Six questions to answer before you sell

Selling a home in Singapore is mechanically straightforward. The market is liquid, the process is well-trodden, and plenty of professionals will happily run it for you. What the machinery cannot do is answer the questions that determine whether you will be glad you sold. Those are decided at the kitchen table, before any listing photo is taken.

One: why now, in one sentence?

"We need a fourth bedroom by next June" is a reason. "Prices are high" is half a reason, because a sale is only half a transaction: you still have to live somewhere, and the same market that pays you handsomely charges you handsomely for the next place. If your sentence is about your life, proceed. If it is only about the market, answer question two before anything else.

Two: where do you go next?

The sell-and-then-figure-it-out plan works until it doesn't. Before listing, know your destination in real terms: the type of home, the areas, the rough budget, and whether that purchase depends on this sale completing first. The gap between selling and buying, where you live during it and what it costs, deserves as much planning as the sale price.

Three: what is your unit actually worth?

Not the record transaction in your project, and not the number a flattering valuation suggests to win your listing. Look at what units genuinely comparable to yours, similar stack, floor, size and condition, transacted for recently, and note how long they took to sell. Anchor there. Sellers who anchor on the outlier record spend months educating themselves downwards in public, which weakens their eventual negotiation.

Four: what will the sale cost you?

A sale has its own bill: agent commission, legal fees, potential seller's stamp duty if you are within the holding window, outstanding loan settlement, and any CPF refund with accrued interest flowing back to your account rather than your pocket. None of these are surprises to anyone who lists them in advance; all of them are surprises to sellers who only look at the headline price. Net proceeds, not gross price, fund your next move.

Five: what is your walk-away number?

Decide, before the first offer, the number below which you keep the home, and make sure that number is built from questions two and four rather than from pride. A seller with a true floor negotiates calmly. A seller discovering their floor mid-negotiation tends to either cave or overreach, and sometimes both in the same week.

Six: could you keep it instead?

The quiet question. Renting the unit out, staying put and renovating, or simply waiting a year are all real alternatives with real numbers attached. Sometimes they lose to selling, clearly and quickly. But a sale chosen against considered alternatives is a decision; a sale made because momentum had already started is an accident with paperwork.

Answer all six and you will notice the listing, the viewings and the negotiation stop feeling like the hard part. They were never the hard part.