Selling
Your HDB made $500K on paper. Here's the cheque you actually get.
The real deduction waterfall when you sell an HDB flat — loan, CPF refund plus accrued interest, agent commission, legal fees — and why your paper gain rarely equals the cash that lands in your bank account.
By Eugene Tan · CEA R074026J · 19 June 2026 · 5 min read
Your flat’s resale price is not your payday. Before a single dollar hits your bank account, your outstanding loan gets repaid, your CPF gets refunded (with interest), and your agent and lawyer take their cut. What’s left is your actual cheque — and it’s often a lot smaller than the “profit” you’ve been mentally spending.
Here’s the waterfall, in the order it actually happens.
The order deductions come out
- Outstanding HDB or bank loan — repaid in full at completion.
- CPF refund — every dollar of CPF you used (downpayment, monthly instalments, stamp duty, legal fees paid via CPF, HPS premiums, any grant) goes back to your CPF Ordinary Account, plus accrued interest. This is not cash to you — it’s a transfer back into CPF.
- Agent commission — your seller’s agent’s fee.
- Legal/conveyancing fees.
- Resale levy — only if you’re buying a second subsidised flat.
- What’s left = your cash proceeds.
This is CPF Board’s own framing of a resale sale, and it’s worth internalising before you plan anything with the money.
2.5%
Current CPF OA interest rate (p.a.)
1-2%
Typical seller's agent commission
37%
CPF refund as a share of sale price, Example A below
CPF Board (OA rate), 99.co / HomeUP (commission), Ohmyhome worked example (37%)
The CPF refund is usually the biggest line item — and it’s not one big sum
The CPF refund is almost always the largest deduction, because it includes every CPF dollar you’ve ever put into the flat — plus interest on each of those dollars.
Get this right
The accrued interest is calculated per individual withdrawal, from the date that specific dollar left your CPF account to your sale’s completion date — not as one lump “total CPF used × 1.025 to the power of years held.” Your downpayment has been accruing interest longer than last month’s instalment. CPF’s own “What Happens If” tool under your Home Ownership dashboard will show your actual number — it’s the only reliable way to know it before you sell.
The floor rate on your CPF Ordinary Account is 2.5% p.a., confirmed unchanged for Q3 2026. That’s the minimum your used-CPF has been quietly compounding at, dollar by dollar, since you first paid it.
A real worked example
Here’s an actual breakdown from a 4-room flat resale in Jurong East, via Ohmyhome:
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Selling price | $380,000 |
| Outstanding HDB loan | –$180,000 |
| CPF refund (both owners combined) | –$140,000 |
| Subtotal | $60,000 |
| Legal fee | –$500 |
| Agent fee (1% + GST) | –$4,066 |
| HDB admin fee | –$80 |
| Net cash proceeds | $55,354 |
The CPF refund alone ate 37% of the sale price. On paper, this couple sold a $380,000 flat. In their bank account, they saw $55,354 — after a loan that was already most of the way paid down. That’s the gap almost nobody plans for.
Agent commission here isn’t set by law. CEA doesn’t mandate a rate — 1-2% (seller side) is market convention, and it’s negotiable, with GST on top. Legal fees typically run $2,000-$3,500 for a private conveyancing lawyer, sometimes cited up to $5,000 depending on the firm and complexity — again, not a fixed regulated fee, just what’s commonly charged.
When “profit” turns negative
The CPF refund is the deduction that catches people out, especially upgraders. Dollarsandsense.sg walked through a seller at $500,000 who was buying a second subsidised flat: outstanding loan of $270,000, CPF refund components (downpayment, stamp duty, legal fees, monthly repayments, grant — each carrying its own accrued interest) totalling roughly $208,300, plus a $40,000 resale levy for the second subsidised flat.
Paper gain vs. cash in hand
That seller had a $100,000 “profit” over their original purchase price on paper. After the loan, CPF refund, and resale levy, their cash position came out negative. A bigger sale price doesn’t automatically mean a bigger cheque — sometimes it means a bigger CPF refund and nothing left over.
Two things worth flagging separately:
Resale levy only applies if you’re buying a second subsidised flat (BTO, SBF, or new EC) after previously receiving a housing subsidy. It does not apply to first-timers, or to anyone buying resale next. The fixed amounts — $15,000 (2-room) up to $50,000 (Executive) — have been unchanged since 2006; singles under the Single Singapore Citizen scheme pay half. Confirm your exact figure on HDB’s own site for your specific case before you budget around it.
If your proceeds fall short of the CPF refund at a market-value sale, you don’t need to top up in cash — CPF Board’s own guidance covers this scenario.
The number that actually matters
Your sale price is a headline. Your cash proceeds are a plan. Before you commit to an upgrade, a downsize, or anything that depends on “the money from selling the flat,” run your own numbers through CPF’s dashboard and get a real agent quote — not the paper gain.
If you want to work through your own flat’s waterfall before you list, that’s a conversation, not a spreadsheet you have to build alone.
Sources
- CPF refund when selling or transferring property — CPF Board
- Sales proceeds after selling your home — CPF Board
- CPF interest rates from 1 July to 30 September 2026 — CPF Board
- Where your sale proceeds go after selling your HDB flat — Ohmyhome
- What happens to your money when you sell your flat in Singapore — DollarsAndSense
- How much is property agent commission in Singapore — 99.co
- Agent commission: fixed fee vs. 2% in Singapore — HomeUP
- Conditions after buying — resale levy — HDB (confirm your exact figure on HDB’s site for your specific case)
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