Four of Five HDB Flat Types Got Cheaper in July. The Median Went Up Anyway.

July was the busiest month of 2026 in the HDB resale market, and the all-flat median resale price finished higher than June's. Both statements are true, and together they read like a market turning back up.

Computed from HDB's own transaction file, four of the five main flat types sold for less in July than in June. The median rose because the composition of what sold changed — not because flats got more expensive.

What July actually recorded

Every figure below is computed from HDB's published resale transaction dataset on data.gov.sg, downloaded 12 August 2026.

Volume is up 24.8% on June and 3.6% on the same month last year — the highest monthly count of 2026. The median is up S$5,000, or 0.8%, on June.

That is the surface. Underneath it the picture inverts.

The median that went the wrong way

Split the same two months by flat type:

Only 4-room flats — 43.6% of the market and the one type most people mean when they say "HDB resale" — transacted higher, by S$4,000. Every other type fell.

The overall median still rose because the mix shifted upmarket. The 5-room share gained two percentage points; the 3-room share lost two. Swap enough S$431,000 flats for S$730,000 flats and the midpoint of the whole distribution moves up, even as each individual segment gets cheaper.

Holding the mix still

The clean way to test this is to price July's flats using June's mix — same weights, new medians — so composition cannot move the answer.

A raw median up 0.8% becomes a like-for-like figure down 0.70% once the mix is held constant. A swing of roughly 1.5 percentage points, entirely attributable to what sold rather than what it sold for.

This is why HDB's Resale Price Index and the raw median can point different ways in the same month. The index controls for flat type, model, storey and location; the median does not control for anything. The RPI fell 0.3% in the second quarter of 2026, its second consecutive quarterly decline. The like-for-like calculation above is the same phenomenon showing up in a single month of raw transactions.

The year-on-year read

Twelve months is a longer base and a better test of direction:

The 4-room median is identical to the dollar a year on. The 3-room median is down 6.2%, which is the sharpest move in the table and the one least discussed, because 3-room flats are a shrinking share of what gets written about.

Note what this is not. Prices are drifting, not falling away — a 1% to 6% move across a year, in a market clearing more units than it did last July. That is a market finding a level, not one in trouble.

The record that proves the rule

On 4 August an executive maisonette at Block 192 Bishan Street 13, on the 22nd to 24th floor, sold for S$1,650,000. At 162 sqm — about 1,744 sq ft — that is S$946 psf, and it is the most expensive executive flat ever transacted in Singapore.

Set against its own market: across the 14 Bishan executive flats in the dataset between April and August 2026, the mean is S$810 psf and the median S$802 psf. The record sits 17% above the mean for the same flat type in the same town over the same five months.

A discontinued typology in a mature estate can set an all-time high in the same month the index falls. Those are not contradictory readings — maisonettes stopped being built in the mid-1990s, so supply is fixed and shrinking while the rest of the market re-prices. Scarcity and direction are different things, and headline records measure the first while telling you nothing about the second.

What a seller should take from this

If you are selling a 3-room flat, the year-on-year number is the one that applies to you, and it is −6.2%. Pricing off a national median that rose is pricing off a statistic your flat is not in.

If you are selling a 4-room flat, your segment is flat over twelve months and marginally up over one. That is the most stable read in the table, and July's volume says buyers are transacting at it.

If you are selling anything larger, the mix shift is working in your favour on the surface — more big flats are changing hands — while the median for your type is down 1% or so. More competition, slightly softer pricing.

And whatever you own, the number to ask an agent for is the median for your flat type, in your town, over the last three months. Not the national median. Not the record. The national median moved 0.8% in July for reasons that have nothing to do with any individual flat.

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Sources: computed from the Housing & Development Board's Resale Flat Prices dataset on data.gov.sg, downloaded 12 August 2026. Monthly figures are by registration month, so recent months continue to accrue transactions after publication; August 2026 is partial and is excluded from all month-on-month comparisons except the single Bishan transaction cited. Medians, shares, the fixed-mix calculation and all percentage changes are computed from the raw records. Quarterly Resale Price Index movements are HDB's published figures.

Methodology published. No spin.