Small Singapore condos attract steady demand yet are tougher to resell

When a 732 square foot leasehold one-bedder at Marina Bay Residences finally cleared at 1.6 million dollars in August 2025, three years after listing and barely above the 1.55 million dollars paid in 2016, it read less like a personal misstep and more like a systems story. The unit had looked safe on paper, right down to a corporate tenant in year one. Then the lease did not renew, rent underwhelmed against mortgage and fees, and resale demand proved slower than the surrounding skyline implied. This is the pattern that animates small-unit investing today. Entry feels easy, carrying costs feel manageable, but exit is an exercise in patience and pricing discipline.

Across 24,327 resale transactions drawn from 146 non-landed projects completed since 2000, studios and one-bedders accounted for about one in four deals from 2019 to 2025. The mix skews toward the Core Central Region by share, rising from roughly 30 percent in 2019 to 2022 to about 35 percent since 2023, even as the Outside Central Region generates the larger absolute volume. In the first seven months of 2025 alone, the OCR saw 352 such units trade, versus 209 in the RCR and 70 in the CCR. Demand is present, but it concentrates in specific corridors and behaves differently from mid sized homes.

The growth and profitability gap is measurable. From 2019 to 2024, studios and one-bedders appreciated at about 3 percent per year on average. Two to five bedroom units advanced at roughly 5 to 8 percent annually. Profit incidence diverges as well. About 89 percent of studio and one-bedroom resales booked gains, compared with 93 percent for two bedders, 95 percent for three and four bedders, and 99 percent for five bedders. The gradient should not surprise an operator’s eye. Smaller product targets a narrower user segment and offers less configuration flexibility, so resale pricing depends more on a thinner set of buyers clearing at a given moment.

That thinness shows up in time to sell and in listing supply. As of September 5, property portals carried thousands of one-bedder listings built between 2010 and 2025, alongside a few hundred studios. These tallies include reposts and duplications, yet the directional signal is intact. Investors use these units as entry level rental assets, so a sizable slice of inventory sits with owners who will sell opportunistically once a preferred return is met. When rates rise or rents normalize, that optionality fades and the listing pool lingers.

The product itself has also shifted under sellers’ feet. A decade ago, a one-bedder at 700 to 800 square feet felt generous and premium, particularly in integrated developments. Newer launches have compressed footprints and squeezed more rooms into sub 1,000 square foot layouts. Three bedrooms in 800 to 900 square feet resets buyer psychology, because more households can imagine a longer stay without a price leap into significantly larger floor plates. The result is not a collapse in demand for one-bedders, but a repricing of utility. For the same cheque size, buyers can now chase an extra room in a new project or accept a one-bedder in an older stack with less efficient layout. Many stretch for the former.

Treat small units like a product with a funnel and the logic becomes clearer. At the top of the funnel are singles and couples prioritizing location and absolute price, plus investors targeting yield. In the middle are users testing whether 400 to 700 square feet can handle life changes. At the bottom is exit, where the user either trades up or the investor sells into a narrow pool of similar buyers. The leak points are evident. Layout constraints reduce the dwell time of owner occupiers as they outgrow the space. Investor buyers watch net yield after fees and interest, then compare that figure with alternative assets or newer projects with better rentability. If net yield compresses, the buyer pool shrinks or demands a discount.

The growth math that once felt straightforward needs a refresh. At launch, one-bedders often price to move. The monthly rent can look attractive against a modest quantum, and vacancy risk feels low in prime or transit rich locations. Over a full hold period, the picture depends on three variables that do not move in sync. The first is rent trajectory, which can soften when corporate demand rotates or when new supply offers smaller rooms with modern amenities that renters prefer. The second is carrying cost, which can rise with interest rates or maintenance fees that weigh more heavily on smaller units’ net yield. The third is resale velocity, which slows when competing launches reframe value per dollar and when the next buyer segment narrows in a given district. If two of those three tilt the wrong way, the owner becomes a reluctant long term holder and the IRR drifts.

