Guide To Condo Rental Yields In Singapore [2026 Edition]

This article is contributed by Vincent Ha, CEO of LyteLease, a fintech company servicing landlords and real estate agents in Singapore.

One in every 15 private homes in Singapore is currently sitting empty.

The vacancy rate for private residential properties reached 6.4% at the end of the second quarter of 2026, rising to 8.3% in the Core Central Region (CCR), according to the Urban Redevelopment Authority. Yet over the same quarter, private residential rents rose 0.7%, up from 0.3% in Q1, while prices increased by just 0.5%.

When rents grow faster than prices, rental yields improve. For the first time in several years, the maths has started to move in landlords’ favour.

For HDB flats, the town you buy in can tell you a lot about your potential rental yield. Condominiums are far messier. Two projects on the same road can have rental yields that differ by 2 percentage points.

So instead of stopping at the district level, we drilled down to individual projects. We looked at 1,295 private condominiums and apartments, as well as 65 Executive Condominiums (ECs), to find out where condo rental yields are actually coming from in 2026.

The results challenged some of our assumptions about where the best rental yields would come from.

How We Calculate Rental Yields

• Gross rental yield is calculated by dividing annualised rent by the purchase price, then multiplying by 100. Annualised rent is simply the median monthly rent multiplied by 12.
• Median monthly rents are based on leases transacted over the most recent 12-month period. Median prices are based on resale and new sale caveats over the same period. For projects with fewer sale transactions, we widen the window to 24 months, or to the full 2023 to 2026 period where necessary.
• For district and bedroom tables, we use the median rental yield across projects in that district. For individual project rankings, we compare rents and prices within the same bedroom count. Otherwise, a project where two-bedroom units are rented out but four-bedroom units are sold could show an unrealistic rental yield.
• All figures are gross rental yields, before costs such as property tax and other expenses.
• ECs are analysed separately because their Minimum Occupation Period (MOP) and eligibility rules make them a different asset class.

Rental Yields By Postal District

Across the 1,295 private projects in our sample, the median condo rents for $4,300 a month against a median price of $1,790,000, giving a gross rental yield of 2.88%.

That islandwide figure hides a spread of more than 1.6% between the best and worst districts.

District 14 takes pole position as Singapore’s highest-yielding condo district at 3.98%.  Geylang, Eunos and Kembangan are not most buyers’ first choices when it comes to investment property and yet they are where rental income makes sense. A median project price of $1.025 million against $3,400 in monthly rent. The district is dense with small freehold apartment blocks built on former shophouse plots, and those blocks are the cheapest freehold private housing on the island. I’ve been guilty of dissuading friends from buying apartments in the area. If they were looking for rental yield, I stand corrected, badly.

Conversely, coveted D10, covering Bukit Timah, Holland and Tanglin, is the worst-yielding district in Singapore at 2.34%. Median rent is high at $6,000 a month, 76% more than tenants in D14. However, landlords in D10 paid 200% in price, explaining the low yield.

Buying prestigious addresses tends to work against rental yield. CCR yields a median 2.60%. The Rest of Central Region (‘RCR’) yields 2.93%. The Outside Central Region (‘OCR’), meaning the suburbs, yields 3.07%. Yield falls as you move towards town.

Bedroom Count Matters For Yield

Shoebox units may have gone out of fashion, but their numbers are trending in the right direction. When we hold bedroom count constant across our sample:

• One-bedders yield a median 4.24% (285 projects)
• Two-bedders yield a median 3.36% (452 projects)
• Three-bedders yield a median 2.93% (512 projects)
• Four-bedders yield a median 2.92% (99 projects)

A one-bedroom unit out-yields a four-bedroom unit by 1.32%.   

The reason is that rent scales slowly with size, while condo price scales abruptly with size. Tenants are sensitive to rental prices. A one-bedder in D14 rents for $2,800 against a $720,000 price. A three-bedder in the same district rents for $4,944, which is 77% more rent, against a price of $1,763,500, which is nearly 1.5 times more expensive.

