Methodology
How we think about property as an investment, and exactly how the RPS and NPS scorecards work. Published in full: no price, nothing held back.
How we see property as an investment
Real estate isn't great on investment returns.
As a pure investment, property is unremarkable. Over the long run, capital appreciation doesn't outpace what you could earn in equities, commodities, or other asset classes. The “property is stable” argument has holes too. If it's safety you want, government bonds and T-bills give you low risk without the baggage.
And there's a lot of baggage. The moment you buy, you're down. Stamp duties, legal fees, and assorted costs come out before the property has earned you a cent.
“But you can leverage 75% from the bank.” True, and few other assets offer ordinary buyers that. It cuts both ways: you pay the bank interest on that leverage for years.
Tally it up as an investment alone, and buying property sounds close to ridiculous.
How we see it differently
There's one thing real estate does that no stock, bond, or coin ever will: it puts a roof over your head.
Property was never only an investment to us. You find a home that fits your life, with the space, location, amenities, and security you want, and it grows in value while you live in it. You get the use of the home and its appreciation at once. No other asset gives you both.
Families who bought landed homes a generation ago weren't running appreciation models. They wanted room for several generations under one roof. They bought a home, it served them, and over the years it grew in value and helped fund their retirement.
That's the lens we bring to every conversation: get the home right first, and let the investment take care of itself.
Our approach
If you're looking for a simple buy, sell, or rent, there are cheaper alternatives. If cheap is the goal, you might even do the transaction yourself. We've put tools on this site to help you handle the basic financial planning and timeline on your own.
So who actually works with us?
- ▸Homeowners and buyers who've already been doing their own research
- ▸People who've found plenty of information online, but no case study ever quite fits their situation, because everyone's circumstances are different
- ▸Clients who are open to learning, yet sharp enough to see through the usual sales fluff
- ▸Clients who want a realtor who lays out multiple paths and the honest pros and cons of each, not one who pushes them toward a single decision
That last point is the whole job, as we see it. We sit down, listen to your actual situation, your timeline, your constraints, what you're really trying to achieve, and map out the paths genuinely open to you. For each one, we lay out the trade-offs plainly: the upside, the risk, what it costs, what it locks you into. Then you decide. We're not here to push a transaction; we're here so you make the call with the full picture in front of you.
Built in-house, end to end. Every tool on this site is built by Silas: the RPS and NPS scorecards, every calculator, every purchase planner. No licensed widgets, no white-labelled plugins, no outsourced math. The methodology is his, the code is his, and it's all published in the open so you can check the working.
RPS: Resale Project Scorecard
A structured way to compare resale condos on the fundamentals that drive long-term demand, not on price. Every factor, every weight, publicly disclosed.
The question “is this condo a good buy?” deserves a defensible, reproducible answer drawn from transaction data, not optimism. RPS scores what the data says about the fundamentals; it never scores PSF or asking price. You bring the price: RPS tells you how the project stacks up on what actually moves demand.
What it scores: the seven factors
Each condo gets a 1–10 score on seven dimensions. Those scores are weighted and summed to a single 0–10 RPS score, which maps to a letter grade (S, A, B, C, D).
| Factor | Weightage | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Project's Historical Performance | 25% | Resale price performance vs same-vintage cohort. Top quartile = 10. |
| Primary School Effect | 20% | Primary schools within 1km, weighted by P1 ballot demand. |
| Project Size | 16% | Total units. Top score at 500–800 units; 800–1,200 still scores well: liquid resale market, viable maintenance pool. |
| MRT Proximity | 13% | Walking distance to the nearest heavy-rail MRT. Doorstep < 200m = 10. LRT, monorail, and terminus-only stations are excluded, so a light-rail stop next door doesn't inflate the score. |
| Tenure | 10% | Freehold / 999YR = 10. 99YR scored on remaining lease. |
| Rental Yield | 10% | Gross rental yield (% per year). Absolute bands: ≥5% = 10, 4.5–4.99% = 9. |
| Future Transformation | 6% | Proximity to forward-looking infrastructure: URA Master Plan 2025 transformation zones and LTA upcoming MRT stations. Closer + larger + sooner = higher score. As MRT lines open, those catalysts automatically drop from the score and the MRT factor takes over. |
Weightages sum to 100%. Final score = Σ(factor × weight) ÷ 100.
