What Landed Homes Cost Per Square Foot of Land
Landed homes are priced on land psf, not built area, and it is the only number that lets you compare a terrace house with a bungalow. Almost nobody publishes what it looks like across house types, so this page does it from our own book of 70 landed homes, and explains the building rule that produces the pattern.
Land psf across 70 landed homes
Landed homes are quoted on land psf — the price divided by the land area, not the built area. It is the number that lets you compare a terrace house to a bungalow. Almost nobody publishes what it actually looks like across house types, so here it is from our own book: 70 landed homes we were marketing in September 2026, each with a published plot size and price.
The bigger the plot, the less you pay per square foot of it
| House type | Homes | Plot size (median) | Land psf (median) | Land psf range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Terrace | 13 | 1,762 sqft | $4,300 | $2,368 – $4,990 |
| Semi-detached | 24 | 2,932 sqft | $3,640 | $2,868 – $4,879 |
| Detached | 31 | 5,623 sqft | $3,397 | $1,386 – $4,939 |
Plot ranges: terrace 1,335–3,253 sqft; semi-detached 2,160–7,000 sqft; detached 4,352–15,248 sqft.
The gradient is clean and it runs the opposite way to what most people expect. A terrace house costs about 27% more per square foot of land than a detached house. The grander the house, the cheaper the ground under it.
Why — and this is the part that is never explained
Land psf is not really a price for land. It is a price for what you are allowed to build on it. Here is the same 84 homes measured a different way: built area divided by land area.
| House type | Homes | Built area ÷ land area |
|---|---|---|
| Terrace | 14 | 2.83× |
| Semi-detached | 28 | 2.34× |
| Detached | 42 | 1.45× |
| Good Class Bungalow | 8 | 0.50× |
A terrace house puts nearly three times its plot area into floor space — three storeys plus an attic, wall to wall, on a narrow lot. A Good Class Bungalow puts half. Inside a Good Class Bungalow Area, URA caps site coverage and holds the house to two storeys, so most of the land stays as garden by design.
So the two tables are the same fact told twice. You pay more per square foot of land on a terrace because you are allowed to stack far more house on it. On a bungalow plot, a large share of what you buy is deliberately left empty — and empty ground is cheaper by the foot than ground with a house on it.
Plot and site-coverage rules: URA development control handbook on bungalow plot size and width and Good Class Bungalow Areas.
What each step up actually costs
Land psf tells you the rate. This is the cheque.
| House type | Homes | Asking price (median) | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Terrace | 13 | $7.20M | $5.20M – $12.95M |
| Semi-detached | 24 | $10.35M | $6.30M – $21.00M |
| Detached | 30 | $20.00M | $10.89M – $50.00M |
The rate per foot falls at every step. The total roughly doubles at every step. Both are true at once, and confusing them is the most common mistake we see: a buyer decides a detached house is “better value” on psf and then discovers the quantum is three times a terrace.
Good Class Bungalows sit outside this table, and here is why
We were marketing eight Good Class Bungalows in September 2026, on plots from 15,400 to 25,748 square feet. Only two carried a published psf, at $2,315 and $2,438 per square foot of land. Two figures is not a median and we are not going to present it as one.
What we can say is that the direction holds. Both sit below every semi-detached and below the detached median, on plots three to four times larger. For a market-wide reference rather than ours, List Sotheby’s International Realty publishes a half-yearly Singapore luxury homes review that reported an average of $2,014 psf across 23 Good Class Bungalow transactions in the second half of 2024. Different period, different basis, same order of magnitude — and the same conclusion: Good Class Bungalow land carries the lowest psf of any landed type in this set, and the largest total price.
GCB plot sizes on this page are ours. The $2,014 figure is List Sotheby’s, published in its half-yearly luxury market review, and is quoted here as an external reference point rather than as our own data.
Tenure, since it always comes up
Of the landed homes in this set, 65 are freehold, 22 are on a 99-year lease and one is 999-year. Freehold is the norm on landed in a way it is not on condominiums, so on landed the tenure question is usually narrower than buyers expect — the leasehold stock is concentrated in specific developments rather than spread across the market. We work through the wider tenure trade-off on our freehold versus leasehold guide.
How to use these numbers
- Compare like with like. Land psf between two terrace houses is meaningful. Land psf between a terrace and a bungalow is not a value comparison — it is a description of two different building envelopes.
- Ask what the plot allows before you argue about the rate. Frontage, depth, corner or intermediate position and whether the site sits inside a Good Class Bungalow Area decide what can be built, and therefore what the land is worth.
- Check the built area is real. Built area on landed listings is often the existing house, which may be old, may not use the envelope, and may be coming down. Land psf on a teardown and land psf on a new build are not the same number.
- A low psf does not mean you are paying less. On this data a low land psf usually means a large plot, and a large plot means a larger cheque and a smaller pool of buyers when you sell.
Work your own numbers: buyer’s and additional buyer’s stamp duty · monthly repayment · seller’s stamp duty
Where this fits
For the condominium equivalent of this analysis, see our new launch condo psf comparison. For what a Good Class Bungalow actually is and the rules that govern one, read Good Class Bungalow facts. If you are not a Singapore citizen, start with whether you can buy landed property at all — the answer is more restrictive than most sites suggest.
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Figures on this page are drawn from the landed homes Finest SRI was marketing as at September 2026. They are asking prices, not transacted prices, and they are indicative — the number on any individual house depends on its plot, its condition and its road. Rules and rates are current as at September 2026 and are linked to their official source. Nothing here is tax, legal or financial advice. Finest SRI is part of SRI Pte Ltd, agency licence L3010738A; every listing is handled by a CEA-registered salesperson.