What a price per square foot actually hides

Every listing in Singapore leads with a price per square foot, and buyers use it the way you would use a unit price in a supermarket — lower is better, higher is worse. It is the single most misread number in the market.

Take the five one-bedroom units I am marketing right now. Same bedroom count, same broad segment, five very different numbers.

• The Line @ Tanjong Rhu — 829 sqft, S$1,915,000, S$2,310 psf
• TMW Maxwell — 474 sqft, S$1,316,000, S$2,776 psf
• Jervois Prive — 549 sqft, S$1,658,000, S$3,020 psf
• Sophia Regency — 474 sqft, S$1,599,000, S$3,373 psf
• Lloyd SixtyFive — 592 sqft, S$2,768,000, S$4,676 psf

Read as a shopping list, Lloyd SixtyFive is twice as expensive as The Line. That is not what is happening.

Small floorplates carry a premium per foot

A 474 sqft unit and an 829 sqft unit both need a kitchen, a bathroom, a service duct and a front door. Those fixed costs are spread over fewer feet in the smaller unit, so its psf goes up. The Line’s S$2,310 psf looks like value partly because you are buying 829 sqft — and much of what is cheap per foot is living-room floor, not extra function.

Turn the same five units around and compare total cheque instead: The Line is S$1.92m and TMW Maxwell is S$1.32m. The "expensive" one per foot is the cheaper property.

Tenure is inside the number

Four of these five are freehold. TMW Maxwell is a 99-year leasehold. Leasehold in a comparable location typically prices below freehold, and part of TMW Maxwell’s S$2,776 psf is that discount — not a bargain, a different asset.

So is completion date

TMW Maxwell is building under construction, expected 2028. You are not paying today’s price for today’s keys; you are paying on a progressive schedule and waiting. Jervois Prive obtained TOP in 2023 and exists. Those two facts belong in any psf comparison and never appear in one.

And location, at a resolution psf cannot show

Lloyd SixtyFive is 330 m from Somerset MRT and 690 m from Great World. Sophia Regency is 430 m from Dhoby Ghaut, where three lines meet. Both are District 9 addresses, both freehold — and they are S$1,300 psf apart. The difference is the building, the block size, the floor, the outlook and the exact street. Per-foot pricing flattens all of it into one figure.

What to do with psf instead

Use it to compare like against like: same project, same stack, same tenure, similar floor. Across projects it is a starting question, not an answer. The questions that decide whether a unit is priced well are: what did comparable units in this development actually transact at, how does this floor and facing differ, what is the tenure, and when do you get the keys.

Ask me for the transaction history on any unit on this site and I will send you the caveats rather than a psf.