How to read a grade
Grades are cohort-aware: a condo is ranked against its peers, not on a flat curve. Letters encode where a project sits in the distribution:
- STop tier: strong across nearly every factor. Rare.
- AWell above average: a clear majority of factors are strong.
- BSolid middle: a balanced mix of strengths and trade-offs.
- CBelow average: weaker on several demand drivers.
- DBottom tier: soft on most of the seven factors.
What powers it
- ▸URA REALIS: 236,000+private residential transactions, refreshed quarterly. Source for Project's Historical Performance scoring.
- ▸OneMap (SLA): school locations and MRT/LRT station coordinates. Distance computed via Haversine, not driving routes.
- ▸MOE primary school registration data: three-year weighted P1 ballot demand per primary school.
- ▸URA Draft Master Plan 2025: transformation zone boundaries for Future Transformation scoring.
- ▸LTA Rail Network Map: upcoming MRT station coordinates and opening years.
- ▸Public rental listings: trailing 12-month median rental PSF for yield calculation.
Edge cases & exclusions
New launches
Excluded from RPS. Insufficient resale transaction history to score Project's Historical Performance reliably. New launches are scored separately on NPS (New Project Scorecard).
Executive Condominiums (ECs)
Included once they have post-MOP resale history. RPS treats ECs identically to private condos: same seven factors, same weights, same grade bands. The methodology does not weight “prestige” or buyer-pool perception. ECs that outperform on measurable factors will outscore CCR condos that don't, and the framework will surface that without apology.
Sample-size limits
Condos with fewer than 20 secondary-market transactions in the trailing 5 years get a confidence flag, but are still scored. The cohort-comparison method (vs same-vintage peers) handles smaller samples better than absolute price-trend regression would.
En-bloc removals
Condos that have gone en-bloc are removed from the dataset on the next quarterly refresh, not retained as historical records. RPS scores what's transactable today.
Worked example: Parc Life EC
A top-ten condo in the dataset. Parc Life EC in Sembawang (District 27) scores 8.92/10 (S grade), ahead of every condo in District 9, 10, and 11.
Why does RPS rank an EC above every condo in the prime districts? Because the methodology doesn't weight prestige; it weights measurable outcomes. Here's the math.
The numbers
Parc Life EC · D27 Sembawang · Frasers Property · TOP 2018 · 628 units · 99YR
| Factor | Weightage | Score | Contribution | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project's Historical Performance | 25% | 10 | 2.50 | Top 5% of 2018-era cohort. |
| Primary School Effect | 20% | 10 | 2.00 | 3 primary schools within 1km. |
| Project Size | 16% | 10 | 1.60 | 628 units, liquid resale sweet spot. |
| MRT Proximity | 13% | 7 | 0.91 | 0.63km to Sembawang MRT: short walk, not doorstep. |
| Tenure | 10% | 8 | 0.80 | 99YR, about 87 years remaining. |
| Rental Yield | 10% | 10 | 1.00 | 5.12% gross yield. |
| Future Transformation | 6% | 2 | 0.12 | Nearest catalyst, the Sembawang Shipyard waterfront redevelopment, sits 2.36km away, beyond meaningful proximity bands: only a marginal forward-looking tailwind. |
| Total | 100% | n/a | 8.92 | S grade |
Factor scores are displayed to the nearest whole number; the total is computed on unrounded scores, so the contributions shown may not sum exactly to 8.92.
The honest read. Parc Life scores 8.92 because five of seven factors hit 10, with tenure at 8. Two factors drag: MRT, where a 0.63km walk to Sembawang station is “short walk” territory, not doorstep, and Future Transformation, where the nearest catalyst sits 2.36km away, beyond meaningful proximity bands. That FT score of 2 still costs the property 0.48 points; the framework doesn't award tailwinds that aren't there, even to a project it otherwise rates this highly.
