Property Strategy

Your mortgage is a loan that supports you over your property ownership journey. Being clear about when you'd be selling your property would help you avoid bank penalties.

Pick the right terms!

By knowing what is your property strategy, you'd be able to prioritize the right terms that are offered within a bank.

Terms such as waiver of fees upon sale, a shorter lock in period to help you refinance earlier for a longer loan tenure or a bank program that helps you offset interest by depositing your excess cash.

We prioritize helping you save money, throughout your home ownership journey, from purchase, to exit by picking the right terms and the lowest interest rates!

Why should you invest in a private property in Singapore?

Singapore is a very small country, at 726km² which means the supply is limited because the land is scarce.

Singapore holds onto very impressive titles that increases the demand such as
- Best airport in the world,
- Best business environment for 15 years in a row
- 2nd busiest shipping port in the world.

Singapore is also sheltered from natural disasters, have political stability, affordable tax rates, low crime rates a good education system and excellent healthcare.

We can't say for certain, where the prices are headed in the next 5 years, but consensus for 10 or 20 years later, prices are likely to increase due to supply and demand, based on a immutable law we call inflation.

If we account for inflation, your mortgage rates can sometimes even be negative, which means, the real effect of borrowing money is positive to your net worth.

In 10 or 20 years, you would have also significantly reduced your principle owing to your mortgage, which is the most predictable way, to become a millionaire.

Buying a Property in Singapore

When buying a private property in Singapore, you will need to put down a 25% down payment and the respective buyer's stamp duty The remainder of 75% can be financed by a bank loan. check on your eligibility by contacting us

You can use as little as 5% cash, the rest of the down payment including the tax can be settled using CPF-OA funds.
Keep in mind, the property tax has to be paid in cash, before being reimbursed by your CPF-OA account.

If you have intention to decouple, consider your property ownership ratios to optimize for tax savings in the future.

For more details, look at our page for getting a new loan.

Holding onto your property in Singapore

When holding onto your mortgage in Singapore, do make sure to keep your rates refreshed by either repricing or refinancing to make sure to avoid thereafter rates.

Holding onto your property in Singapore, is the most predictable way to become a millionaire as your mortgage gets paid down, and your property price will likely increase over time due to inflation and a stronger demand.

You can't pay for rent using CPF, and unlike your mortgage; rent does not contribute to principle repayment.
Taking into account your interest payment and condo management fees and your property tax, holding onto a property is a more stable and predictable expense for your housing needs.

Refinancing

Refinancing your property allows you to get the best promotional rates in the entire market. The promotional rates also come with a welcome bonus that pays for most if not all of your moving fees. (legal and valuation fees)

The legal and valuation subsidies typically comes with a 3 year clawback which is why banks usually give a free repricing for each refinanced loan. This can save you up to $1000 because banks do charge an administrative fee for repricing your loan.

When refinancing, you can extend your loan tenure to 75-age, which helps optimize cashflow. Refinancing is also when you'd be getting legal subsidies which is a great time to look at gearing up or decoupling your loan.

Repricing

Repricing is usually free once, when you buy a property or when you refinance a loan. Else, repricing can cost $300-$1000. If you do not have the free repricing, you may consider refinancing your property, unless you have intention to sell between year 2 and 3. This way you may consider staying within the bank to be able to avoid the legal and valuation fee clawbacks.

When repricing, do feel free to contact us to make sure you pick the right rate package.

Selling your property in Singapore

Property transactions are expensive, think about your agent fees of typically 2%, and when you buy the next property, you'd be paying stamp duties of 3-6%. There are also other costs such as, moving costs, renovation costs.

Mortgage penalties
For your mortgage, there may be cancellation fees, if you're still locked in, clawback of legal and valuation subsidies if you have recently refinanced, or rate review dates where you need to execute your sell order on a specific day. We can reduce our penalties on mortgage by planning our exit. If the purpose of exiting the property is to take profit, you can do so by gearing up your property.

Why should you sell?

Upgrading/resizing
You may be looking to upgrade the size of your property, as your family grows and require more space or when you're looking at a smaller place if your kids have grown up and left the house.

Relocate
You may be relocating for your work or your kid's school, yes Singapore is small but if you're looking at a long term relocation, you may not want to travel from one end of Singapore to the other everyday.

Valuation and time decay
A property in Singapore typically has a 99 year leasehold, due to that, they are subject to time decay; a rate of depreciation that follows the time the property has before the ownership of the land gets taken back by the state. Time decay decreases your property value at an increasing rate over time, where the effects of the decay becomes more obvious towards the end of the property lifespan.

Banks will require the property's lease to be 30 years after the mortgage ends, which means when the lease is left with 60 years, the affordability of your property will start to decline as people are no longer able to borrow 30 years and the demand of your property property drops, which means, the price of the property will start to decline.