Selling an Ageing HDB With 75 Years Left: Sell Now or Wait for VERS in 2026?

Expert takeaway: If your HDB has around 75 years of lease left, VERS is not a near-term exit. The first VERS pilots are only expected in the early 2030s at roughly the 70-year mark, so your decision to sell now or ride it out is really a holding-period and financing-cliff question, not a wager on a government buyback.

Why owners of an ageing HDB with 75 years left are asking this now

The end of new SERS projects has changed the calculation for every owner of an ageing HDB flat in Singapore. For years, buyers of older flats in mature estates like Toa Payoh, Bedok, Ang Mo Kio and Queenstown quietly hoped a Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme selection would hand them a fresh lease and a windfall. That hope has effectively closed, and in its place sits the Voluntary Early Redevelopment Scheme. If you own a flat with roughly 75 years of lease remaining, the honest question is whether to sell now while the lease is still long, or hold and wait for VERS to eventually reach your precinct.

This piece works through the real numbers behind that choice: how lease decay actually behaves, what CPF and loan rules do to your future buyer pool, and what VERS realistically offers. Data references below are drawn from HDB, CPF Board and MAS rules as published in 2026.

What VERS actually is, and why 75 years left means you are early

VERS was first announced at the 2018 National Day Rally as Singapore's long-term answer to lease decay. Public housing in Singapore sits on 99-year leases, and VERS is the framework for buying back precincts near the end of that lease so the land can be redeveloped. The mechanics that matter to you are these: it is voluntary, it is offered when flats are approximately 70 years old, and it needs a precinct-level vote before anything proceeds. The process is often compared to the Home Improvement Programme voting mechanism, where a majority of residents must agree.

Two facts should anchor your planning. First, VERS is offered around the 70-year mark, which is roughly 30 years of remaining lease. A flat with 75 years left has about 24 years to go before it even enters that window. Second, the Government has indicated the first VERS exercises are unlikely before the 2030s, because the bulk of flats have not yet reached the age threshold that would justify redevelopment. In short, if you have 75 years left, VERS is not an exit you can plan a sale around this decade.

It is also worth being clear-eyed about compensation. VERS is deliberately designed to be less generous than SERS, because it must cover a far wider pool of ageing flats rather than a narrow set of high-value redevelopment sites. Indications point to compensation linked to the remaining lease value with a modest top-up and rehousing help where possible, not a jackpot. Our fuller explainer on what VERS means for ageing HDB flat owners walks through the voting and timeline in more detail.

How lease decay behaves between 75 and 30 years

The core reason waiting has a cost is that an HDB flat is a depreciating asset whose value is tied to its remaining lease, not to when you bought it. The widely referenced Bala's Curve values a fresh 99-year lease at roughly 96% of freehold, about 80% at 60 years remaining, and around 60% at 30 years remaining, with depreciation accelerating in the final decades.

The important insight for a 75-year flat is that you are still on the flatter, upper part of the curve. The steep decline comes later. That means the value you would preserve by selling now versus in 15 years is meaningful, but the sharpest erosion happens as you approach and cross the 60-year threshold, not immediately.

To see how a specific band prices in your town, our guide on HDB lease decay and Bala's Curve in 2026 breaks down how remaining lease shapes resale value.

The financing cliffs that quietly shrink your future buyer pool

The most underappreciated cost of holding is not the sticker value on the curve. It is what CPF and loan rules do to the set of buyers who can afford your flat later. Two thresholds drive this.

CPF usage. CPF savings can be used for an HDB flat only when the remaining lease is at least 20 years, and full CPF use requires the lease to cover the youngest buyer to age 95, otherwise it is pro-rated. A 40-year-old eyeing a flat with 55 years left may find their CPF capped below the full valuation, forcing the shortfall into cash. The official CPF rules for using CPF to buy a home set out the age-95 coverage test.

Bank loan LTV and tenure. Under MAS loan-to-value and tenure limits, the standard 75% LTV for a bank loan on an HDB flat applies only when the remaining lease is at least 30 years and covers the youngest buyer to age 95. Where it does not, the maximum LTV is pro-rated downward, and loan tenure is capped by the remaining lease, which lifts monthly instalments and further limits how much a buyer can borrow.

Here is why this matters over a 10 to 15 year hold. Consider a flat that today has 75 years left. A buyer aged 40 easily clears the age-95 test now (40 + 75 = 115). Fast forward 15 years: the flat has 60 years left, and a buyer aged 40 still clears it (40 + 60 = 100), but a buyer aged 50 does not (50 + 60 = 110 is fine, actually), while a buyer aged 45 buying at 55 years left (45 + 55 = 100) is fine but an older buyer at 55 years left starts to lose full CPF. The takeaway is that each year your flat ages, it quietly filters out older buyers first, which are often exactly the cash-rich resale buyers of mature-estate flats.

The pattern is clear. At 75 years the flat is friendly to almost every buyer. The narrowing is gradual, not a cliff you fall off next year, which is precisely why panic selling is rarely the right answer either. To see how the funding stack works out in practice, our note on stamp duty and buyer costs and the way TDSR and LTV affect borrowing are useful companions.

Sell now versus ride it out: weighing both sides

The case for selling now

• Your flat is on the upper, flatter part of the lease-decay curve, so you capture value before the steeper decline that begins around 60 years remaining.
• Your buyer pool is at its widest, since almost all buyers clear the CPF and LTV coverage tests, supporting stronger demand and pricing.
• You remove the biggest uncertainty in an ageing flat's story: whether, when and at what compensation VERS ever reaches your precinct.
• Proceeds can be redeployed now, whether into a right-sized flat, retirement liquidity, or an upgrade while you still qualify for financing.

The case for holding

• At 75 years, depreciation is still gradual, so there is no urgent cliff forcing a sale this year.
• Selling and rebuying incurs real transaction costs, and a flat you already own outright can be a low-cost place to live.
• If your precinct is eventually offered VERS, you receive compensation plus rehousing help, though this is modest and years away.
• If you are older and do not rely on CPF or a long loan to rebuy, the lease-decay math bites you less than it bites a younger seller.

If your reason to hold is purely to wait for VERS, weigh it honestly: only a small share of flats were ever selected under SERS historically, and VERS depends on a precinct vote and government planning that will not crystallise until the 2030s. For most owners the sounder frame is a holding-period decision. If you plan to move within the next several years anyway, selling while the lease is long protects value. If you are settled and self-funded, holding is defensible.

Owners weighing an upgrade should also map the timing carefully. Our guides on upgrading from HDB to condo without paying ABSD and what to do when your HDB reaches MOP cover the sequencing. Before listing, run your figures through our HDB sales proceeds calculator so you know exactly what lands in your bank after CPF refunds. And if you are considering redeploying into a new launch after selling, our Chuan Park review in Lorong Chuan is a useful benchmark for what an ageing-flat seller might move into.

Selling itself has costs to plan for. Confirm your eligibility on the HDB selling eligibility page and verify market comparables via URA and HDB resale statistics before setting an asking price.

Every ageing HDB flat has a different story once you layer in your age, your CPF balance, your plans and your precinct. The math above gives you the framework, but the right call depends on your specific numbers and timeline. If you would like an independent, unbiased read on whether to sell your ageing flat now or hold it, and what your realistic proceeds and upgrade options look like, reach out to the team at PropertyNet.SG for a personalised, no-pressure consultation.