Home Loan (Mortgage) in Singapore: Your Questions Answered
These are the questions people ask most often about home loan (mortgage). Each answer is short; follow the links for the full detail.
What does a home loan (mortgage) calculation tell me?
Estimates monthly repayments on a bank home loan for private property or HDB flats.
What is the formula?
Monthly instalment = P × r ÷ (1 − (1 + r)^−n).
What do I need to enter?
Loan amount (S$), Interest rate (% a year), Loan tenure (years).
Should I rely on this before signing?
Use it to plan, then confirm the figures with your banker, lawyer or the IRAS stamp duty calculator before you exercise an option to purchase.
Can you show an example?
For example, with these inputs:
- Loan amount (S$): 800,000
- Interest rate (% a year): 2.8
- Loan tenure (years): 30
the calculator returns:
- Monthly instalment: S$3,287.16
- Total interest: S$383,376.00
- Total repaid: S$1,183,376.00
Any tips?
- Stamp duty must be paid within 14 days of signing, so have the cash ready before you exercise the option.
- Banks test your TDSR at a stress-test rate, not the advertised rate, so your borrowing limit is lower than you might expect.
- HDB loans are capped at 25 years and must be fully repaid by age 65.
Background
Most Singaporeans live in HDB flats, which can be financed with an HDB concessionary loan at 0.1% above the CPF Ordinary Account rate or with a bank loan. Private property must be financed with a bank loan, and banks offer fixed, floating and SORA-pegged packages.
Singapore's property market is shaped by cooling measures introduced since 2009, including Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty, loan-to-value limits and debt servicing ratios. These rules are adjusted when the market runs hot, so the numbers you see today may differ from what friends paid a few years ago.
The Total Debt Servicing Ratio limits monthly debt repayments to 55% of gross monthly income for any property loan, and the Mortgage Servicing Ratio limits the housing instalment to 30% of income for HDB flats and new executive condominiums. Banks apply a medium-term interest rate in these tests rather than the rate you will actually pay.
Related calculations
- Rental Yield Calculator: Measures the return from rent before and after costs such as property tax, maintenance fees and agent fees.
- Home Loan Refinancing Calculator: Compares your current mortgage with a new rate to show the monthly saving and how long switching costs take to recover.
- Property Downpayment Calculator: Splits the downpayment into cash and CPF and shows the remaining loan.
- Buyer's Stamp Duty (BSD) Calculator: Calculates Buyer's Stamp Duty on a Singapore residential property using the tiered rates from 1% to 6%.
Try it yourself with the Home Loan (Mortgage) Calculator.
Run your own numbers: Home Loan (Mortgage) Calculator