If the Sengkang 4 room resale price looks stable, does that mean the market is still strong? In the HDB resale market, the real turning points often show up first in premiums, the extra amount buyers are willing to pay for specific attributes, even when headline prices barely move.
Most buyers start with a town wide median to decide whether the market is rising or falling. However, a single number can hide what matters in real negotiations. When buyer priorities shift, prices can look steady on the surface while the value of certain attributes quietly changes underneath.
In 2025, Sengkang’s 4 room resale market offered a clear example. Prices did not collapse and there was no sharp correction. Yet the high floor premium compressed sharply. At the start of the year, buyers were paying around five figures more for high floors versus mid floors for comparable flats. By the end of 2025, that gap had narrowed to only a few hundred dollars.
This shift remains largely invisible to many buyers, not because the data is unavailable, but because attention is still focused on headline prices instead of premiums.
Why Floor Premiums Matter More Than Headline Prices
A resale price is not just a reflection of the market. It is also the outcome of trade-offs. Buyers do not evaluate a HDB flat in a vacuum. They compare one unit against another, then decide which attributes justify paying more. Floor level is one of the most visible attributes in that decision process. It is easy to understand, easy to communicate, and easy to feel good about. Many buyers see it as an upgrade that improves lifestyle and safeguards future resale value.
That is exactly why floor premiums are worth tracking. They act like a live signal of buyer psychology. When demand is strong and confidence is high, buyers pay more for optional upgrades. When confidence cools, buyers still buy, but they question whether upgrades are worth stretching for.
This is why analysing the price gap between high and mid floor HDB flats can be more informative than tracking prices alone. A town wide median can look stable while premiums within the market are quietly changing. If you only track prices, you can miss the shift. If you track the premium, you can often see the shift forming earlier.
What “Premium Shrinkage” Actually Means
When people hear that a premium shrank, they sometimes assume prices must have fallen sharply. That is not what happened here.
A shrinking premium means the difference in what buyers are willing to pay for an attribute becomes smaller. The market may still be active. Transactions may still be closing near recent levels. But the extra amount buyers attach to the attribute compresses.
This is important because it changes the risk profile of a purchase. Paying a premium is safest when it is stable. Paying a premium is riskier when it is inflated by short-term momentum. Even if the HDB flat price holds, the premium can evaporate, and that evaporation can be the difference between feeling you bought well and feeling you stretched for something you did not need.
In Sengkang in 2025, the key story is not a collapse in prices. The story is that the high floor premium moved from a meaningful five figure number to a near symbolic amount in the space of one year.
How The Comparison Was Done Fairly
Floor premiums are easy to misunderstand if you compare the wrong units. A HDB flat on the tenth floor can be a high floor in a twelve-storey block, but only a mid floor in a twenty-five-storey block. A flat with a much longer remaining lease can trade at a higher price even if it is on a lower floor. A slightly larger floor area can easily overwhelm the effect of floor level.
To minimise distortion from lease differences, size variation, and outlier transactions, this analysis isolates a consistent Sengkang 4 room flat profile:
- Town: Sengkang
- Flat type: 4 room
- Lease band: Long lease, defined as 80 years and above remaining
- Floor area band: Standard size cluster derived from transaction frequency patterns
- Price metric: Three month rolling median to reduce the influence of one off outliers
The only variable allowed to vary is relative floor position within each block. We classify transactions by splitting each block’s total storeys into three equal bands. High floor is the top third and mid floor is the middle third. This normalises for differences in block height, so the comparison captures the marginal price effect of height within comparable block environments rather than relying on raw storey numbers that are not directly comparable across blocks.
The result is a cleaner read of the premium buyers paid specifically for high floors.
The Floor Premium Gap Over Time In 2025
The cleanest way to see what changed in 2025 is to separate two things. First, the median prices for high floor flats and mid floor flats. Second, the price gap between them. That gap shows how much extra buyers were willing to pay for height, even when headline prices looked steady.
Across 2025, the medians for high floors and mid floors stayed close enough that the shift was easy to miss. The real movement happened in the premium. It compressed sharply from early to late 2025.
