https://www.straitstimes.com/life/youre-not-imagining-it-singapore-homes-are-getting-smaller?ref=top-stories
You’re not imagining it: Singapore homes are getting smaller
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Mr Jon Phua lives in a shoebox condominium unit that forms part of a trend towards smaller private residences.
ST PHOTO: JASEL POH
SINGAPORE – At 43 sq m, Mr Jon Phua’s condominium unit in Hougang places at the cosier end of the living-space scale.
The one-bedroom shoebox apartment, which works out to be 463 sq ft, has no dining table. The 37-year-old former flight attendant eats at a desk that doubles as his workspace. His coffee table is a retrofitted plane galley cart that can be moved around to serve as an end table. A bedside ledge functions as a table and storage space.
Mr Phua bought a new 99-year leasehold home in 2023 to avoid an overly burdensome loan for a small home of his own. In 2025, one-bedroom units in his complex resold for between $750,000 and $869,000.
The alternative – waiting until he was 35 to buy an HDB flat on the resale market – seemed intolerable at the time. As a communications professional, his decision was made after spending long stretches of the Covid-19 pandemic working remotely from the tight confines of his parents’ home.
Such small-space living represents a growing trend in what life in Singapore looks like.
Singapore’s living space in numbers
In 1995, the average floor area of non-landed private residences up for new sale transactions was 118 sq m, according to an analysis of Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) data by real estate consultancy Knight Frank Singapore. By 2025, that figure had fallen to 83 sq m.
A similar trend can be seen in the decreasing average floor area of condo resale units. Some HDB flat types have seen similar dips over the past decades too.
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More than 70 per cent of Singapore residents live in HDB flats, but some of these trends might be perceptible only to those growing up before the 2000s.
According to HDB data on resale transactions, the average floor area of flats peaked with units built in the mid-1990s, with the average floor space of resale flats built in 1995 clocking in at 130 sq m.
In 2011, CNA reported that the size of HDB flats had shrunk by 5 to 10 per cent over the last two to three decades.
The average size of four-room and five-room HDB flats completed in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020 has stayed constant at 90 and 110 sq m respectively, according to data disclosed in Parliament in 2022.
All of this takes shape against a backdrop of shifting configurations for HDB flats.
Executive apartments and maisonettes ceased to be built in 1995 after the introduction of the executive condominium housing scheme, a new private-public hybrid model. Meanwhile, the proportion of one- and two-room flats built has been increasing since the 2010s.
What’s making things small?
Demographic trends form one part of the reason behind the shift towards smaller living spaces, says National University of Singapore professor of real estate Lee Kwan Ok.
Falling birth rates, empty-nester seniors and more singles living alone have all contributed to growing acceptance of smaller homes.
The average resident household size has fallen over the years from 4.87 in 1980 to 3.06 in 2025, according to the Singapore Department of Statistics. One-person households now represent 16 per cent of all resident households.
However, the rising prices of land and real estate also play a role.
The increasing costs of land acquisition, construction and financing mean condo developers are under more pressure to optimise floor space, says Ms Alice Tan, head of consultancy at Knight Frank Singapore.
Property cooling measures like the additional buyer’s stamp duty (ABSD) also mean cost constraints have sharpened for potential home buyers and developers.
One consequence is that property developers are carving up condo developments into a greater number of small units to keep the overall price of each affordable for potential buyers, even as the price per square foot (psf) has increased.
The average psf for condo units sold in the core central region, which each measure between 50 and 70 sq m in size, increased from $2,045 in 2015 to $2,791 in 2025, according to an analysis of URA data by Knight Frank.
In contrast, the size of HDB units is more stable against such market factors as a result of government subsidies and housing policies, says Dr Lee. As such, their development is not entirely market- or demand-driven.
Spatial inequalities
Biomedical worker Sathya Prakash paid $1,500 a month for a room in a condominium unit that he shared with four other people.
The two-bedroom two-bathroom Clementi property – which had a floor area of around 121 sq m – also had its living room and dining room repurposed as additional bedrooms.
The most expensive room, which had exclusive access to a toilet, cost $2,000 a month to rent.
“I don’t really have many complaints about my stay there,” says Mr Prakash, 31, who describes his rate as a good deal.
He moved into the room in 2024 and moved out in January 2026. He now lives in a house of about the same size in Newton, which he co-rents with three others, paying $1,200 a month.
Dr Lee says the trend towards smaller spaces also means that larger homes increasingly come at a premium affordable only to higher-income households, due to the limited supply of landed properties and shrinking condo units.
