Resale Condos Taking Longer to Sell as Buyers Hold Back Amid New Launches

In 2022, listings for completed resale condos were taken off the PropertyGuru portal after a median of 45 days. The following year, this went down to 39 days. But as at 18 May 2026, active resale listings created in the first three months of the year had a median age of 81 days.

Similarly, 99.co associate head of research Joel Lim noted that resale condo listings taken off the portal in the first quarter of 2026 had been up for a median of 106 days, up from 66 days in the same period in 2025.

“The resale condo market has clearly shifted from the urgency we saw at its peak,” said PropertyGuru Singapore’s managing director Yao Lu. With listings staying up longer, buyers have more options and more time to decide, and market conditions have moved in the buyers’ favour, he added.

The trend has been consistent across all parts of Singapore. On PropertyGuru, the median age of active listings as at 18 May 2026 was between 81 and 82 days across all three regions. Four out of 10 listings in each region had been live for more than 90 days.

For 99.co, the CCR saw the sharpest increase, with the median age of active listings rising to 145 days in the first quarter of 2026, compared with 76 days in the same period in 2025. In the RCR, it rose from 69 days to 116 days, while in the OCR, it rose from 60 days to 86 days.

On PropertyGuru, there were 21,614 active resale condo listings overall, with 5,673 in the CCR, 7,914 in the RCR and 7,964 in the OCR. About 79.6 per cent had been live for more than 60 days, and 41.5 per cent for more than 90 days.

Wong Shanting, director and head of research at real estate adviser Newmark Singapore, said higher land costs mean the cost of replacing a home is expected to rise further over the next 12 to 18 months. Some sellers continue to hold out for higher prices as a result.

PropNex chief executive Kelvin Fong said the median resale unit price was S$1,770 per sq ft as at 19 May 2026, up from S$1,747 psf in 2025. In contrast, the median for new condo sales is 44.3 per cent higher at S$2,554 psf. He added that the 3,225 units resold in the first three months of 2026 were still broadly in line with the 10-year quarterly average resale volume of 3,216 units from 2016 to 2025.

Chief researcher and strategist at property firm Realion (OrangeTee and ETC) Group, Christine Sun, said the slowdown in transaction volumes can also be observed in other sectors such as the HDB resale, rental, and the industrial markets. She attributed the broader slowdown partly to macroeconomic uncertainties, including geopolitical conflicts, more layoffs in some sectors and rising inflationary concerns from higher oil prices.

Sun said the resale market could still remain resilient, as the supply of newly completed units is low and the price gap between new and resale condo units remains substantial. Recent changes to executive condo rules, including a higher allocation of units to first-time buyers and longer minimum occupation period, may encourage more potential HDB upgraders to turn to the resale market, Sun added.