Finally found a way to check if my rent quote is fair — sharing in case useful

[SgRoller]

Hey all, Been lurking here for a while. Just renewed my lease in Woodlands and the landlord wanted to bump rent by $400. I had no idea if that was reasonable or completely taking the piss.

Spent a few hours going through . and 99.co but those only show asking prices — no way to know what people actually paid. Asked a few colleagues but everyone's situation is different (different floors, different sizes, different landlords).

Eventually stumbled on this site that pulls from actual URA rental transaction data - https://singaporerent.sg/ You can filter by district, flat type, and year, and see what leases were actually signed at, not just what agents are listing. Helped me push back and we settled at a much smaller increase.

Anyway, not affiliated with it or anything, just found it genuinely useful when I was going in blind. Thought I'd share since I see this question come up a lot here — "is my rent fair?" — and there's rarely a good data-backed answer.

Anyone else used URA data to negotiate? Curious if it actually moved the needle for others or if landlords just don't care.

[malcontent]

You don’t need to go to a commercial site, the URA provides the detailed data of property rentals and sales to the public from their website, including the ability to search and filter. The SRX also indexes all of this data which is perhaps even more useful because rental amounts can vary depending unit conditions, but taking the index number from the month of your original lease and comparing that to the latest index number gives a much better insight into what you should expect the market rent to be.

[Airportrips]

Good point on using the URA data directly. I think most tenants just don’t know where to find or interpret the raw data properly, which is why tools that simplify it become popular.

The SRX index comparison idea is actually quite useful too, especially for checking whether a landlord’s increase is roughly in line with the market rather than just based on “current asking prices” from ..

What surprised me recently was how big the gap can be between asking rent and actual signed rent in some areas. A few listings I saw in the CCR were advertised several hundred dollars above nearby completed transactions.

Did your landlord negotiate when you showed market data, or were they pretty fixed on the increase?

[abbby]

Can google ura rent contracts for the latest rents as this would be the most accurate as they're computed when stamp duties are paid. Sometimes the rent difference could be the 'views'' and facing as I would think some projects have significantly different views. The other thing I can think of is maybe the increment in your owners' property tax, hence the increment in rent..