Key Dataset (Long Lease, Standard Size, Sengkang 4 Room)
| Period | High Floor Median | Mid Floor Median | High vs Mid Floor Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan to Mar 2025 | S$702,000 | S$692,000 | S$10,000 |
| Apr to Jun 2025 | S$699,500 | S$694,000 | S$5,500 |
| Jul to Sep 2025 | S$697,000 | S$695,500 | S$1,500 |
| Oct to Dec 2025 | S$696,500 | S$696,000 | S$500 |
If you focus only on prices, the market appears broadly stable. High floor medians eased slightly while mid floor medians edged up.
However, the premium tells the more important story. In early 2025, buyers were paying around five figures more for high floors versus mid floors for comparable flats. By late 2025, that gap had narrowed to just a few hundred dollars, which effectively means the market was valuing high floors and mid floors almost the same for this flat profile.
Early 2025: Why Buyers Paid A Five Figure Premium
A S$10,000 premium for high floors in early 2025 reflects a period when buyers were confident and competition was meaningful. In such environments, buyers tend to prioritise differentiation. They want a unit that feels better, looks better, and is easier to justify emotionally. Height is a clean differentiator. It also carries a story that is easy to tell: better view, better privacy, more wind, less street noise.
Another driver is fear of missing out. When buyers believe prices will continue rising, they often assume that paying extra now is a form of future-proofing. They tell themselves that if they are going to buy anyway, they might as well buy the better unit before it becomes even more expensive.
This is how premiums expand. They are not driven only by the physical attribute itself. They are amplified by market momentum and buyer emotion.
Mid 2025: When The Floor Premium Compressed
By the second quarter of 2025, the floor premium fell to S$5,500. What is striking is that this happened without an obvious market shock. The environment simply became less heated. When the pace of price growth slows, buyers become more deliberate. They still want good units, but they stop treating optional upgrades as essential.
This is where relative comparisons matter. Buyers do not always demand lower absolute prices. Instead, they become less willing to pay extra for features that are nice to have rather than must-have. If a mid floor unit is priced attractively, it starts to feel “good enough”, especially when buyers are already stretching budgets on interest rates, renovation costs, or cash over valuation.
So the market can cool in a very quiet way. High floors still sell. Mid floors also sell. But the “extra” narrows because buyers stop bidding up the premium.
Late 2025: When The Floor Premium Became Symbolic
By July to September 2025, the premium had fallen to about S$1,500. By October to December 2025, it was down to around S$500. At this level, the floor premium exists mostly in name and is no longer a meaningful pricing driver.
This does not mean high floors lost value. It means high floors stopped commanding a strong incremental reward. High and mid floors were being priced close enough that the difference would barely influence a buyer’s decision. Many buyers would treat S$500 as noise, not as a meaningful premium.
This is the essence of premium evaporation. Prices can remain steady, transactions can continue, and yet the market’s valuation of an attribute can shrink dramatically.
Why Town Wide Medians Failed To Warn Buyers
A key reason this shift went unnoticed is that most people track the wrong benchmarks. Town wide medians mix flats with different lease lengths, sizes, and micro-locations. When the mix of transactions changes, the median can move even if underlying segment behaviour is shifting in the opposite direction.
In addition, headline prices tend to anchor perception. When buyers see high prices continuing to print, they assume all premiums are intact. But a premium can compress even when prices remain high. Mid floors can catch up quietly while high floors flatten, and the town wide view will not show the relationship changing.
The only way to see premium compression clearly is to segment the data and compare like with like over time.
What This Means For HDB Buyers In 2026
If you are buying in 2026, the main lesson is not that high floors are bad value. The lesson is that the amount you should pay extra depends on where the market is in its cycle.
When premiums are already wide, paying extra carries a higher risk of not being recognised later. Even if the flat price holds, you might not get the premium back if the market normalises. That risk is biggest when enthusiasm is high and buyers are bidding up optional attributes.
When premiums are modest and stable, paying extra for a high floor can still make sense, especially if lifestyle benefits matter to you. But you want to understand whether you are paying for a long-term attribute or for short-term momentum.
