HDB Remaining Lease Explained: What 60, 75 or 90 Years Really Means

Every HDB flat starts life with a 99-year lease. “Remaining lease” is simply how many of those years are left, and it quietly controls three things that matter to a buyer: how much of your CPF you can use, how much a bank will lend, and how easily you can sell later. It is one of our nine scoring pillars — the value pillar — precisely because it is a fact about the block that no renovation can change.

How lease decay works

A lease runs down in a straight line — one year per year — but value does not fall evenly. For the first few decades buyers barely notice; the market discount steepens as a flat passes roughly the 60-year-remaining mark and again below 40, because financing and CPF rules bite. At lease expiry the flat returns to the state with no compensation, which is why the tail years are discounted hardest.

CPF and remaining lease

The key test is whether the remaining lease can cover the youngest buyer until age 95. When it does, you can generally use CPF up to the full Valuation Limit. When it does not, CPF that can be used is pro-rated by how much of that “to-95” span the lease covers — and if the remaining lease is 20 years or less, CPF usually cannot be used at all. This is the single rule most first-timers miss when eyeing an older, cheaper flat.

Loans and remaining lease

Banks and HDB size a loan against both the value and the lease. A comfortable lease supports the maximum loan-to-value; a short one reduces the tenure they will grant and can cut the loan amount, meaning a bigger cash-plus-CPF downpayment. Two flats at the same price can therefore need very different amounts of cash upfront purely because of lease.

Reading a block’s lease

On every block page we show the approximate remaining lease, derived from the block’s lease commencement (HDB’s official lease-commencement date, taken from resale records where available, which can start years after the block was physically built) against the standard 99-year term, and fold it into the value pillar (full credit at 90+ years, tapering to zero by 40). It is an estimate for screening — always confirm the exact figure on the official listing before you commit. Investors weighing lease against price can start from the investor rankings, which price lease decay and resale momentum directly.

So is a short lease a bad buy?

Not necessarily. If you are older and buying your last home, a 60-year-remaining flat you can pay for largely in cash may suit you perfectly and cost far less. If you are 30 and expect to upgrade or sell, a longer lease protects both your financing and your future buyer pool. The right lease is the one that matches your horizon — screen for it deliberately rather than letting a low price decide for you.

Figures on this page are computed from the current snapshot and update each rebuild. Contains information from data.gov.sg (Singapore Open Data Licence) and OneMap, Singapore Land Authority. This is general information for research, not financial or professional advice.