The prices of landed homes, she says, are “just crazy”. “People will pay whatever the landlord is asking because it is so scarce.”
Mr Jon Phua retrofitted a plane galley cart into a portable coffee table to save space.
ST PHOTO: JASEL POH
Knight Frank’s price analysis of private non-landed residential projects from 2015 to 2025 found that the price growth of larger units outpaced that of smaller units across Singapore.
Knight Frank’s Ms Tan says: “Despite structural shifts towards smaller units, a substantial market segment prefers larger, more comfortable homes where supply allows.”
And 18 per cent of the 1,000 respondents polled as part of the Knight Frank-Ipsos Quality of Life report indicated that they preferred an older development with a larger living space over newer, compact ones.
Dr Lee adds: “This reinforces the intergenerational and wealth divide, especially in our ownership-based housing systems.
“A lot of older condos and landed housing are freehold. These homes will never be available to laypeople. That’s one kind of inequality or equity concern I have.”
Small-home dweller Foo Zhiwei, 36, bought his newly developed one-bedroom condo unit in Guillemard in 2023. Living in just 41 sq m of space, he too has adopted many space-maximising measures.
His shoebox unit has no dining table. The human resources worker eats at a coffee table that can be converted into a work desk. The space beneath his bed doubles as storage, and much of his furniture – like fold-down desks and shelves – hangs off the wall to conserve floor space.
To Mr Foo, such a unit made sense for a bachelor in his early 30s looking to strike out on his own and move out of the family home.
Although he aspires to move into a home with a larger living area to entertain guests, he considers such a prospect unlikely to happen in the near term because of his uncertainty about the job market.
“Taking on a bigger loan is possible, but then you cannot afford to lose your job,” he says. “As a single, it’s different from a two-person team.”
Another concern is that even as household sizes have fallen, demand for space has not.
Mr Phua says he cannot help but envy the homes of his married friends: spacious four- or five-room HDB flats with extra rooms occupied not by children but by pets – an arrangement he deems “absolutely unfair”.
Mr Jon Phua’s bedroom includes a bedside ledge which functions as a table and storage space.
ST PHOTO: JASEL POH
That marriage is often a precondition to accessing larger subsidised homes is a different kind of inequality that concerns him.
He hopes that in the future, larger HDB flats will also come in more configurations intended for smaller households – such as three-room layouts with two bedrooms and a bathroom – that are available to singles like him, without age or marital restrictions.
Will it shrink further?
A consequence of these space constraints is that efficiency has become an increasingly important priority for designers, developers and policymakers.
“Older properties were not built for optimal space efficiency,” says Mr Joel Lim, associate head of research at real estate directory 99.co. “Newer BTOs are usually more efficient in terms of flat layout.”
The demand for space-efficient design has also meant the
ascendancy of Japanese-infused minimalism
as the dominant aesthetic for condo and HDB units.Such demand is also a key driver behind the new open-concept HDB
and multi-generation flats designed to maximise functionality for larger families, Mr Lim adds.
As he has no dining table, Mr Jon Phua eats at a desk that doubles as his workspace.
ST PHOTO: JASEL POH
Mr Lee Sze Teck, senior director of data analytics at real estate agency Huttons Asia, expects the demand for small homes in Singapore to increase. “The number of singles, seniors and households with one or no child is likely to increase in the years ahead.”
However, experts speaking to ST note that Singapore’s living spaces are unlikely to shrink further.
The URA issued guidelines on the average living space required and the maximum number of dwelling units for new developments in 2012, which it tightened further in 2019 and 2023.
All non-landed residential units must contain at least 35 sq m, measured to the middle of the walls of the unit, but excluding voids, balconies, air-conditioner ledges and other external areas.
Developments in central Singapore must have at least 20 per cent of units measuring a minimum of 70 sq m, with this requirement raised to 100 sq m for a non-central development.
That the majority of Singaporeans live in public housing also sets expectations around size, especially compared with other housing markets infamous for tiny homes.
“In Singapore, when we think of the baseline, it’s public housing,” says Dr Lee. “In Hong Kong, public housing is very small.”
In 2023, it was reported that the median per capita floor area of accommodation for Hong Kong’s domestic households was about 172 sq ft or 15.9 sq m.
Still, Dr Lee notes: “It is not really about size, but the design.”
Smaller layouts work when they are efficient and well-served by communal amenities. Problems arise when downsizing is achieved without attention to usability, she adds.
“But so far, Singapore’s housing is heavily controlled and regulated.”
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