Insights

The New Condo Purchase Planner, Explained

A new launch isn't paid upfront — it's paid in stages as the building goes up, and your loan draws down to match. This planner lays out the progressive payment schedule and the instalment that ramps with it.

By TRIBE Editorial · 28 June 2026 · 3 min read

Buying a new launch under construction works nothing like buying a finished home. You don't pay the price upfront — you pay it in stages tied to construction milestones, and your loan draws down to match, which means your monthly instalment starts small and climbs as the building rises. The New Condo Purchase Planner lays out that whole schedule on real dates, with the duties, the funding mix at each stage, and the ramping instalment.

Booking fee, cash, day one

CPF and grants can't touch it

Progressive payment stages

booking through to CSC

ramps up

Your monthly instalment

loan draws stage by stage

The Progressive Payment Scheme, stage by stage

Under the Progressive Payment Scheme (PPS), the price is released in fixed slices as the project hits each milestone: 5% booking (cash, at OTP), 15% on signing the S&P (within about 8 weeks), then 10% at foundation, 10% at reinforced-concrete frame, 5% at partition walls, 5% at ceiling, 5% at doors/windows/wiring, 5% at car park and roads, 25% at TOP (when you collect keys), and the final 15% at CSC (the completion certificate). The planner places each on a real date projected from your OTP and your stated construction stage.

Why your instalment climbs

Here's the part buyers misjudge. Your equity (the part not covered by the loan) is consumed first, stage by stage; only once it's used up does the loan begin to disburse — and it disburses progressively, one stage at a time. Because you pay interest only on the loan drawn so far, your monthly instalment starts low and ramps up with each drawdown, reaching the full amount around the later stages. A new launch is genuinely cheaper to carry in the early years than an equivalent resale — but that's a timing feature, not a discount, and the planner shows the climb so you can plan for the instalment at TOP, not just at foundation.

Duties and the upfront cost

Buyer's Stamp Duty (and ABSD, by your profile) falls due within 14 days of exercising the S&P — early, alongside that first 20% — so the planner surfaces an upfront-cost figure that combines the called percentage with the duties. The default model assumes a 75% loan; you can set your own LTV, tenure and interest rate to see how the ramp and the upfront cash change.

How to read it

Open the New Condo Purchase Planner, enter the price, your ABSD profile, LTV, tenure, interest rate, CPF and your OTP and current-stage dates. Read two things: the upfront cost (booking + S&P + duties, all due in the first couple of months) and the instalment at TOP (the real monthly cost once the loan is fully drawn). Budgeting off the early, low instalment is the classic new-launch mistake.

For the loan's full ramping schedule down to the dollar, pair this with the New Sale Amortisation Table.

Map your new-launch payments at tribesg.com/planner/new-sale.

Sources: TRIBE New Condo Purchase Planner; PPS stage percentages (standard scheme), BSD/ABSD per URA and IRAS conventions, as at June 2026. Informational only; not financial advice.

Silas Tan is a District Director at Huttons Asia and co-founder of TRIBE. This article is for informational purposes and does not constitute financial or investment advice. CEA Registration R000303I.