Ethan Ng
597 HDB resale flats sold for $1m or more in the third quarter of 2026, the highest quarterly count on record (Real Estate Asia, 25 October 2026). An HDB resale flat is one you buy from its existing owner rather than new from HDB. If you are looking at flats in this price range, the asking price is only the start of the sum. What decides whether you can buy is how much you are allowed to borrow, and how much of the rest has to be cash.
So this is less a luxury story than an affordability one. At a million dollars, three HDB rules land at the same time: a cap on your repayment as a share of your income, a ceiling on how much you can borrow, and a gap that cannot be borrowed or paid from CPF. What income and cash does it actually take to be one of those 597 buyers?
If you have looked at a resale listing with a seven-figure price, you have probably done one sum in your head: the monthly repayment, against what you pay now.
That is a fair instinct. For most loans the monthly payment is the constraint that bites. If it fits the budget, the purchase is on.
Three rules govern buying a resale flat, and all three tighten at this price (Cashew mortgage guide, HDB and MAS rules).
MSR, the Mortgage Servicing Ratio. Your monthly home loan repayment cannot exceed 30% of your gross monthly household income when you buy an HDB flat. The higher the price, the higher the repayment, and the higher the income you have to show to stay under the same 30%.
The 75% LTV ceiling. LTV means loan-to-value. Your housing loan, whether it comes from HDB or from a bank, is capped at 75% of the price or the valuation, whichever is lower. The other 25% is yours to find.
Cash over valuation. HDB values the flat. If the seller's price sits above that valuation, the difference cannot be borrowed and cannot be paid from CPF. Both the lender and CPF work off the valuation, so anything above it has nowhere to come from except your own cash.
At $1m these three do not take turns. They arrive together.
Here is what those rules do to one flat. Assumptions, all of them: an asking price of $1.05m, an HDB valuation of $1m, a 25-year loan, no other debt, and an HDB concessionary loan (the loan HDB itself gives, rather than a bank) at 2.6% a year. That is HDB's published rate. Check it on hdb.gov.sg before you rely on it, because it moves with the CPF Ordinary Account rate rather than with what banks are quoting this month. The bank-loan version of the same flat comes after.
Two things stand out. The first is that the income figure is a ceiling test, not a comfort test: about $11,333 is what the rule demands, not what the purchase feels like. The second is that the cash is the part no income can substitute for. On this HDB loan example it runs from $50,000, the valuation gap you pay whatever your CPF balance looks like, up to $300,000 if CPF covers none of the downpayment.
If you go the bank route instead, the structure is identical: $750,000 loan, $250,000 downpayment, $50,000 cash for the valuation gap. What is different is the cash floor, and the rate.
A bank loan requires at least 5% of the valuation, $50,000 here, to be paid in cash rather than from CPF. Added to the $50,000 valuation gap, that puts the cash floor at $100,000 instead of $50,000. The top of the range is still $300,000 if you use no CPF at all.
The rate also changes, and with it the repayment. We are not putting a bank repayment figure here, because we do not have a dated bank rate to hand. At this loan size, every 0.1 percentage point on the rate costs roughly $40 a month, and raises the income you must show by roughly $130 a month.
One thing to ask your lender: whether MSR is assessed at the rate on your loan or at a higher assumed rate. If it is the latter, the income you need is higher than the figure above.
The figures also leave out stamp duty, legal and valuation fees, and agent commission. Those are cash too. Budget for them separately.
Ethan Ng is Head of Mortgage Consulting at Cashew, bringing deep home financing expertise from leadership roles at PropertyGuru Finance and Maybank to guide clients and advisors across Singapore's mortgage market.
Rising loan sizes above $1 million and rising cash/CPF down payments may not describe the same buyers, but two different groups moving in opposite financial directions, reflecting a K-shaped split between those with more money and those with less. The report's data shows direction but not scale, so this is a plausible reading rather than a proven one, and buyers should calculate their own affordability rather than rely on market averages.
Sarah Chen·22 Oct 2026
Your actual cash from selling an HDB flat is the sale price minus the outstanding loan, the CPF refund plus accrued interest, and selling costs such as agent commission, legal fees and any resale levy. Because the CPF refund (with accrued interest) goes back into your Ordinary Account rather than as cash, the amount available as a budget for your next home can be significantly lower than the headline sale price.
Sarah Chen·18 Oct 2026© 2026 Cashew. All rights reserved.
