The book is on Bala's Table
Bala’s Table tells a simple but uncomfortable story about leasehold property: time does not erode its value evenly.
The table, used by the Singapore Land Authority as a reference for valuing leasehold land, estimates a fresh 99-year lease at about 96% of equivalent freehold value. At 60 years remaining, that falls to 80%. With 30 years left, it is 60%. From there, the curve becomes considerably steeper as the lease approaches expiry.
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This does not mean a condominium automatically loses 40% of its transaction price when its lease reaches 30 years. Bala’s Table concerns the value of the leasehold interest in land, not the entire home. Actual prices also reflect location, building condition, unit size, market demand, financing and redevelopment potential.
Still, the curve makes one point very clearly: lease decay is not linear. Losing a year from a lease with 90 years remaining is relatively painless. Losing a year when only 20 remain is much more consequential.
2026 sits on an interesting moment in Singapore's urban renewal timeline.
The Land Acquisition Act was passed in October 1966 and came into force on June 17, 1967. It gave the state the legal powers needed to assemble fragmented private land for public housing, infrastructure and wider urban development. Over the following decades, the proportion of land under public ownership rose substantially, allowing Singapore to plan and rebuild at a scale that would otherwise have been difficult.
The Act also sits around a broader turning point in Singapore’s land-tenure history. Under British colonial administration, land could be granted as freehold or on extremely long leases, which explains why some older developments still sit on freehold or 999-year land today.
After independence, the state moved towards releasing residential land on finite leases rather than permanently parting with it. The Government Land Sales programme began in 1967, and freehold residential parcels had generally been sold before its introduction. Today, land released through the GLS programme carries a tenure not exceeding 99 years.
It would therefore be slightly imprecise to say that the Land Acquisition Act itself legally abolished freehold land. Rather, 1966 and 1967 marked a larger policy shift. The government acquired more land, retained ultimate ownership and increasingly recycled it through time-limited leases.
That shift gave Singapore flexibility. Land could be developed for one generation, then eventually returned and replanned for another.
But it also started a clock.
A 99-year lease beginning in 1966 or 1967 has around 39 to 40 years remaining in 2026. Such land has not reached the final 30 years yet, but it is moving steadily towards them. Around 2035 to 2037, the earliest leases from that era will begin crossing that threshold. Coincidentally, this is also where the gradient of Bala's curve steepens aggressively. A very big part is also due to the fact that banks are very much less willing to offer mortgage loans for these properties that are likely to run to 0 at the end of the mortgage tenure.
Thirty years may sound comfortably distant. In urban redevelopment, it is not. Collective-sale negotiations can take years. Developers must assess planning potential, secure consent, finance the acquisition, obtain approvals, demolish the existing estate, construct the replacement project and sell hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of new homes.
Waiting until the lease curve is at its steepest would be poor planning.
Academic research reinforces the concern. A 2019 NUS study1 examined more than 618,000 resale transactions between 1997 and 2017. It found that HDB flats, private freehold homes and private leasehold properties showed broadly similar depreciation during their early years. The gap widened as properties aged. For homes aged 21 years and above, the researchers estimated depreciation of around 3% for HDB flats, more than 10% for private freehold properties and more than 30% for private leasehold homes.
That does not mean every 21-year-old leasehold condominium is worth 30% less than a new one. The estimate captures a wider ageing effect that may include physical deterioration, outdated facilities, maintenance costs and shortening tenure. Nevertheless, the much steeper decline for private leasehold housing is difficult to ignore.
A separate 2022 study2 of private non-landed homes tried to isolate the remaining-lease effect more directly. After accounting for unit and locational characteristics, it found that a 1% increase in remaining lease was associated with a 1.46% increase in transaction price. The paper also showed that older developments may retain value because of redevelopment potential, established locations or other attributes not fully captured by age alone. The lesson is not that every leasehold property follows an identical curve, but that remaining tenure has a statistically significant relationship with price.
Against this backdrop, the government’s announcement on 28 July 2026 on the latest adjustment to developers’ Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty rules looks less like assistance for developers and more like advance maintenance for the city.
Under the revised regime, developers undertaking large en bloc redevelopments will receive more time to complete and sell their projects. Sites producing 700 to 1,399 new homes can receive six years, while those producing at least 1,400 homes can receive seven years. Qualifying projects must replace the original estate with at least 1.5 times as many homes, linking the concession directly to housing intensification and supply.
This will not produce an instant en bloc boom. Owners must still agree on price, developers must still make the numbers work, and some ageing estates simply lack sufficient redevelopment potential.
But the policy removes one obvious obstacle. A rigid five-year sales deadline makes very large collective-sale sites riskier, particularly when developers must absorb thousands of units without triggering an ABSD clawback.
For property owners, the signal is worth noting. The government appears to recognise that Singapore’s next phase of growth cannot rely only on opening new plots. Increasingly, it must renew land that is already occupied.
The policy is timely and necessary precisely because the problem is not yet at its worst. Singapore still has a window before the earliest post-independence leases enter their final 30 years. Urban renewal works best when it begins before lease decay, financing constraints and physical ageing sharply narrow the available choices.
Singapore’s first transformation was powered by assembling land. Its next one will depend on how intelligently it recycles that land, before the clock becomes the most powerful party at the negotiating table.
1 https://ireus.nus.edu.sg/2019/04/06/aging-and-decaying-leases-of-residential-properties