Private Apartment Rentals In Singapore

How much should you pay for an private apartment or condominium flat for rent per month? This is something you need to check before going into any rental agreement. If you browse the web to have an idea what you would only see are the asking prices for individual flats, which are highly inflated by a large premium over actual contract prices you can get. So you should check Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) web site directly to have some idea on real rentals. URA quarterly publishes rents in private residential rents by individual condominium project. This data is compiled based on (Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore's (IRAS) records of rental contracts for such properties where leases commenced in referenced quarter.The rental data released are for private residential projects with at least 100 units where there are at least 10 rental transactions in that quarter. So the numbers are much reliable compared to asking prices of greedy property agents in useless but celebrity online property websites related to Singapore.

Rentals for Private Residential Developments (refer to terms and conditions of URA web site for the usage of the data)web site has a simple selection box for you to select the quarter you would like to check. After making the selection (i.e. 2011Q3, latest available data at the publishing time of this article) press the PDF icon labelled as "Download". You will need a pdf reader but most browsers also support pdf for you to read.

The rental data in the pdf file for selected quarter is for non-landed residential projects, known as private houses or condominiums here. The data is presented in a table with project name, postal district the project is located, and dollars per square foot per month info in 25th percentile, median and 75th percentile.

Median means, half of the rentl transactions in that quarter were above the median number and half of them are below the median numbers. So if the median rental is 3.0 $ per spf per month, it means half were transacted below 3.0 $ per sqf per month and half were above. So median rental price for a 1,000 sqf unit is around 3,000 SGD per month in that development.

25 percentile score gives you the a rental level where 25 per cent of the transactions are below that level and 75 per centile score gives you a rental level where 25 per cent of the transactions are above that level.
HDB flats are public housing flats unique to Singapore and they are the cheapest units to be found for rent in Singapore. Especially the newer HDB flats which had some renovation are in very good shape to rent. Newer HDBs do not having corridors on the outer faces of the building which is typical in older HDBs. Residents (citizens and Singapore PRs, Employment and S pass holders, student, dependent, professional visit pass holders and long term social visit visa holders can rent an HDB flat.

By end 2011, effects of restrictions on foreign skilled worker intake by the government, job cuts in banking and financial services (number one source for foreigners with enough income to rent a private development), uncertain economic future, slowdown in growth and large number of private residential units coming to rental market is started to be felt and if you are looking for a flat to rent in Singapore, you will have more bargain power compared to 2010 - 2011 period. Do your homework, check the asking prices against these URA transactions and bargain hard.