A Bridging Loan Runs Six Months. That Isn't the Bank's Rule — It's the Legal Definition.

Most explanations of bridging loans start with the bank. That is the wrong end. Start with the regulator, because the regulator wrote the product's boundaries into a definition — and the definition is doing far more work than any bank's marketing page.

MAS Notice 645, paragraph 2(b), in full:

"Bridging Loan" means a credit facility granted for the purchase of Residential Property by the Borrower, pending the receipt of proceeds from the sale of another Residential Property owned or co-owned by the Borrower, under which any balance outstanding must be repaid within six months.

The same wording appears at paragraph 30(d) of Notice 632. Six months is not a bank convention that a relationship manager might stretch. It is definitional. A facility that runs longer simply is not a bridging loan under the notices — which matters enormously, because of what the notices switch off inside that boundary.

"Exempt from TDSR" badly undersells it

Notice 645 paragraph 22 lists bridging loans as an excluded facility, disapplying three separate paragraphs. Notice 632 paragraph 18 disapplies most of that notice as well. Together:

What survives is paragraph 7(c) of Notice 632 — the creditworthiness assessment — which continues to apply where the borrower is an individual. The bank must still form a view about you. It is simply not bound by the usual arithmetic on this slice.

There is a second, separate carve-out that is easy to miss and worth real money. Notice 645 paragraph 2(p)(vii) brings "Bridging Loans (except Bridging Loans with a tenure of six months or less)" into Total Debt Obligations. Read it the other way round: a bridge of six months or less is invisible in the TDSR computation on your new home loan. A longer one is not. That is the second reason the six-month line is load-bearing, and it is why banks cannot casually roll a bridge forward — doing so would retroactively collapse the carve-outs on the main mortgage.

MAS says the same thing in plain English in its own explainer: the TDSR rules do not apply to "bridging loans where the outstanding balance will be repaid within 6 months."

What it actually costs, August 2026

This is where the published record thins out dramatically. Only two banks publish anything.

For context on the pegs: 3-month Compounded SORA was 1.14% at end-July 2026, and overnight SORA 0.83% (MAS series via SingStat table M700071). ABS published DBS and UOB prime at 4.25%, OCBC at 5.00% and Standard Chartered at 5.75% in its 14 August 2026 table.

The defensible statement is narrow: one bank publishes a rate, one publishes a peg, and the honest market range is roughly 4% to 6% per annum. Anything more precise than that, on any comparison site, is not sourced from a bank.

Fees are the pleasant surprise. DBS lists loan processing as "not applicable." Standard Chartered advertises no processing fee and no upfront arrangement fee. The Association of Banks in Singapore states that "generally, no prepayment fee is levied for early or partial redemption of the Bridging Loan before maturity date," and UOB says the same. Neither the UOB nor OCBC published fee schedules carry a bridging line item.

The sizing trap: net, not gross

Here is the number that catches upgraders, and it comes from a bank's own page rather than any blog. UOB sizes the bridge against net sale proceeds — the sale amount "less any outstanding loan balance and the amount of CPF plus accrued interest used for the existing property."

Banks lend against the cash that will actually land, not the price on the contract. Worked through, on a household selling an HDB flat and buying private:

Six months of interest on S$220,000: S$4,675 at DBS's 4.25%, about S$779 a month. At the top of the 4–6% band, S$6,600. Those are small numbers, and they are the least interesting part of the transaction.

Note the shape of the trap. The larger your accrued interest, the smaller your bridge — so the seller with the longest CPF history and the highest sale price gets the least support, which is precisely the seller who assumed the sale price was the resource.

One nuance the comparison sites get wrong in both directions: the CPF refund can retire the bridging principal, subject to the withdrawal limits on the new property. Both UOB and the ABS handbook say so explicitly. The interest, however, must be serviced in cash — UOB's terms bar CPF from it outright.

What a bridging loan does not fix

The bridge is often sold as the solution to buying before selling. On the largest number in that transaction, it barely moves the needle.

Source: MAS, for options granted on or after 6 July 2018.

Buying while the old loan is still outstanding adds S$540,000 to the equity requirement and S$360,000 to the minimum cash. A S$220,000 bridge covers 22% of the S$990,000 equity gap. It is a cashflow smoother, not a leverage substitute, and no amount of bridging changes which LTV tier you land in.