The contrarian read. The Sail @ Marina Bay, widely cited as a flagship CCR purchase, scores in the C band on RPS. Marina One Residences scores C. Most of District 9 trades on prestige and PSF, not on the seven factors the framework actually measures. A buyer who pays 2-3x the PSF of Parc Life for CCR prestige is making a real estate decision, but it isn't the decision RPS scores well.
The caveat. Parc Life hit MOP in 2022. That gives roughly four years of resale transaction data, thinner than a 1990s-era condo with three decades of history. The cohort-comparison method handles this (compare Parc Life vs other 2017–2018 TOP condos, not vs all condos), but if you want a thicker dataset on the same EC story, The Visionaire EC (D27, also S grade, TOP 2018) scores 8.78 and tells the same structural story.
What it can't tell you
- ▸It doesn't price the unit. RPS scores the project on demand fundamentals, never PSF or asking price. It also can't account for the specific stack, facing, floor, or renovation of the unit you're looking at.
- ▸It's not a price prediction. RPS scores what the data says about a condo today, not what it will be worth in 2035. Past performance isn't a guarantee.
- ▸It's not a buy/sell signal. A high score means “this project scores well on these seven measurable factors,” not “buy.” Whether to buy depends on your budget, financing, family stage, and risk tolerance, none of which RPS knows.
- ▸It's not lifestyle-weighted. The framework doesn't score CCR-vs-OCR preference, sea views, ID quality, or facilities. If a sky pool is non-negotiable, RPS won't help you choose between two condos that both have one.
Run the scorecard
Score your shortlist against the same framework. Graded S to D, on the fundamentals: you bring the price.
NPS: New Project Scorecard
A quality grade for active new launches, paired with a holding-period and buy-vs-resale calculator, built on the fundamentals of the district a project sits in and the project's own location, measured over a ten-year window.
New launches don't have the resale history that RPS needs, so NPS uses a distinct framework. The grade scores a launch on its district's long-run capital and rental trends plus the project's own location fundamentals, not the seven resale factors RPS uses. Alongside the grade, a calculator answers the question a grade can't: at this asking price, how long until it compounds into the return I want, and would a resale nearby be a better entry?Each project lands on the same S–D letter grade, on its own basis.
A grade is not an entry price
NPS scores a project's capital-appreciation potential from district and location fundamentals: the demand side. How easily you exit, though, still depends on what you paid. The lower your entry PSF relative to the rest of the project, the easier the eventual sale: the best-scoring stacks bought at the lowest PSF in a project are the easiest to exit.
So when an asking price looks “high” next to what's already transacted in the same project, and there's no cheaper comparable, the instinct is to think “I don't want to pay more than others did.” That's the wrong question. The right one is: how long do I need to hold before this compounds into the capital appreciation I want? If you're buying for your own stay and planning to hold for the long run, say 10 years or more, a strong-fundamentals project can still serve your needs and still appreciate. The entry premium is a function of time, not a dealbreaker. The calculator below makes that trade-off explicit.
The grade: five district-weighted factors
Each launch gets a 0–10 score on five factors. Those scores are weighted and summed to a single 0–10 NPS score, which maps to a letter grade (S, A, B, C, D).
| Factor | Weightage | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Capital Appreciation | 30% | The 10-year resaleappreciation of comparable condos within 1km (same-property URA resale prices), on an absolute scale, then adjusted up to ±1.5 points for the project's own size, transport and schools. Using resale prices strips out the new-launch price inflation that can skew a district's headline median. |
| School Effect | 20% | Primary schools within 1km, weighted by P1-ballot demand and proximity. Being next to an oversubscribed school scores high; a lone undersubscribed school nearby scores low. |
| Project Size | 18% | Total units. Mid-to-large developments score best: liquid resale market without overcrowding. |
| MRT Proximity | 18% | Distance to the nearest MRT station. Integrated with the station = 10; a short walk (even ~150m) tops out at 9. |
| District Rental Growth | 14% | The 10-year rental trend of the project's district (URA rental contracts), scored on an absolute scale, so the number reflects the actual rate of growth. |
Weightages sum to 100%. Final score = Σ(factor × weight) ÷ 100.