One-bedroom Yields By District

There is a contradiction worth mentioning. When looking at postal districts for median rents, the closer you get to town, the worst the yield gets. When analysing one-bedders, D1, covering Raffles Place and Marina Bay, ties with District 14 for the highest one-bedroom yield in Singapore at 4.67%. Our guess is that CBD works best for studio investors. Its shoebox stock was built for tenants who want to walk to work, live in city and it is priced accordingly.

Two-bedroom yields by district (top 10)

Winning here again are the CBD districts of D1 and D2. The bottom of the two-bedroom table is worth naming: D11 Novena at 2.63%, D10 at 2.79%, D15 Katong at 2.82%, and D21 at 2.82%. These are the districts where a two-bedder costs $1.7 million or more and still rents for $4,000 to $5,000.

Three-bedroom yields by district (top 10)

Three-bedroom yields by district (top 10)

Read Also: Guide To HDB Rental Yields In Singapore (2026 Edition)

Top 15 Condo Projects By Rental Yield

Rent and price here are matched on the same bedroom count, and every project shown has at least eight leases behind its rental figure.

Ten of the top 15 are in District 14. Almost all are small freehold blocks with few or no facilities, most of them completed during the boutique-apartment boom of the 2010s. They are the closest thing private property has to a 3-room HDB flat: cheap to enter, unglamorous but the best yields.

Even so, only 19.6% of the projects we measured yield 4% or more. Just 1.7% clear 5%.

Three Surprises: Condos That Buck Their District’s Trend

1. The Hillford yields 5.71% in Singapore’s second-worst district

District 21 sits near the bottom of our table at 2.54%. Yet The Hillford in Upper Bukit Timah returns 5.71% on its one-bedders, a premium of 3.17% over its own district, and the second-highest yield in our entire sample.

One possible explanation is that The Hillford only has a  60-year lease commencing 2013. Singapore’s first retirement-concept condominium was sold on a lease so short that banks lend against it reluctantly and CPF usage is restricted. The result is a $588,888 entry price in a district where the median project costs $2.03 million, and rent of $2,800 that behaves like rent anywhere else in Bukit Timah.

Hence the trade-off, would you buy a 47 years balance of lease for a higher rental yield? Potential landlords might squirm at that fact, but this is the reality for many commercial and industrial leasehold properties too. Part of that 5.71% is a return of your own investment, and the figure will compress as the lease runs down. It functions as an income instrument with a finite life, a distinction most Singaporean property buyers have never had to make.

2. Hillion Residences and The Dairy Farm sit in the same district, 3.21% apart

District 23 sits mid-table at 3.00%. Inside it, Hillion Residences yields 5.49% on two-bedders, at $3,800 a month against $830,000, while The Dairy Farm, a freehold project a few MRT stops away, yields 2.28%.

Hillion sits directly on top of the Bukit Panjang MRT and LRT interchange and its own shopping mall. Its units are on the small side and its lease is 99 years from 2013. It seems like tenants care more about one thing here: they can reach the Downtown Line without an umbrella.

The Dairy Farm is freehold, larger and greener but further from the station. It has appreciated in capital value while producing thinner rental income. Within a single district, the integrated 99-year development outperforms the freehold condo by more than double.

3. District 9 has a 4.86% condo in it

Orchard and River Valley yield a median 2.57%, fifth from bottom. Yet Illuminaire on Devonshire returns 4.86% on its two-bedroom units, at $4,250 a month against $1,050,000, freehold, a few minutes from Somerset MRT.

Others follow the same pattern. Robertson Edge (4.80%, $950,000 for a two-bedder), Mackenzie 88 (4.69%, $800,000 for a one-bedder), RV Point (4.67%, $855,000) and Vivace (4.51%, $878,000) all sit inside the same district. Each is a small development with relatively compact units, and most units transact under $1.1 million.

Within D9 we see trophy stock like Ardmore Park (1.78% yield) and Sommerville Park (1.98% yield) drags the median down, while sub-$1.3 million CBD-fringe boutique units quietly clear 4.5% in the same postcode. Buying by district gets you the district average. Buying by the correct number of bedrooms gives landlords the yield outcome they seek.

Executive Condominiums Quietly Out-Yield Most Private Condos

The 65 ECs in our sample return a median gross yield of 3.33%, 15% higher than the 2.88% private condo median.

