One S$70 Million Deal Decides Whether the Shophouse Quarter Was Up or Down

Twenty-one shophouses were sold in the third quarter of 2026, worth S$157.7 million. That is five more deals than the second quarter and 18.6% less money (EdgeProp, reporting Huttons Asia, 9 October). Huttons attributes the value fall to a "normalised baseline," which is the polite version of what actually happened.

What actually happened is that one deal in the second quarter was S$70 million — three adjoining freehold corner shophouses at 29B/C, 31 and 33 Lorong Liput in Holland Village, sold as a single block on a 7,543 sq ft site (EdgeProp, 3 July). That one transaction was 36.1% of the entire quarter's transacted value. Strip it out and 2Q2026 was 15 deals worth S$123.7 million, against which the third quarter's S$157.7 million is up 27.5%, not down 18.6%.

Both numbers are correct. Neither is a market signal. That is the state of the shophouse market in 2026.

The quarterly path the headline hides

The year-on-year number is the one that gets quoted: 51 shophouses sold in the first nine months of 2026 against 68 a year earlier, down 25%, with value down 31.5% from S$644.5 million to S$441.3 million.

The quarterly path runs the other way.

The first-quarter figures are published, not inferred. Huttons reported 2Q2026 as 16 deals, up from 14, with value "more than double the S$90 million in 1Q2026" and an average deal size of S$12.1 million against S$6.4 million in the prior three months (EdgeProp, reporting Huttons, 10 July). The series reconciles exactly: 14 + 16 + 21 = 51, and S$89.9m + S$193.7m + S$157.7m = S$441.3 million.

Two things follow. First, 2026 opened at a genuine low — PropNex, working off URA Realis, put 1Q2026 at 13 deals and called it the weakest quarter in 28 years, the lowest count since 2Q1998 (EdgeProp, 28 April). Second, volume has risen in every quarter since. The nine-month comparison is down because 2025 was a recovery year, not because 2026 is deteriorating.

The average deal size is where the real softening shows: S$8.65 million across 9M2026 against S$9.48 million in 9M2025, down 8.7%. More deals, smaller tickets.

Why the block sale counts as one deal

Huttons publishes three figures for 2Q2026 that have to agree with each other: 16 transactions, S$193.7 million, average S$12.1 million. S$193.7m ÷ 16 = S$12.106 million, which is the published average. If the Lorong Liput trio were counted as three, the divisor would be 18 and the average would be S$10.76 million — which is not what Huttons printed. The same check holds on the adjacent quarter: S$89.9m ÷ 14 = S$6.42 million, matching the published S$6.4 million.

This is also what the stamp-duty rules would produce. IRAS treats a block purchase under a single contract as one dutiable instrument: where properties "are acquired collectively" under a single contract, or the purchases "are dependent and conditional on one another," duty is calculated on the total price, and "only one of the documents is required to be stamped at ad valorem duty" (IRAS). One instrument, one caveat, one line in the quarterly count — at S$9,280 psf on the land.

No published source states the caveat count directly. The finding rests on Huttons' own arithmetic and the duty convention, and we are saying so rather than asserting it.

Three firms count the same market and get three answers

These are not errors. They are different definitions. ERA's report is scoped to landed shophouses, which excludes strata-titled units (ERA, 1H2026, 25 August). PropNex pulled 1Q2026 caveats on 21 April; Huttons pulled the same quarter in July, by which time more had been lodged — and PropNex has itself restated a quarter upward before, moving 1Q2025 from 19 deals to 20. The caveat-level record also mixes prime conservation stock with suburban shophouses in Balestier, Greenwood Avenue and Jalan Jurong Kechil, which different scopes include or drop.

Then there is the stock that never appears at all. Huttons estimated uncaveated shophouse deals on Amoy Street, Neil Road, North Bridge Road and Telok Ayer Street in 2024 alone at more than S$200 million (EdgeProp, 12 February 2025). Every count in the table above is a floor.

In a market of 200 deals a year, a one-deal definitional gap is noise. In a market of 51 deals in nine months, it is 2% of the sample.

The denominator nobody updates

URA says shophouses "form the bulk" of the more than 7,000 gazetted conservation buildings across almost 100 conservation areas (URA, last updated 2 September 2026). It does not publish a shophouse count. The figure everyone uses — about 6,500 — traces to a URA statement in 2012 and has not been publicly restated since.

