The order is the whole problem.
You have two transactions to run and they are tied to each other. Sell first and you may be renting. Buy first and you pay ABSD you will spend a year claiming back. The sequence is the work, and it starts with one number.
You are probably here because:
- You have outgrown the flat, and you cannot tell whether you have outgrown it enough to take on the payment.
- Everyone says sell first. Everyone else says buy first. Neither camp has looked at what you owe CPF.
- You are afraid of ending up in a rental with your furniture in storage for eight months.
If two of those landed, the rest of this page is the order I would do it in.
The number that surprises upgraders.
Almost every upgrader I meet has a figure in their head for what the current place is worth. Very few have a figure for what it leaves them. Those are different numbers, and the gap between them is usually large enough to change which property you buy next.
The reason is CPF. Everything you took out of your Ordinary Account for the flat goes back in on completion, with the interest it would have earned had you left it there. That accrued interest keeps running for as long as you hold the place, so on a flat you have been in for twelve years it is not a rounding error. The money is still yours. It is simply not cash, and it cannot go towards the cash portion of the next down payment.
The second thing is ABSD. If you buy before your sale completes, you pay it as if the new place were a second property — and yes, on a matching set of conditions you can claim it back, but you have to find it first, in cash, and then wait. I have watched that single line turn a comfortable upgrade into a stressful one. It is avoidable almost every time, and avoiding it is entirely a matter of what happens in what order.
So the plan I write for an upgrader is a calendar before it is a shortlist: which one goes on the market, what the overlap looks like, and where the bridge is if the dates do not meet. If you want a sense of how those dates behave in practice, my track record shows what actually went, at what price, and how long it sat.
How this actually goes.
Five steps. The first three are all arithmetic and calendar, and they decide the two after them.
We value what you are in, honestly.
Not the best price a neighbour ever got. What the last three comparable units actually transacted at, adjusted for floor, facing and condition — and how long each of them took to go. Optimism here is expensive, because everything downstream is built on this figure.
Then we work out what the sale leaves you.
Sale price, less the outstanding loan, less the CPF refund with its accrued interest, less commission and legal fees. That remainder is your real down payment. It is nearly always smaller than people expect, and knowing it now is what keeps the next step realistic.
We sequence the sale and the purchase.
Sell first and you have certainty and possibly a gap to bridge. Buy first and you carry ABSD until the sale completes. There is a middle route — an offer with a longer completion, or a lease-back from the buyer — and which one fits depends on your dates and your tolerance, not on a rule.
We shortlist against the real number.
Only after the two figures above are settled. I will also tell you when the upgrade does not earn its cost — a bigger place with a longer commute and a payment that ends your flexibility is not automatically a better life, and I would rather say so before you list.
We run both transactions to one calendar.
Option granted, exercise, completion, keys — for the sale and the purchase, on one page, with the money movements marked. You will know which week is tight before you are in it, and what the fallback is if a date slips.
From an upgrade that ran on one calendar.
“I had assumed the sale price was the money I would have. Michele showed me what went back to CPF first, and it changed the whole plan — we sold before we bought, avoided the extra duty entirely, and moved once.”
PlaceholderWritten to a brief, not by a client. Replace it with a real review, or delete the entry in data/home.ts — the section drops off the page rather than breaking the build.
Get the two numbers that decide everything.
Free, no sign-up, and nothing is sent to me. Start with the first — until you know what the sale leaves you, the rest is guesswork.
Sale Proceeds Calculator
Start hereWhat actually reaches your account: sale price less the outstanding loan, less the CPF refund with accrued interest, less commission and legal fees. This is your real down payment.
Stamp Duty Calculator
The upgrader trap, priced. Buy before your sale completes and ABSD applies as though the new home were a second property. Put both orders through it and the cost of buying first stops being abstract.
Affordability Calculator
The new loan, at the 4% stress rate, with the current mortgage still on your books if the sale has not completed. TDSR does not care that one of them is about to disappear.
Progressive Payment Calculator
If the next place is under construction, you pay it in ten stages tied to milestones, not in one lump. That schedule is what tells you whether a longer sale completion is survivable.
If you would rather read first.
The market notes are the ones worth your time before you list — what is actually moving, what a headline number leaves out, and how long things are taking to sell right now.
Send me three things.
Which flat you are in, what is left on the loan, and roughly how much CPF you have put into it. I will come back with what the sale leaves you and the two orders it could run in — not a valuation pitch, and not a call I have to book first.