How the factors are built
Capital appreciation starts from the same-property resale growthof condos within 1km of the project: the median 10-year annual appreciation of nearby resale transactions (URA), with the district's resale growth used where local data is thin. It is scored on an absolute scale calibrated so 0%/yr maps to 0 and 5%/yr maps to 10. We deliberately use resale-only prices rather than a district's overall median PSF: a wave of pricey new launches can lift a district's median without any existing home actually appreciating, so resale growth measures the real thing: the same signal the RPS resale scorecard uses. We then apply a bounded ±1.5-point project-quality adjustment: a development's own size, MRT access and schools nudge its score up or down, so a standout project isn't capped at the same score as a weaker neighbour.
Rental growthis the district's 10-year rental trend (URA rental contracts), scored on an absolute scalecalibrated so that roughly 2.5%/yr maps to 0 and 8.5%/yr maps to 10. We use an absolute scale here rather than a pure rank because district rental growth is tightly bunched: a ranked score would make a genuinely healthy 6% read as “below average,” which it isn't.
The project-level factors, schools, MRT distance and unit count, are scored with fixed band tables: the closer the station and the healthier the project size, the higher the band. Schools go further than distance alone: each primary school within 1km is weighted by its three-year P1-ballot demand (the same popularity signal RPS uses), so proximity to an oversubscribed school lifts the score while a lone undersubscribed school nearby barely moves it. Where a district has too little history to fit a reliable trend, NPS says so rather than inventing a score.
How to read a grade
The weighted 0–10 score maps to a letter grade on fixed bands:
- S8.5 and above: strong across nearly every factor.
- A7.0 – 8.49: well above average.
- B5.5 – 6.99: solid middle.
- C4.0 – 5.49: below average.
- DBelow 4.0: soft on most factors.
Beyond the grade: the holding-period calculator
The grade measures a project's appreciation potential. The calculator turns that into a buyer's answer. You enter the project, bedroom type, floor area and asking price, and set a target annual return (default 5%). NPS returns the recommended holding period: the earliest window at which your entry price compounds to that target.
- ▸Fair-value benchmark: the median transactedPSF for that exact bedroom type, from URA caveats. We calibrate each project's bedroom-area boundaries against transaction records so the bands reflect the project's real unit mix, not a size guess.
- ▸Growth assumption:the district's 10-year trend, tilted ±1.5%/yr by the project's own size, transport and schools (the same quality signal as the grade).
- ▸Own stay vs investment: pick your buyer type. Own stay counts price appreciation only. Investment adds the district's gross rental yield (URA), since an investor also earns rent, so the holding period reflects total return (appreciation + yield), which is why a low-growth but high-yield prime district can still clear a target an own-stayer can't.
- ▸The output: pay at fair value and the holding period is short; overpay and it lengthens. The number is the time it takes for your specific entry price to reach your target return.
Buy new, or resale within 1km?
For every launch, NPS lines it up against the most comparable resale projects within 1km — the completed projects closest to the launch in age and number of units, then distance (not whichever happened to appreciate most), so you can weigh a new-launch price against a cheaper resale entry on the same footing.
The catch is that older resale always looks cheaper per square foot simply because it's older. To compare like-for-like, we reprice each resale to what it would cost if it were launched brand-new today, using an age-depreciation curve measured from roughly 2,400 URA resale projects. The curve runs on separate freehold and leasehold tracks: a leasehold home loses value faster as its 99-year lease runs down, so it gets a larger uplift back to a fresh launch; a freehold only ages physically and its PSF flattens out. Each resale is matched to its own tenure, region and building age.
Growth is projected the same way for both sides: the new launch and each resale are forecast from their own district's 10-year trend, tilted ±1.5%/yr by that property's own size, transport and schools. We deliberately don't use a resale's past run as its forecast (a single project's history is noisy and would let a strong past inflate the comparison), but we still showeach resale's actual past growth for context. For each option you then see the entry price for your unit size, the projected growth per year, the years to your target return, with a plain-language verdict.
