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 May 18, 2026, active resale listings created in the first three months of the year had a median age of 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.

“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.

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

On the buyers’ side, the article highlights the case of a two-bedroom condominium unit in Serangoon that failed to sell after two months. The property agent persuaded the owner to reduce the S$1.92 million asking price by S$100,000. An offer was made in May for the 1,100 sq ft leasehold unit, which was first listed in early February. But that deal fell through because the potential buyer was facing issues selling his own home, a common hurdle for buyers who need to dispose of one property before buying another.

John Tan, who has been looking for a resale condo unit, said he has viewed more than 30 units since a year ago, but has not been able to strike a deal yet. “Many of the units I saw were priced well above the market rate. And if the location of the unit is good, there is no room for negotiation,” said the 40-year-old sales manager.

PropNex chief executive Kelvin Fong said the median resale unit price was S$1,770 per sq ft as at May 19, 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.

Fong said these figures show that private residential resale demand has not weakened materially. 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.

The number of resale condo units sold has fallen for two consecutive quarters since the July to September period in 2025. However, asking prices have remained firm.

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.