Every agent selling Dubai to Singaporeans quotes the ABSD comparison. Almost none of them show the full table, the exit taxes, or the parts of the comparison that cut the other way. This page does all three, because the comparison survives honesty — and if your investment case only works when half the facts are hidden, it isn't an investment case.

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What Singapore charges you to buy

Two duties apply at purchase. Buyer's Stamp Duty (BSD) applies to everyone, tiered by price: 1% on the first S$180,000, 2% on the next S$180,000, 3% on the next S$640,000, 4% on the next S$500,000, 5% on the next S$1.5M, and 6% above S$3M. On a S$1.5M property, it is S$44,600; on S$2M, S$69,600.

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Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty (ABSD) is the one that changes lives. The rates, unchanged since April 2023 and reconfirmed in effect as of July 2026:

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Read that table the way a markets person would: for a citizen, the marginal cost of a second residential exposure in Singapore is 20% of the purchase price, paid on day one, non-recoverable. For a PR, it is 30%. For a foreigner, any purchase at all starts 60% underwater on taxes alone. ABSD is not a fee — at these levels it is a policy instrument designed to make exactly the purchase you're considering unattractive. It works.

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What Singapore now charges you to sell

Since 4 July 2025, the Seller's Stamp Duty holding period is four years, at 16% if you sell within the first year, 12% within the second, 8% within the third and 4% within the fourth — payable on the sale price or market value, whichever is higher. Sell after four full years, and SSD is zero. The change was aimed squarely at sub-sales of uncompleted units, which tells you what the regulator thinks of short-hold property speculation in Singapore. The practical effect for an investor: a Singapore residential purchase now commits you to a four-year horizon before the exit is tax-clean, on top of the entry taxes above.

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What Dubai charges you

The Dubai Land Department charges a 4% transfer fee on every purchase, every profile, first property or fifth, citizen of anywhere. Around it: a registration trustee/admin fee (a few hundred dirhams; lower for off-plan Oqood registration), agency commission of about 2% on secondary purchases (on off-plan, typically paid by the developer — including to us; see the disclosure below), and 0.25% mortgage registration if you finance.

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Then the ongoing column, which is where the comparison stops being about one-off entry costs: no annual property tax, no tax on rental income for individual owners, and no capital gains tax on sale, held one year or twenty. There is no Dubai equivalent of ABSD, and no Dubai equivalent of SSD.

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Worked examples: S$1.5M, every profile

Acquisition taxes only — BSD of S$44,600 applies to all Singapore rows; the Dubai figure converts S$1.5M at approximately AED 1 = S$0.37 and applies the 4% DLD fee plus admin.

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Notice the first row. For a citizen's first property, Singapore is cheaper to enter than Dubai — 3.0% against 4.0% — and we'd rather tell you that in a table than have you discover we buried it. The ABSD case for Dubai is a second-property case, a PR case, and overwhelmingly a foreigner case. On the second-property row, the S$284,000 difference is capital that in one market goes to IRAS on day one and in the other stays deployed in the asset.

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What this comparison doesn't capture

If we stopped at the table above, this would be a brochure. Four things the entry-tax gap ignores, each with its own page:

• Liquidity and collateral. Singapore residential is one of the deepest, most bankable property markets on earth. It transacts fast, banks lend against it eagerly at fine margins, and it sits inside your home legal system. Dubai's market is liquid by emerging-market standards and improving, but time-on-market varies sharply by community, and a Dubai title is less useful as collateral to a Singapore bank. Part of what ABSD "costs" you buys access to that depth.

• Net yield does the earning, not the tax table. Dubai's yield advantage over Singapore is real but smaller than advertised once you model service charges, management, and voids — the honest gross-to-net math is on the net yield page, and it is the number that decides whether the trade actually pays.

• You are taking a currency position. Swapping SGD exposure for a USD-pegged asset is a deliberate FX decision, not a footnote. The SGD has been a strong currency for a generation. The peg page treats this properly.

• Your tax residency follows you. Dubai charges nothing on rental income; Singapore's treatment of foreign rental income received by resident individuals is generally favourable, but "generally" is doing work in that sentence — confirm your specific position with a tax adviser, not a property site, ours included.

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And the summary caveat the table already showed: on a first property, the entry-cost argument mostly disappears. If you have no Singapore residential property and are choosing your first, ABSD is not a reason to look at Dubai — yield, diversification and currency may be, and those are different arguments held to a different standard of proof.