Developers sold 153 new private homes in August — the quietest month since February 2024, and a 92.9% fall on the same month last year. The headline looks alarming. What actually happened is more mundane than that, and more useful to understand.
The number everyone will quote is 153. That is how many new private homes, excluding Executive Condominiums, developers sold in August 2026. It is a 79.1% fall from July's 731 units and a 92.9% fall from the 2,142 units sold in August 2025, and it matches February 2024 as the weakest month in more than two years.
Before reading anything into that about demand, look at the other number: 116. That is how many new units developers put on the market during the entire month, all of them at one project, Union Square Residences. In July they launched 889. August fell inside the Lunar seventh month, which developers routinely schedule around, so the launch calendar was effectively empty.
In Singapore, monthly new home sales are driven by the launch calendar more than by buyer appetite. A month with almost nothing to buy produces a low number almost by definition. The interesting question is never "how many sold" — it is "how many sold relative to what was available".
On that measure August reads differently. With no fresh product, buyers still took up 153 units from previously launched projects. Demand did not disappear; it simply had nowhere new to go. The first eight months of 2026 now stand at roughly 5,038 units excluding ECs, and PropNex Research expects volume to recover from the second half of September as launches resume.
The Rest of Central Region led the month with 72 units, ahead of the Outside Central Region's 57 — not because the city fringe got busier, but because the suburbs fell away faster. The OCR had been carrying volume in July on the back of the Lentor Gardens Residences launch, and without a fresh launch it dropped 82.9%. The Core Central Region managed 24 units, three-quarters of which came from a single project.
| Region | Jul 2026 | Aug 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| CCR (Core Central) | 235 | 24 | −89.8% |
| RCR (Rest of Central) | 162 | 72 | −55.6% |
| OCR (Outside Central) | 334 | 57 | −82.9% |
| Total (ex. EC) | 731 | 153 | −79.1% |
Dunearn House was the top seller across the whole primary market with 18 units at a median $3,008 psf, and accounted for about 75% of all CCR sales in the month. Lentor Gardens Residences moved 15 units at a median $2,367 psf to lead the OCR. In the EC segment developers shifted 18 units, down from 27 in July, with Coastal Cabana taking 12 of them at a median $1,830 psf — and there were only 157 unsold EC units left across launched projects at the end of August.
Exactly one new private home was bought by a non-permanent-resident foreigner in August, a unit at River Modern. On URA Realis records that is the lowest monthly foreign buyer count since 1995.
Singaporeans took 83.5% of the month's new private home sales and Singapore Permanent Residents 15.8%. This is what a market carried entirely by domestic demand looks like. Since the 60% ABSD rate for foreign buyers came in, that segment has been functionally closed, and August is the clearest illustration of it yet. If you are a Singaporean or PR buyer, the practical read is that you are no longer competing with overseas money for new launch stock.
Median unit prices for new non-landed homes slipped across all three regions in August.
| Region | Jul 2026 | Aug 2026 | MoM change |
|---|---|---|---|
| CCR | $3,117 psf | $3,059 psf | −1.9% |
| RCR | $2,737 psf | $2,667 psf | −2.6% |
| OCR | $2,350 psf | $2,325 psf | −1.1% |
I would not build a decision on a one-month median drawn from 153 transactions. What is more durable is the quantum story underneath it: 60.1% of new non-landed units sold in August were priced below $2.5 million, up from 58.5% in July. Developers have been pricing to a budget ceiling rather than to a psf target, and that pattern has held for most of this year.
The launch drought ends in September. The 212-unit Amberwood at Holland — the first project in the new Holland Plain precinct — was slated to preview, and Lucerne Grand in Lakeside follows. More than 2,000 new units may be placed on the market across the rest of 2026, which means buyers who spent August with nothing to look at are about to have real choice.
One thing on the watch list: the Manpower Ministry reported retrenchments rising to 4,500 in Q2 2026, the highest quarterly figure since end-2020, even as unemployment stayed low at 2.0% and employment expanded for a 19th consecutive quarter. That is not a warning sign on its own, but it is the sort of thing that shapes buyer confidence at the margin, and it is worth keeping an eye on alongside the interest rate picture.
The PropNex Research monthly report goes further than the summary above. It is the document my clients use when they want the underlying numbers rather than a headline.
It is free, there is no obligation, and I will send it over by email or WhatsApp — whichever you prefer.
A month like August is exactly when people make bad decisions in both directions. One group reads "92.9% fall" and concludes the market is collapsing. Another reads "lowest since 2024" and concludes it is time to hunt for desperation pricing. Neither is supported by what is in the data.
What the data actually supports is narrower and more useful. There was nothing new to buy in August, so very little was bought. Residual inventory kept moving, which suggests demand is not purely launch-driven. Foreign buyers are out of the picture entirely. Developers are pricing to quantum. And roughly 2,000 units are about to arrive on the market.
If you are weighing a move in the next 12 months, the useful thing is not the headline — it is knowing what your own segment did, what is launching near you, and whether your financing and timing stack up in the order you are planning to do them. That is the conversation I would rather have.
Want to talk it through? WhatsApp me at +65 9698 9189. Twenty minutes, your actual numbers, no obligation on either side. Sometimes the right answer is to wait a year, and that is a fine answer.
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