Dubai vs Singapore property investment: where does it break?

Stopping at the 60%. The additional buyer's stamp duty is the largest single number, but a foreign owner in Singapore also pays property tax on the annual value at the non-owner-occupied rates and income tax on the rent at the non-resident rate, every year. Those two lines alone take Singapore from 7.00% gross to 2.74% net for a buyer who pays no ABSD at all. Believing the free trade agreement relief reverses the comparison. It removes the 60%, and a US or EFTA buyer then recovers his stamp duty in under a year. He still keeps 2.74% against Dubai's 4.33%, because the relief is from stamp duty, not from property tax or income tax. Using the old seller's stamp duty. Since 4 July 2025 it runs for four years, at 16%, 12%, 8% and 4%. Pages that still describe a three-year schedule topping out at 12% are out of date. Assuming property tax follows the rent you actually get. It is charged on the annual value, which is IRAS's estimate of the market rent, whether the flat is let, vacant or let cheaply to a friend. Comparing at one budget. Both Singapore scales are progressive, so a bigger flat pays a higher share of its rent in property tax and a higher share of its price in buyer's stamp duty. Dubai's registration fee is flat. The gap widens with the budget. Treating these figures as a building. The Singapore flat is the Dubai unit's money and ratios in Singapore dollars, deliberately, so that only the two governments' rules differ. Run your own flat through the same lines. Mortgage interest, a Singapore tax residence and corporate ownership all change the answer and are not modelled here. A Singapore tax resident pays the resident scale, not 24%.

Playbooks / Property

Dubai vs Singapore property investment

Dubai or Singapore property: which keeps more after tax?

A foreign buyer pays S$320,648 stamp duty on a S$517,536 Singapore flat and keeps 1.72% after two annual taxes, where the same money in Dubai keeps 4.33%.

The towers of Singapore's Central Business District at dusk, photographed from the observation deck of Marina Bay Sands — Singapore's Central Business District, from Marina Bay Sands. Basile Morin, CC-BY-SA-4.0.

Both properties are bought at the same gross yield. Dubai's entry stamp duty is 4.00% of the price; Singapore's is 61.96% once Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty applies to a foreign buyer. Nothing else in the comparison does as much work.

The rule

Every page ranking for this question leads with Singapore's 60% additional buyer's stamp duty and then stops doing arithmetic. The best of them prints a net yield for each city, but still describes a seller's stamp duty that changed in July 2025. None of them runs the two annual taxes a foreign owner in Singapore pays for every year the flat is let: property tax on the annual value, and income tax on the rent at the non-resident rate.

This page runs the same money through both cities, and through everything the two governments set.

The short answer

For someone who lives in Dubai and is not a Singapore citizen, a Singapore flat bought with AED 1,500,000 keeps 1.72% of what it cost, after stamp duty and both annual taxes. The same money in Dubai, on the net rental yield page's flat, keeps 4.33%, untaxed. That is a lead of 2.61 points.

It takes 22.2 years of the Singapore flat's kept rent to pay back its stamp duty. Dubai's whole entry cost takes 1.39.

For a Singapore flat to leave a foreign owner what Dubai's leaves at 7%, it would need a gross yield of 23.94%.

The free trade agreement relief removes the 60% for Americans and for EFTA nationals, and it is worth a great deal. It does not close the gap. A buyer who pays no additional duty at all still keeps 2.74%, because the relief is from stamp duty and the annual taxes stay.

The two flats

Dubai is the illustrative one bedroom the net rental yield page prices from the Land Department's fee schedule: AED 1,500,000, AED 105,000 rent, a 7.00% gross yield.

Singapore gets the same money. At the Central Bank of the UAE's fixed rate of 3.6725 dirhams to the dollar and the Federal Reserve's rate of 1.2671 Singapore dollars on 11 September 2026, AED 1,500,000 is S$517,536.

Then two deliberate choices. The Singapore flat is given exactly the Dubai unit's gross yield, 7.00%, and exactly the same running cost ratio: vacancy, service charge, management, maintenance and insurance together taking 34.2% of the rent. So the only differences left are the two governments' rules. This flatters Singapore twice: its yields are not usually quoted anywhere near 7%, and only its stamp duty is counted on the way in, with no agency or legal fees, where Dubai's entry cost includes the agent. Neither choice changes the answer's direction. Both make the gap smaller than it is.

The Dubai vs London page uses the same method.

Getting in

Singapore charges two stamp duties on a residential purchase, and MOF sets the base for both: "Stamp duty is computed based on the consideration or market value of the relevant asset, whichever is higher".

