Million-dollar HDB flats: how many, where, and what share

Over the published window, 1,770 HDB resales crossed a million dollars, out of 24,419 resales in the districts that publish the figure. That is 7.2% of the market. Both halves of that sentence matter, and the second half is the one almost never printed.

Why does a count on its own mislead?

A record number of million-dollar resales is compatible with the market getting cheaper, because the count depends on how many flats sold at all. In a busy quarter more flats cross any threshold. The figure that survives a change in volume is the share, and it is the one this article leads with for that reason.

It is the same failure that makes an average move without any price moving: a statistic that counts events is measuring activity as much as value.

Where are they?

The two orderings disagree, and the disagreement is the whole point. Toa Payoh records the most million-dollar resales, 297 of them, because it is a large district that sells a lot of flats: they are 29.6% of its own resales. In Outram the count is lower at 53 and the share is 52.5%. A headline counting resales describes district size as much as district price.

What actually drives it?

Three things, in roughly this order. Location, which is why the mature central districts dominate the share column. Flat size, because a million-dollar price is easier to reach across 130 square metres than across 90, so Executive and 5-room flats are over-represented among them. The rate per square foot tells a different story from the total price for exactly this reason.

And remaining lease. A million-dollar flat is usually one with a long tail left, because the lease is a price variable in this market, not a legal footnote. A large, central, long-lease flat is the combination, and each of the three is doing work.

Is a million dollars the right line?

It is a line, not a category: nothing separates a flat that resold at S$999,000 from one that crossed the threshold except a round number in nominal dollars. Two properties of that line matter for reading any headline built on it. The first is that it never moves. It is not adjusted for inflation or for the market’s own growth, so in a rising market flats cross it through market-wide growth alone, without becoming any dearer relative to their neighbours, and the count would keep setting records even if every relative price froze. A fixed threshold over a growing market measures the growth as much as the flats.

The second is that the line sits well above the middle of the market: over the current window the national median resale went for S$630,000. That distance is why the share stays small while the count sets records, and why both facts can be true at once. A record count is a statement about the market’s upper tail; the median is a statement about its middle; and a headline that quotes the first as if it described the second is the misreading this page exists to prevent.

What does it not mean?

It does not mean public housing has become unaffordable in general: the share above is a small fraction of a market whose median sits far below a million. It does not mean these flats are overpriced, which is a claim about value that a resale record cannot make. And a district appearing here is not a forecast about that district.

What it does mean is that the top of the public-housing market now overlaps the private one in price, while remaining a different product with different eligibility and a 99-year lease. That overlap, rather than the count, is the interesting story, and the gap between the two registers is where to look at it properly.

Figures are read live from the published register and are current to August 2026. Only districts that clear the publication floor appear; the share is each district’s own resales, not a share of the national total.