Take it anyway. Fifty-one deals in nine months is 0.78% of 6,500, or 1.05% annualised. Full-year 2025 was 1.39%. The 1995–2023 average of 200 deals a year was 3.08%. Current turnover is about a third of the long-run norm, and because the traded sample includes non-conservation suburban shophouses while the denominator does not, the true conservation-stock figure is lower still.

That is the honest description of this asset class: not a falling market, a barely-trading one. Supply is fixed by gazette, ownership is tightly held, and the quarterly numbers are small enough to be set by whoever happened to transact.

Rents have gone nowhere for eighteen months

While capital values swung, the islandwide median shophouse rent did not move: S$6.43 psf per month in 1Q2024, S$6.45 in 4Q2024, S$6.47 in 1Q2025, S$6.51 as a 2025 full-year average, and S$6.47 in 3Q2026 — flat quarter on quarter. Rental contracts rose 4.2% to 800 in the quarter, which Huttons links to restaurant openings including Árō Singapore, Assaggi, Casa Lola and KIN-NOMI.

Yields are correspondingly thin, and here the published figures will not give you a market number. Huttons' S$6.47 median rent is struck on lettable area; every published shophouse capital value we found is struck on land area — PropNex says so explicitly, and the Lorong Liput psf reproduces on land (S$70m ÷ 7,543 sq ft = S$9,280). Dividing one by the other is meaningless for a building two to four storeys tall.

One asset does give both denominators. A three-storey 999-year conservation shophouse on Circular Road, 1,075 sq ft of land and about 3,000 sq ft built up, was marketed by Knight Frank in March at S$17 million on a yield of "just under 2%" (EdgeProp, 20 March). A Circular Road shophouse of exactly that land area transacted in August at S$16.2 million — a 4.7% discount to asking, which on the same income lifts the gross yield to roughly 2.0% to 2.1%. Working backwards, a sub-2% yield at S$17 million implies passing rent of about S$9.00 to S$9.45 psf per month, some 39% to 46% above the islandwide median. Prime Boat Quay rent is not what the market median measures.

A note on that transaction: EdgeProp's March profile had a named investor marketing this as his last remaining Singapore shophouse, while its October report describes the same investor as the buyer of the Circular Road unit. We have not resolved the contradiction, so we name neither side of the deal.

What this does not say

It does not say the market is recovering. Three rising quarters off a 28-year low is a low base doing what low bases do, and ERA's full-year forecast of about 70 transactions and S$550–650 million implies a soft fourth quarter — 19 more deals and as little as S$109 million. It does not say prices are up: the only comparable psf series, PropNex's, had 1Q2026 averaging S$4,963 psf on land, down 12.6% quarter on quarter. And it does not say the composition is stable, because with 21 deals a quarter there is no such thing as stable composition.

What it says is narrower and more useful. When a market trades 1% of its stock a year, the quarterly print is a sample, not a measurement. The direction of 3Q2026 depends entirely on whether you leave one Holland Village block in the denominator — and whichever way you choose, you are describing three buildings, not a market.

Method

Quarterly counts and values are Huttons Asia's caveated-transaction series as reported by EdgeProp on 9 October 2026 (3Q2026, URA data via Huttons Data Analytics downloaded 8 October) and 10 July 2026 (2Q2026 and 1Q2026). The 1Q2026 value of S$89.9 million is the published 9M total less the published 2Q and 3Q values, and reconciles to Huttons' separately published "~S$90 million" and S$6.4 million average. PropNex figures are from EdgeProp, 28 April 2026 and 24 April 2025, on URA Realis. ERA figures are from its 1H2026 Landed Shophouse Report, 25 August 2026, sourced to URA as at 11 August 2026. Stamp-duty treatment is from IRAS. Conservation stock is from URA's conservation programme page; the ~6,500 shophouse figure dates to a 2012 URA statement and is used as the conventional denominator with that caveat stated. All percentage changes and averages are our calculations on those published figures.

Shophouses are commercial property for most purposes, but the regime turns on use, not on the building. A shophouse used commercially needs no approval under the Residential Property Act for a foreign buyer, attracts no ABSD, and caps at 5% buyer's stamp duty. One used non-commercially requires approval (SLA), and IRAS states that "HDB shops with living quarters or shophouses with a portion permitted for residential use will be included as a residential property count" for ABSD (IRAS) — which for a foreign buyer means a 60% rate on the residential count. Mixed-use shophouses are a material share of what trades, so the two regimes are not academic. Confirm the treatment of any specific shophouse with IRAS or a conveyancing lawyer before relying on it.