a foreigner sitting in my office asks me the same question. Rent or buy? After they hear the answer, most go pale.
Buying a S$2 million condo in Singapore as a foreigner means handing the Inland Revenue S$1.2 million in tax before you’ve touched a single square foot. That’s not a typo. The Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty for non-PR foreigners is 60 percent. Flat. Every property. Any price.
I moved from London to Singapore in 2009. Back then, the ABSD didn’t exist. In April 2023, it doubled from 30 percent to 60 percent for foreigners, and as of Budget 2026, it’s still sitting there. If you’re thinking about buying here, that’s the only number that matters. Until you understand why it exists, you can’t make the right call.
The 60 percent wall most expats don’t see coming
Here’s the table worth memorising:
- Singapore Citizens: 0 percent on first property, 20 percent on second, 30 percent on third
- Permanent Residents: 5 percent on first, 30 percent on second, 35 percent on third
- Foreigners (non-PR): 60 percent on any property, whether first or fifth
- Corporate entities: 65 percent
The gap between a citizen and a non-PR foreigner buying the same first property is 60 percentage points. On the S$2M condo above, that’s S$1.2M of difference for the identical unit.
There are exemptions. Under the US-Singapore FTA, American nationals are treated as citizens, meaning they pay 0 percent ABSD on their first Singapore residence. The same applies to nationals and permanent residents of Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland under the EFTA treaty. Five passports, full remission, real money saved.
A few warnings. First, the FTA remission is not automatic – you have to apply through IRAS (Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore). Second, it only covers your first Singapore residential property. And third, the US route is citizens only, so green card holders don’t qualify.
Plenty of agents will quote you the exemption and forget to mention the application paperwork. If you’re not one of those five nationalities, you’re looking at the full 60 percent.
Why the 60 percent exists (and why Singapore isn’t Hong Kong)
Most agents frame the ABSD as a punishment. It isn’t. It’s policy doing what it was designed to do.
Singapore’s private residential market is now the most expensive in the Asia Pacific, having overtaken Hong Kong. That happened without the 60 percent going away. Imagine what the numbers would look like without it.
The ABSD is primarily a market-cooling measure, not a specifically anti-foreign one. Local upgraders pay stamp duty too, and the government has adjusted rates multiple times in both directions based on market temperature. The 2023 package was literally titled ‘Measures for a Sustainable Property Market’. The Monetary Authority of Singapore has said the measures are ‘functioning as intended’. I read that as: the 60 percent is not going anywhere soon.
But property is only part of the picture. Singapore has been tightening access to its economy more broadly. Employment Pass (EP) qualifying salaries rose again in January 2025, benchmarked to the top third of local wages for professionals, managers, executives, and technicians. Since April 2024, employers must report workforce nationality data to the Ministry of Manpower as part of every EP application, feeding into a mandatory diversity scoring framework. The government hasn’t called this protectionism. The effect is the same.
The pressure behind it is not unreasonable. Locals have raised sustained concerns about foreign professionals concentrating in certain sectors, about neighbourhoods changing faster than communities can absorb, about what Singapore is for and who it is for. These aren’t fringe views. They surface in Parliament, in election campaigns, in the comment sections of every single article about foreign talent.
Sydney, Vancouver, and London all watched foreign capital reprice their cities and paid the political consequences. Singapore watched those cities and made different choices. The ABSD is one of them. So is COMPASS. So is the Fair Consideration Framework.
You aren’t being punished. You’re being told, clearly and by design, that this market wasn’t built around you. Whether that matters depends entirely on what you’re actually trying to do here.
The maths that kills the deal for short-stay expats
The average expat posting in Singapore runs two to four years. Most relocate for a role, stay until it ends, and then they’re somewhere else. Most agents don’t show you what that timeline does to the maths.
On a S$2M condo as a non-FTA foreigner, you pay:
- S$1.2M ABSD
- Around S$69,600 BSD (progressive, 1–6 percent)
- Roughly 2–3 percent in legal, agent and valuation fees
That’s approximately S$1.33M in transaction costs before you’ve painted a wall. To break even when you sell, the property has to appreciate by about 66 percent. Singapore private residential compounds at roughly 3–5 percent annually over long cycles. That’s twelve to twenty years of appreciation just to recover your entry costs.
Sell in four years and you aren’t breaking even. You’re subsidising the government. And because foreigners can’t use CPF, every dollar of that is cash out of your savings account.
For anyone on a fixed-term posting, the arithmetic is brutal. Rent. Invest the ABSD money somewhere it can actually compound. Revisit the question when your timeline changes.
When buying actually makes sense
The 60 percent isn’t universal. Three types of foreign buyers run the numbers and still pull the trigger:
- The FTA nationals. Americans, Swiss, Norwegians, Icelanders, Liechtensteiners. Your ABSD drops to zero on the first property, assuming you file the remission correctly through IRAS, because it doesn’t happen on its own. Singapore is effectively on sale for you relative to the rest of the expat community.
- If you’re on the path to permanent residency, the maths looks entirely different. Your ABSD drops from 60 percent to 5 percent the moment your IC turns blue. Most successful PR applicants have two to four years of Employment Pass tenure before approval. Renting while that application clears is almost always cheaper than paying 55 percentage points of tax to skip the queue.
- The ultra wealthy. When 60 percent is a rounding error, Singapore becomes a stable, politically neutral place to park capital in a strong currency. Cash again. You aren’t here for leverage, you’re here for stability.
So what do I tell the foreigner in my office?
If you’re on a two-year posting, rent. Bank the salary. Take a place in Tanglin or River Valley and enjoy the city without the mortgage.
If you’re here for the long haul and PR is on the table, rent until your status changes, then revisit with the right tax profile.
If you’re one of the five FTA passports or sitting on serious capital, run the numbers with an independent adviser and move deliberately, not because an agent told you the market is hot.
For everyone else – the majority who end up in my office – the answer is still rent. Invest what you would’ve paid in tax. Revisit when your passport, your PR, or your timeline changes. Until then, the maths isn’t even close.