Older ECs in Woodlands and Jurong yield above 4% on three-bedroom family units, the only place in our data where large units yield well, because the land was subsidised at launch and the resale market still prices lower for those locations.

What Rental Yield Means At Today’s Mortgage Rates

For most of the past four years, a 3% rental yield was a losing proposition, because the mortgage cost close to 4%. Conditions have since reversed. Three-month compounded SORA is sitting around 1.12%, and as of August 2026 the sharpest fixed packages for private property are around 1.40% p.a., with floating packages from roughly 1.33%.

Since 2025, the median Singapore condo yields more than it costs to finance. A 2.88% gross yield against a 1.40% mortgage gives you a margin of nearly 1.5%. In District 14, the carry widens to 2.58%.

Sounds good? Maybe not if you factor in costs to own and rates may not be low forever.

Gross yields overstate what you keep. Take the D14 one-bedder: $720,000, $2,800 a month, 4.67% gross. Property tax on a non-owner-occupied unit runs 12% to 36% of annual value, which on $33,600 of rent works out to about $4,320. Add roughly $3,000 in maintenance fees, amortised agent commission of about $1,400, and a half-month annual vacancy allowance of $1,400. A landlord’s rental return drops to $23,480, a net yield of 3.26%. 3.36% is still above the mortgage rate, though the 4.67% headline has lost 1.41% before factoring a single dollar of interest.

Cheap debt may not be forever. A 1.40% two-year fixed rate resets in 2028. If rates normalise to 2.5%, the margin on a 2.88% property disappears. Landlords doing their sums may want to check if they make a profit at a 3% mortgage rate.

In conclusion, what kind of condo makes sense?

On this data, the answer is unusually specific, and it sits some distance from what the industry tends to market.

Buy small. One and two-bedroom units outperforms three and four-bedders by 1% to 1.3%, in every district. If rental income is the goal then floor area works against you.

Buy cheap in an expensive place. The best sounding opportunities in our data are sub-$1.1 million units inside high-rent districts: Illuminaire in D9, Suites @ Katong in D15, Viva Vista in D5. You capture the district’s rental demand without paying the district’s capital cost. There is an important caveat here: we have not analysed the price appreciation of such units. Intuitively, these appear to be good rental-yield deals today because prices have move slower for those units. Therefore, if you are expecting great capital gain + great rental yield, you may want to adjust your expectations.

Prioritise the MRT connectivity over the tenure. On a like-for-like bedroom basis, 99-year leasehold projects in our sample yield a median 3.53% against 2.94% for freehold and 999-year. Hillion out-yields The Dairy Farm two-to-one in the same district. Tenants value commute time and pay for it. Only the landlord cares about the remaining lease.

Consider an already privatised or post-MOP EC. A ten-year-old EC in Woodlands or Jurong above 4% on a three-bedroom family unit is the only place where size still yields well.

Be honest about what you are buying. The Hillford’s 5.71% partly represents a wasting asset paying you back your own capital. If you want yield alongside capital preservation, you will need to accept something in the 3.5% to 4.5% range, which is roughly what a well-chosen small unit in D14, D8, D12 or a privatised EC gives.

Entry cost is the main constraint and yield-killer. At 1.4% interest, almost any competently chosen condo covers its interest. The harder problem is the minimum 20% downpayment you exchanged for the keys, and cheap financing does nothing to solve it. Prices for new developments regularly going above $3000 psf should give all rent-seeking investors pause.

Read Also: Complete First-Timers’ Guide To Buying A New Executive Condominium (EC) In Singapore

Wondering how much you can rent out your HDB flat for in today’s market? Try the LyteLease calculator and get an instant estimate

Instead of waiting to receive rent month by month, LyteLease lets landlords unlock up to 12 months of rental income upfront, in as fast as 3 business days. That means having the cash on hand sooner for a big purchase, an investment, or a family trip, without waiting on your tenant’s next transfer.Rental yields are gross and historical. They do not account for financing costs, taxes, vacancy, or capital appreciation, and past transaction data is not a forecast of future rents. Do your own due diligence before purchasing any property.