As a result of house rental costs continuing to skyrocket and showing little indications of reverting to pre-pandemic levels any time soon, foreign residents in Singapore continue to feel the squeeze.
Long-term expats who have been living in Singapore for a significant amount of time are having to dig deep into their pockets and make significant adjustments in order to deal with the escalating cost of renting a room, an apartment, or a home.
In 2022, all private residential property prices rose 29.7% year-on-year, the most since 2007.
According to information obtained from the rental index maintained by Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority, the prices of all private residential properties had a year-on-year increase of 29.7% in 2022, which was the highest level seen since 2007.
Some of the international residents here claim that their landlords may be driving up rent and other costs by taking advantage of the hot real estate market. In some cases, the rent has even been increased by a factor of two.
Expats on how they deal with expensive rents and why they stay in Singapore.
Christine Li, the head of Asia-Pacific research at Knight Frank, stated that landlords may still anticipate seeing double-digit rise in pricing despite the fact that the rate of rent increases looks to be starting to slow down.
“If rents continue to rise steadily, more people will just bite the bullet and purchase a property rather than paying higher prices for rent,” she added. “If rents continue to rise steadily, this trend will continue for quite some time.