Selling
Your HDB made $500K on paper. Here's the cheque you actually get.
The gap between your sale price and the money that lands in your bank account is bigger than most sellers expect. Here's every line item that comes out of it, in order.
By Eugene Tan · CEA R074026J · 14 July 2026 · 7 min read
Sample article. This post is placeholder copy while the site is being built. The published version will carry live figures sourced from URA and HDB transaction data.
Sample post — placeholder copy for layout. Final version to be written against real figures.
Most sellers work out their profit like this: sale price, minus what they paid, equals profit. That number feels great. It is also not the number that reaches your bank account.
The order things come out
- Outstanding loan. Whatever’s left on the mortgage is settled first.
- CPF refund — principal. Every dollar of CPF you used for the downpayment, stamp duty and monthly instalments goes back to your CPF Ordinary Account. Not to your bank.
- CPF accrued interest. The 2.5% your CPF savings would have earned had you never withdrawn them. This compounds for as long as you’ve held the flat, and it is the line that surprises people.
- Agent commission and legal fees.
- Whatever is left — that’s your cash proceeds.
Why accrued interest is the one that stings
Accrued interest is not a penalty and it is not a fee. It’s your own money moving back into your own CPF account. But it is not spendable cash until you’re 55 and past your retirement sum — so for the purposes of funding your next home’s downpayment, treat it as unavailable.
The important detail: accrued interest is calculated per drawdown. A chunk withdrawn at purchase has been compounding the whole time; a dollar used for last month’s instalment has barely compounded at all. Anyone who quotes you a single number by multiplying your total CPF used by 2.5% over the full holding period is overstating it — sometimes badly.
Pull your actual figure from the CPF portal before you plan anything. It’s under My Statement → Property → Amount to refund. Takes two minutes.
What to do with the number
Once you know your real cash proceeds, the upgrade question becomes answerable rather than aspirational. You can size a downpayment, work out whether you’re paying ABSD, and decide whether sell-first or buy-first is the right sequence.
That’s the conversation worth having — and it starts with a number, not a hunch.
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