Government removes 15-month wait-out period for private property owners to buy HDB resale flats

Private housing owners who sell their property will no longer have to wait 15 months before buying an HDB resale flat. On July 28, HDB announced that private residential property owners who purchase a non-subsidised HDB resale flat without an HDB housing loan will no longer be subject to the 15-month wait-out period, with immediate effect.

The move follows several quarters of price moderation in the HDB resale market, said the public housing agency. The HDB Resale Price Index saw two consecutive quarters of decline this year, falling 0.1% q-o-q in 1Q2026 and 0.3% q-o-q in 2Q2026. The decline comes on top of five consecutive quarters of slower or no price growth from 4Q2024 to 4Q2025.

HDB added that the stabilisation in the resale market is further supported by a larger number of new flats that will be completing their minimum occupation period (MOP) and entering the resale market over the next few years. 8,000 Build-to-Order flats reached their MOP in 2025, with HDB estimating the figure to increase to 13,500 in 2026, 15,000 in 2027 and 19,500 in 2028.

Read also: HDB resale prices fall for second consecutive quarter, down 0.3% in 2Q2026

The wait-out period was first introduced in September 2022 as part of a package of property cooling measures for the HDB resale market that included a cut in the HDB loan-to-value (LTV) limit to 80% and an interest rate floor of 3% for HDB loans. The LTV limit was further reduced to 75% in August 2024.

Seniors aged 55 and above were exempted from the 15-month wait-out period if they moved from their private property to a four-room or smaller non-subsidised flat.

In May 2025, Minister for National Development Chee Hong Tat said that the government may remove the wait-out period if resale prices in the HDB market continued to moderate.

Analysts largely welcomed the removal of the wait-out period. Eugene Lim, key executive officer at ERA Singapore, sees it as a "measured response to a more balanced HDB resale market". "It gives private homeowners greater flexibility to right-size, while the larger pipeline of flats reaching MOP should help the market absorb the additional demand and preserve overall market stability," he adds.

Kelvin Fong, CEO of PropNex, said the government’s timing was “well-judged”, given that the HDB resale market has “visibly found more stable footing”. By eliminating the wait-out period, buyers will also be able to avoid “the awkward gap between selling and buying” that the rule had imposed on former private home owners seeking to downgrade to a resale flat, Fong adds.

More demand for larger resale flats

Since the introduction of the 15-month wait-out period, purchases of five-room or larger resale flats by private property owners have largely tempered, points out Lee Sze Teck, senior director of data analytics at Huttons Asia. Data compiled by the agency show that the transaction volumes for five-room and executive/multi-gen HDB resale flats eased from 6,951 and 1,946 in 2022 to 5,966 and 1,539 units in 2025, respectively.

Read also: What's moving the market: Singapore's biggest property deals and hottest searches (July 24)

With the wait-out period now abolished, Lee expects more private property owners to enter the resale market for five-room and larger flats. However, while this may boost resale market activity, a spike in HDB resale prices is "unlikely", given that first-time buyers have more options to choose from, ranging from BTO flats and executive condos to private residential homes, he notes.

Christine Sun, chief researcher and strategist at Realion (OrangeTee & ETC) Group, believes more million-dollar resale flat transactions are on the horizon, driven by private home buyers downgrading. Still, any price spikes will likely be contained within this specific segment, given that premium flat transactions account for a minority of total resale flat deals.

ERA’s Lim expects the change to unlock some pent-up demand for resale flats, particularly for larger, newer and well-located homes. Additionally, the greater flexibility may facilitate activity in the private resale housing market, as owners dispose of their existing properties.

Meanwhile, Mohan Sandrasegeran, head of research and data analytics at SRI, expects resale flat prices to remain stable, notwithstanding any additional transaction activity from the revised policy. He projects prices to grow between 0.5% and 2% for the full year.