Buyer's stamp duty is banded, and the current bands apply to "all properties acquired on or after 15 February 2023". On S$517,536:

Slice of the price (S$)	Rate	Duty (S$)
180,000	1%	1,800
180,000	2%	3,600
157,536	3%	4,726
Total		10,126

The higher bands, 4% from S$1,000,000, 5% from S$1,500,000 and 6% above S$3,000,000, do not reach a flat this size. They reach the larger budgets further down.

Additional buyer's stamp duty is 60% of the price for a foreigner, on any residential property, and 65% for an entity or trustee. MAS announced the doubling from 30% on 26 April 2023: "The revised rates will take effect from 27 April 2023". On this flat it is S$310,522.

Together that is S$320,648, 61.96% of the price. In Dubai the statutory purchase tax is the Land Department's 4%, AED 60,000, under Executive Council Resolution No. (30) of 2013.

Every year after

Two taxes a Dubai owner never sees.

Property tax. Singapore charges it on the annual value, which IRAS defines as "the estimated gross annual rent of the property if it were to be rented out, excluding furniture, furnishings and maintenance fees". A flat that is let, not lived in by its owner, pays the non-owner-occupied rates. Budget 2022 raised them in two steps: "The final property tax rates of up to 36% will take effect for property tax payable from 1 January 2024".

Taking the annual value as the flat's rent, S$36,228:

Slice of the annual value (S$)	Rate	Property tax (S$)
30,000	12%	3,600
6,228	20%	1,246
Total		4,846

That is 13.38% of the rent, before vacancy. It is charged on IRAS's estimate of market rent, so a month empty or a tenant paying below market does not reduce it.

Income tax. An owner who is not tax resident in Singapore pays the non-resident rate on the rent, which Budget 2022 says "will correspondingly be raised from 22% to 24%", from the 2024 year of assessment. There are two ways to count the expenses. IRAS allows a flat rate, "The amount of deemed expenses allowable in respect of a residential property is 15% of the gross rental income", and the guide confirms it is open to non-residents. The alternative is to claim actual expenses. This page charges whichever leaves less tax. Here that is every running cost plus the property tax, which is the more generous reading and gives S$4,561 of tax against S$6,822 on the deemed 15%.

Line	S$ a year
Rent, at 7.00%	36,228
Running costs, the Dubai unit's 34.2%	(12,377)
Property tax on the annual value	(4,846)
Net operating income	19,005
Income tax, 24%	(4,561)
Kept	14,444

On a Dubai flat bought and let by a Dubai tax resident, the last two deductions are zero.

Side by side

For a Dubai resident	Dubai	Singapore, foreigner	Singapore, US or EFTA
Gross yield	7.00%	7.00%	7.00%
Net operating income over price	4.61%	3.67%	3.67%
Statutory purchase tax, share of price	4.00%	61.96%	1.96%
Net yield, after entry and tax	4.33%	1.72%	2.74%
Years of kept rent to recover the purchase tax	1.39	22.2	0.7

The Dubai years are its whole entry cost, AED 96,220 with the agent, not just the 4%. The Singapore years are stamp duty alone.

Three buyers

Singapore buyer	Stamp duty (S$)	Net yield	Dubai's lead, points
Foreigner	320,648	1.72%	2.61
Entity or trustee	346,524	1.67%	2.66
US national, or EFTA national or PR, first home	10,126	2.74%	1.59

The third row is the relief most articles leave out. Under the US and EFTA free trade agreements, MOF lists "Nationals of the United States of America, and the Nationals and Permanent Residents of Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland" as getting the same stamp duty treatment as Singapore citizens, which on a first home means no additional duty. It turns a 22-year payback into one of under a year. It leaves a 1.59 point gap, because the annual taxes are not stamp duty.

What Singapore would have to yield

The cleanest way to state the gap is to solve for it: the gross yield a Singapore flat would need, after all of the above, to leave its owner exactly Dubai's 4.33%.

Singapore buyer	Gross yield needed
Foreigner	23.94%
Entity or trustee	24.89%
US national, or EFTA national or PR, first home	12.48%

These are solved, not estimated: each is the one yield at which the Singapore owner's kept rent over his outlay equals the Dubai owner's, with the property tax recomputed at every step because a higher rent pushes the annual value into higher bands. Even the buyer who pays no additional duty needs a gross yield well above Dubai's 7.00%.

At larger budgets

Both of Singapore's scales are progressive. Dubai's registration fee is a flat 4%. So the gap widens as the budget grows.

Budget (AED)	Singapore price (S$)	Stamp duty, share of price	Property tax, share of rent	Singapore net yield	Gross yield needed
1,500,000	517,536	61.96%	13.38%	1.72%	23.94%
3,000,000	1,035,071	62.51%	21.09%	1.46%	27.54%
6,000,000	2,070,143	63.53%	28.55%	1.21%	29.48%

The rows are for a foreign buyer at the same 7.00% gross yield. At AED 6,000,000 the property tax takes 28.55% of the rent before any other cost.