The dataset helps separate narrative from structure. The Singapore one-bedder resale market is not broken. It is simply specialized, and specialization demands accurate underwriting. Singles still want an ownership path without heavy debt, and investors still like the idea of a modest quantum that can be tenanted quickly. The constraint is in the exit assumptions. A buyer pool that is steady is not the same as a buyer pool that clears at rising prices within a tight window. The first supports rental continuity. The second is what flips need, and that is where small units underperform larger homes over time.

Older one-bedders face the steepest slope. Projects delivered more than ten years ago tend to carry layouts that feel less efficient by current standards. New builds compress circulation space and push more function into fewer square feet, so buyers compare not just price, but perceived utility per dollar. When a new three bedder fits into 900 square feet and still stages well, yesterday’s spacious one bedder must work harder to justify its resale price. Investor demand gravitates to the configuration with the easiest rental story, not the largest absolute room sizes, and that further weighs on legacy stock.

Liquidity also wears a policy and financing tint, even if the underlying thesis is about product. Investors who bought small units at launch for affordability reasons may find, several years in, that refinancing and fee loads chip away at net returns. When rent fails to cover mortgage and maintenance, conviction decays. Some owners will stay the course, but a nontrivial number will list, wait for their target price, then capitulate to a lower clearing level if months turn into years. That is not panic selling. It is time cost becoming explicit.

For operators deciding whether to back this slice of the market, the frame should prioritize use case clarity over headline yield. The strongest reason to buy a small unit remains life fit for a specific user who values location and can tolerate space constraints for a defined period. The second strongest remains a rental thesis anchored in micro location and tenant profile, not in generic corporate demand. The weak reason is the flip based on quick appreciation. The data shows slower annual price growth and a lower profitability rate than larger apartments, even before counting the time value of a prolonged sales process.

There is still a growth story, just not the one many imagined a cycle ago. Declining household sizes should lift transaction counts for studios and one bedroom homes over time, although the increase is unlikely to be dramatic. Rising home prices will funnel some buyers into entry level private stock because that is where the absolute quantum remains accessible. The mix shift supports baseline demand, but it will not erase the exit dynamics that come with a specialized product. Price growth will likely trail mid sized homes in most conditions. Profit rates will remain a few points lower. Sales cycles will stretch when new launches change the comparison set.

None of this means small units are a mistake. It means they behave like a niche product with loyal users, decent utilization, and modest resale velocity. In platform terms, they are supply that stays listed longer and clears when the right buyer shows up, not supply that clears because demand is broad and impatient. That is a solvable constraint if the underwriting matches the reality. Buy for use, or buy for rental cash flow with conservative assumptions and an honest timeline. Do not buy for a quick exit unless the micro story is unusually compelling and the layout beats the new-build competition in ways that matter to the next buyer.

The French investor who exited at near cost after nine years of ownership and three years of listing did not fail the market. She met it. Her unit delivered some rent at first and then struggled to cover the mortgage and fees once the initial tenant moved on. The resale pool was there, just not at her target price, and not on her preferred schedule. That is the nature of a narrow buyer market. It rewards clarity on purchase and patience on exit. It punishes borrowed assumptions about growth that belong to a different product class.

For founders, PMs, and growth leads who read property as another marketplace, the lesson travels. When the supply side builds a product that serves a specific segment well, adoption can be steady without being explosive. When adjacent products evolve to deliver more perceived value for a similar price, yesterday’s utility premium becomes today’s discount. When exit paths rely on a narrow cohort, holding periods lengthen, and returns depend on cash flow discipline rather than multiple expansion. The small unit story is the product story. The funnel is tight, the users are loyal, and the math works best when you respect what the product is instead of pretending it behaves like something else.

Use the phrase Singapore one-bedder resale sparingly and place it in the underwriting memo, not on the vision slide. This market will keep moving, but it will move on its own terms.