In practical terms, you should not just ask what the last high floor sold for. You should ask what comparable mid floors sold for in the same period and whether the gap is expanding or compressing. The gap tells you what the market is willing to reward.
What This Means For Sellers In 2026
If you are selling a high floor flat, the shrinkage of premiums in 2025 highlights the importance of timing and positioning. When the market is confident, high floors can command strong premiums because buyers compete for differentiation. When buyers become cautious, many will refuse to pay five figures extra for height alone, especially if mid floor options are abundant and priced attractively.
A seller who expects peak premiums in a normalised market can end up chasing the market down through repeated price adjustments. A seller who understands the current premium environment can price more precisely and avoid unnecessary time on market.
The Core Takeaway
Sengkang’s 2025 data shows a market that remained relatively stable in absolute prices while undergoing a meaningful behavioural shift. In early 2025, buyers were willing to pay a five figure premium for high floors. Within months, that willingness compressed sharply. By late 2025, the premium was almost gone.
Prices did not crash. The premium evaporated.
If you want to make better decisions in 2026, focus less on the headline price and more on the premium. The premium reveals what buyers are truly prioritising right now, and that insight is often more valuable than any single transaction record.
Get the Median for Your Flat Profile
If you want a median that truly reflects your flat profile rather than a town-wide figure, contact us with your flat details and we will reply with the closest comparable median range based on our segmentation.
High Floor Premium FAQs
It can be, but only if the floor premium is reasonable for today’s market. In 2025, the high floor premium for comparable Sengkang 4 room flats shrank from about S$10,000 in early 2025 to about S$500 by late 2025. That means paying a large premium in 2026 is not automatically justified. Compare the asking price against similar mid floor units before deciding how much extra is worth paying.
It depends on market conditions and the flat profile. For long lease, standard size Sengkang 4 room flats, the high vs mid floor gap was about S$10,000 in Jan to Mar 2025, fell to about S$5,500 in Apr to Jun 2025, and dropped to about S$1,500 in Jul to Sep 2025. By Oct to Dec 2025, the difference was only about S$500. The floor premium can change quickly, so always check recent like for like transactions.
High floors often sell for more, but the premium is not fixed and it does not always protect resale value in the short term. Premiums expand when buyer demand is strong and compress when buyers become more price sensitive. The Sengkang data shows a clear example where prices stayed relatively stable but the floor premium nearly disappeared within one year. Resale value depends on multiple factors including remaining lease, floor area, location, and market cycle.
Not automatically. A higher floor can increase price when buyers strongly prioritise views, privacy, and wind flow, but the effect depends on block height, noise exposure, and the buyer segment. In Sengkang, the market was willing to pay a five figure premium for high floors in early 2025, but by late 2025 the premium narrowed to a few hundred dollars for comparable flats. Floor level matters, but it is only one part of the pricing equation.
The premium shrank because buyer willingness to pay extra for optional attributes weakened as the market cooled. This often happens without a price crash. Instead of prices dropping sharply, buyers simply stop stretching for upgrades like high floors and become more willing to choose mid floor flats at similar prices. In 2025, mid floor prices caught up while high floor prices flattened, causing the premium gap to compress.
Not necessarily. Each town has a different mix of flat ages, block heights, supply conditions, and buyer demand. The results here are specific to Sengkang 4 room flats in the long lease and standard size profile. If you want to apply the same method elsewhere, you should segment by flat type, remaining lease bands, floor area bands, and relative floor position within the block, then compare medians over time.
No. The better approach is to avoid overpaying for the premium. If the asking price for a high floor flat is far above comparable mid floor units, you should verify whether recent transactions still support that gap. High floors can still be a good choice for lifestyle reasons, but the data suggests the resale market may not always reward large premiums, especially when the premium is already wide.
Start by comparing only similar flats. Match flat type, remaining lease band, and floor area band, then classify floor level based on relative position within the block rather than raw storey number. Next, compare the median prices for high floor versus mid floor units over recent months using a rolling median. This produces a floor premium that is specific to your flat profile and avoids misleading town wide averages.