Getting out

Singapore has no capital gains tax, and it has a seller's stamp duty that works like one for anyone who sells early. MOF lengthened it to four years and raised the rates "on and after 4 July 2025, 12.00am". On the S$517,536 flat, sold at its purchase price:

Sold within	Rate	Seller's stamp duty (S$)
1 year	16%	82,806
2 years	12%	62,104
3 years	8%	41,403
4 years	4%	20,701

After four years it is nothing. In Dubai the seller pays the agent, and under the market convention none of the registration fee. The selling well page sets out the seller's costs line by line.

What a foreigner may buy

A foreign person may buy condominium and flat units in Singapore freely. Landed homes, vacant land and property at Sentosa Cove are restricted under the Residential Property Act and need government approval, according to the Singapore Land Authority. So there is usually no Singapore equivalent to a Dubai villa. The comparison above is flat against flat.

The case for the expensive market

A page that stops at the arithmetic is a sales page for the cheaper option. There are real reasons to hold Singapore, and none of them is income.

A currency that is managed, not pegged. The dirham is fixed to the dollar, so a Dubai flat is a dollar asset whatever it is priced in. Currency risk and the peg sets out what that means for a balance sheet already full of dollars. The Singapore dollar is managed against a basket of currencies, which makes a Singapore flat a real diversifier where a second dollar asset is not.

A longer record. Singapore's land registry, courts and dispute resolution have a long and tested history. Dubai's are good and improving, and younger. That is worth something, and how much is a judgement, not a calculation.

Policy can move. The additional duty went from 30% to 60% in one step, to suppress exactly the demand this page is written for. What moved that far once can move again, in either direction.

If the case for Singapore is diversification, size it as diversification and accept the yield above as its cost. If the case is income, the tables above are the case against. The net rental yield calculator runs the Dubai side on your own numbers, and transaction cost drag explains why a 62% entry cost sets the holding period rather than the return.

The arithmetic

The same money, for an owner who lives in Dubai Dubai Singapore Singapore foreigner US / EFTA Gross yield 7.00% 7.00% 7.00% Net operating income / price 4.61% 3.67% 3.67% Statutory purchase tax 4.00% 61.96% 1.96% Net yield, after entry and tax 4.33% 1.72% 2.74% Years of kept rent to recover 1.39 22.2 0.7 Singapore, every year the flat is let Property tax on annual value, non-owner-occupied 12% / 20% / 28% / 36% Income tax, non-resident 24% Gross yield Singapore would need to match Dubai's 4.33% Foreigner 23.94% Entity or trustee 24.89% US / EFTA national, first home 12.48% Selling within four years Seller's stamp duty 16% / 12% / 8% / 4% from 4 July 2025

Where it breaks

Stopping at the 60%. The additional buyer's stamp duty is the largest single number, but a foreign owner in Singapore also pays property tax on the annual value at the non-owner-occupied rates and income tax on the rent at the non-resident rate, every year. Those two lines alone take Singapore from 7.00% gross to 2.74% net for a buyer who pays no ABSD at all.
Believing the free trade agreement relief reverses the comparison. It removes the 60%, and a US or EFTA buyer then recovers his stamp duty in under a year. He still keeps 2.74% against Dubai's 4.33%, because the relief is from stamp duty, not from property tax or income tax.
Using the old seller's stamp duty. Since 4 July 2025 it runs for four years, at 16%, 12%, 8% and 4%. Pages that still describe a three-year schedule topping out at 12% are out of date.
Assuming property tax follows the rent you actually get. It is charged on the annual value, which is IRAS's estimate of the market rent, whether the flat is let, vacant or let cheaply to a friend.
Comparing at one budget. Both Singapore scales are progressive, so a bigger flat pays a higher share of its rent in property tax and a higher share of its price in buyer's stamp duty. Dubai's registration fee is flat. The gap widens with the budget.
Treating these figures as a building. The Singapore flat is the Dubai unit's money and ratios in Singapore dollars, deliberately, so that only the two governments' rules differ. Run your own flat through the same lines.
Mortgage interest, a Singapore tax residence and corporate ownership all change the answer and are not modelled here. A Singapore tax resident pays the resident scale, not 24%.

When to use it

Before comparing a Singapore yield with a Dubai yield, which are not the same kind of number until both have been through stamp duty, property tax and the owner's income tax. Before assuming that a US or EFTA passport makes Singapore competitive on income. And before any plan that might sell a Singapore flat inside four years.

Run it on your own numbers

The Net Rental Yield does this arithmetic for you, in your currency, in about thirty seconds.

Open the calculator

Sources

Last reviewed 22 September 2026. Commercial relationship disclosure: the author works in Dubai real estate brokerage. See the disclosure standards. Disclosure standards.