What powers it
- ▸URA Data Service: per-unit private residential caveats (price, area, sale type), refreshed automatically from a Singapore server. Source for transacted PSF, the district trends and the age-depreciation curve.
- ▸Transaction records with bedroom labels:used to calibrate each project's bedroom-area boundaries, so a project's actual unit mix is reflected rather than inferred from floor area alone.
- ▸OneMap (SLA): school and MRT station coordinates. Distances computed via Haversine, not driving routes.
What it is, and isn't
NPS grades location fundamentals (capital appreciation from nearby resale, district rental growth, schools, MRT, project size) plus the project's own location, over a 10-year window. The grade is backward-looking and reflects historical area performance, not project-specific forecasts, and it does not account for precinct transformation or new growth corridors. Holding periods and entry prices are gross of stamp duties, agent fees and financing costs, and assume the growth rate holds. They are illustrative, not a price prediction or a buy/sell signal. Not financial advice.
Score a new launch
The New Project Scorecard is live for active Singapore launches. The grade is open to all; the holding-period and buy-vs-resale calculator is available through our consultants.
Our Tools
We build the things we wish existed when we were advising clients: structured ways to pressure-test a decision instead of relying on gut feel. Each one is grounded in actual transaction data, not opinion.
Scorecards
- RPS: Resale Project ScorecardLive
Scores resale condos across the demand fundamentals that drive long-term value.
- NPS: New Project ScorecardLive
Grades active new launches S–D on district-level fundamentals, a distinct framework from RPS.
Sale & Purchase
What you can afford, end to end.
Net cash from a sale after costs.
Budget & grants for a resale flat.
Full cost of a resale condo.
Progressive-payment new launch.
EC eligibility, grants & costs.
Mortgage
Borrowing limits under MAS rules.
Repayment schedule over the loan.
Progressive-payment schedule.
How age caps your loan tenure.
Boost eligibility via pledged funds.
Stamp Duties
BSD & ABSD on a purchase.
SSD if you sell within the holding period.
Stamp duty on a tenancy.
Strategy
For more complex, multi-property scenarios, where timing, structuring, and downside all matter.
Time a sale and a purchase together.
Costs & savings of decoupling owners.
Compare the two paths head-to-head.
Stress-test your holding power.
Project your exit outcome over time.
Each tool has its own page with the full detail. This tab is just the map. View all tools →
Frequently asked questions
- What is the TRIBE Resale Project Scorecard (RPS)?
- RPS independently scores 2,357 Singapore resale condominiums across seven weighted factors, producing a single 0–10 score and a letter grade (S–D). The full methodology (every factor, weight, formula, and data source) is published.
- What are the seven RPS factors and their weights?
- Project's Historical Performance (25%), Primary School Effect (20%), Project Size (16%), MRT Proximity (13%), Tenure (10%), Rental Yield (10%), and Future Transformation (6%). The weighted scores sum to a single 0–10 RPS score.
- How is the RPS letter grade determined?
- Grades are cohort-aware: each project is ranked against same-vintage peers, not a flat curve. S is top tier (strong across nearly every factor), down to D (soft on most of the seven factors).
- Why can an Executive Condo outscore a prime-district (CCR) condo?
- Because RPS weights measurable demand fundamentals, not prestige or price-per-square-foot. An EC that performs on schools, transport, size, and resale demand will outscore a CCR project that trades mainly on prestige.
- What data sources power RPS?
- URA REALIS (236,000+ private transactions), OneMap/SLA (school and MRT coordinates), MOE P1 balloting data, the URA Draft Master Plan 2025, the LTA rail network map, and public rental listings.
- Are new launches included in RPS?
- No. New launches lack enough resale transaction history to score reliably, so they are assessed separately under the New Project Scorecard (NPS).
- What can RPS not tell you?
- It does not price a specific unit, is not a price prediction or a buy/sell signal, and is not lifestyle-weighted (no view, facing, or renovation factors). It scores project-level demand fundamentals. You bring the price.