Public and private are two markets, not two prices

In the 28 districts that publish both, private property trades at between 1.91 and 3.22 times the public rate per square foot, with a median multiple of 2.60. That single sentence is the most useful thing this site can say about the relationship between the two markets, and the variation across districts is more interesting than the average.

Why publish a multiple rather than a difference?

This site publishes the ratio and deliberately not the cash step. A cash figure reads as the price of moving from one to the other, and it is not: the two are different products with different eligibility rules, different tenure and different buyers. A ratio is a comparison of rates and travels honestly between districts; a cash step invites an arithmetic nobody can actually perform.

It is also the only form the licences permit to be set beside each other. The two registers are never pooled and never averaged, so what can be published is a relationship rather than a combined figure.

How big is the gap, district by district?

The multiple is narrowest in Outram, at 1.91 times, and widest in Marine Parade, at 3.22 times. A narrow multiple usually means the public stock there is unusually well located rather than that the private stock is cheap.

What does the multiple hide?

• Tenure. Every HDB flat is a 99-year lease. Private property may be freehold, and the table above prints the freehold share of the private stock in each district for that reason. A freehold-heavy district is not comparing like with like.
• Eligibility. Public housing has citizenship, income and household rules and a minimum occupation period. Private property has none of those and, for some buyers, a substantial additional duty instead.
• What the rate is measured on. One register publishes its own recorded floor area; the other publishes strata area from caveats. Neither is wrong and they are not the same measurement.
• What is in the sample. The private figure pools apartments, condominiums and executive condominiums where each district has enough of them, so its composition varies more between districts than the public one does.

How should you use it?

The multiple is a good instrument for one question: how much more does private space cost here than public space, relative to elsewhere. A district where the multiple is low is one where public housing is priced closer to private, which usually reflects location rather than a bargain.

It is a poor instrument for “can I afford to upgrade”, which depends on the specific flat, the specific home, the duties, the loan rules and the timing, none of which a ratio of medians knows about. For the price side of that question, the flat-type benchmarks are the better starting point, and what a flat yields is the other half.

Figures are read live and current to August 2026. A district appears only where both registers clear their own publication floors.