If the sale does not complete

No Singapore bank's terms contain a roll-over or extension mechanism. What exists is discretionary restructuring — a bank's option, not your right — and the contractual position on non-payment is severe.

DBS's terms make non-payment an event of default that triggers immediate repayment on demand of the whole facility, which means a bridging default cross-defaults the housing loan issued under the same letter of offer. OCBC's terms automatically cancel the facility with immediate repayment of the full amount owing, and separately allow OCBC to demand full repayment on one month's notice at any time, default or not. Standard Chartered reserves the right to ask for repayment "at any time," notwithstanding any other term.

Default interest, using the ABS prime rates published on 14 August 2026:

UOB and OCBC each levy a flat S$80 late-payment fee on top of default interest.

The ABS handbook sets out the remedies plainly: recall the loan, charge a higher rate, sue or initiate foreclosure, sue for any shortfall after the sale proceeds, and bring bankruptcy proceedings. That is the industry body's own list, not a worst-case reading of it.

Worth correcting one persistent myth here: a failed sale does not convert the bridge into a permanent second mortgage or a 10–12% personal loan. No bank document supports that. What actually happens is a repayment demand.

The alternative, and the asymmetry nobody prices

The other route is to buy first, pay ABSD, and reclaim it. For a Singapore Citizen couple buying a second residential property, ABSD is 20% — S$360,000 on a S$1.8m purchase — refundable if the first home is sold within six months of the purchase.

Two things about that refund are current and frequently misreported. Since 2 July 2023 it is automatic for eligible married couples where intent was declared at purchase, paid within about six weeks of the sale being stamped — not the "3 to 6 months" figure still circulating from the old manual regime. And the deadline is absolute. IRAS's own words: the six-month timeline "must be adhered to. The refund application will be rejected if any of the conditions are not met… As an extension of the six-month timeline will not be acceded to, married couples can consider to secure a buyer for the sale of their first property before purchasing their next property to avoid incurring ABSD."

That is the tax authority recommending sell-first. It is the single most quotable line on this subject and it comes from IRAS, not from us.

The asymmetry between the two routes is worth stating explicitly, because no one seems to:

• ABSD route fails — the S$360,000 is permanently lost. There is no appeal mechanism. A timing cost becomes a dead cost.
• Bridging route fails — you face a repayment demand that cross-defaults the housing loan, with the bank's security being a mortgage over the home you have just moved into.

Different sizes, different kinds. One is a large, bounded, certain loss. The other is smaller in dollars and unbounded in consequence.

Against both, sell-first-and-rent is the boring option that keeps getting dismissed. Six months in an interim rental at Q2 2026 HDB town medians: about S$21,000 in Tampines, S$18,600 in Woodlands, S$22,800 in Toa Payoh. Add commission, tenancy stamp duty, two moves and storage. It is inconvenient and it is roughly a twentieth of the ABSD exposure. Note too that renting is not getting cheaper — URA's rental index rose 0.7% quarter on quarter in Q2 2026 and about 1.7% year on year.

The read

There is one eligibility condition that reframes the entire product, and it appears in every lender's terms: the outgoing property must already be under an exercised option or a signed sale and purchase agreement before the bridge is released. DBS additionally requires irrevocable authorisations directing your solicitor — and HDB, for a flat — to pay the bank out of the proceeds directly.

So a bridging loan is not a bet that you will sell. It is not available to anyone still hoping to sell. It is a short, cheap, cash-flow instrument for the narrow window between a sale that has already been agreed and proceeds that have not yet cleared — and it is priced accordingly, at four to six percent for six months against a signed contract.

Every use of it beyond that window is somebody selling you the wrong product. And the buyer who most wants a bridging loan — the one who has found the next home but has not sold the current one — is precisely the buyer who cannot have it.

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Methodology published. No spin. Regulatory provisions quoted from MAS Notices 645 and 632 as revised 21 August 2025. Rates verified against bank and ABS published sources on 18 August 2026; SORA from the MAS series via SingStat. Worked figures computed, not estimated. Bridging pricing for most lenders is not published and is set in the letter of offer — treat any precise third-party figure with suspicion.