The acquisition code
Every project runs roughly the same price curve, from the first release to the day it is an ordinary resale condo. Where you step in decides three things: what you pay, how much you get to choose, and how long you wait for the keys.
Click any point on the curveOne project, one curve
Price per sq ft, from launch day to mature resaleIllustrative
The shape, not a forecast. The bars underneath are the number of units changing hands. Almost every project sells most of its units in one quarter, goes quiet for years, wakes up again at key collection, then settles into a slow trade.
The four windows, side by side
Same building. Four different deals.
Nothing here is a ranking. A row that reads well for one buyer reads badly for the next: the person who wants the keys in sixty days and the person who wants the best stack in the block are not shopping in the same window.
| New sale — from the developer | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pre‑launch | Post‑launch | Subsale | Resale | |
| When | From the first release, 20–60% sold | 60–100% sold, run‑out stock | Around TOP, first year owners can sell | Second year from TOP onwards |
| Price position | Lowest of the project | Staged up, with discounts on leftovers | Spike, capped by bank valuation | Market, plus the owner's own view |
| Choice of unit | Everything — stack, floor, facing, layout | What is left — often big or poor facing | Plenty — supply floods on key collection | Whatever is listed that week |
| Wait for keys | Longest — three to five years | Shorter — the building is going up | Short or none | None |
| Condition | A showflat and a floor plan | A building you can see | Brand new, never lived in | Lived in, sometimes renovated |
| You are buying from | The developer | The developer | An owner who has not moved in | An owner who lives there or rents it out |
| How price is set | Fixed price list, e‑ballot, no haggling | Price list plus promotions and discounts | Negotiated, with a valuation ceiling | Negotiated, no ceiling but no floor either |
| Paying for it | Progressive — instalments follow construction | Progressive, compressed | Full loan draws down at completion | Full loan draws down at completion |
Green reads easier for a buyer, amber reads harder. Which matters depends on what you came for. Figures and timings vary by project.
Does the curve hold up?
Four projects, launch to today
Average price per sq ft in the launch quarter, against the latest quarter. The left dot is the launch, the right dot is today, and the number on the right is what that works out to per year.
Read off project trend charts at Q3 2026 and rounded to the nearest $5. Quarterly averages cover all unit types, so they move with the mix of units sold as well as with price. Past movement is not a forecast.
Why the average dips without a single price cut
A project still in its launch run. The average moved up nine per cent and then back down inside a year — not because the price list was cut, but because the units transacting changed. Bigger units and the less wanted facings clear at a lower psf.
Read off the project trend chart, rounded to the nearest $5. This is the single most misread line on any trend chart: an average that falls is not the same thing as a price that falls.
What the next launch does to yours
Your project does not sit still while the next one launchesIllustrative
The curve above is one building on its own. It never is. Four or five years after you buy, another site nearby launches — at the land price and the build cost of a later cycle, which is to say well above what you paid.
The new launch prices the postcode, not just itself
Every valuation, every listing and every buyer's sense of what is expensive around there is now measured against the newest number on the street.
The buyers it prices out do not go home
They look at what is already standing nearby, which is your project. Same road, same train station, visibly less money. That comparison is the entire argument.
It does not have to work
If the new project is poorly received, or the location will not carry the price, the benchmark is simply ignored and nothing moves. New supply nearby is also competition.
Illustrative. Shape only, no forecast, and no project is named. A new launch lifting nearby resale prices is a tendency, not a mechanism: it depends on the location, the gap in price, and whether the new project sells.
The part nobody puts on the slide
Selling at the top of the curve is not the same as doing well. A unit that takes twelve years to gain forty per cent has earned you a shade under three per cent a year. The absolute number looks handsome. The annual rate is the one that competes with everything else you could have done with the money.
And the sale is only half of it. Whatever you release, you are replacing at today's launch prices — the new cycle's benchmark, not the one you bought into. The price that looks high against the old cycle is the entry price of the next one. That gap, between what your unit fetches and what the replacement costs, is the real decision, and it is the one most people work out after they have already signed.
Which is the whole argument for knowing where on this curve you are standing before you move, rather than afterwards.
What this page does and does not do
The curve
Illustrative. It shows the shape a project's price per sq ft typically traces, built from the pattern that shows up again and again on project trend charts. It is not a model, it carries no figures, and it is not a forecast for any particular development. Real projects are messier: some never dip at subsale, some never recover, and a weak location can flatten the whole right hand side.
The phase thresholds
Phase 1, 2 and 3 are the developer's own staging, measured in percentage of units sold rather than in months. The 20–60%, 60–85% and 85–100% bands are the common pattern, not a rule. Developers set and move their own thresholds, and a slow project may never reach phase 3 pricing at all.
Subsale and resale
Used here the way the market uses them: a subsale is a unit sold by its first buyer before or around completion, so it has never been lived in; a resale is a completed unit with a title that has already changed hands. The Seller's Stamp Duty period and any Minimum Occupation Period run on their own clocks and are not shown on the curve.
The four projects
Average price per sq ft read from project trend charts at Q3 2026 and rounded. These are quarterly averages across all unit types in each project, so they move with the mix of units transacting as well as with price. They are shown to illustrate the shape, not as a valuation of any unit. Ask us and we will pull the actual chart, and the actual transactions, for any project you are looking at.
What is missing
Stamp duties, the loan, your CPF, the holding costs and the cost of the replacement home. Those are where the answer actually lives, and they are specific to you. The hold or swap tool and the stress test put your own figures through them.
Where are you on the curve?
Tell us the project and we will show you the real trend chart, the live stock, and what the same money buys in each of the four windows. Often the answer is to wait for a different one.