The entry price framework: three numbers that matter more than PSF

Every cycle produces its scary per-square-foot number, quoted at dinner tables as proof that the market has left ordinary buyers behind. PSF is a genuinely useful comparison tool, and our market desk uses it constantly. But it is a terrible affordability tool, because nobody pays PSF at the bank. You pay a total price, monthly, out of a specific life. That is where the real framework lives.

Why PSF misleads on affordability

PSF compresses everything into one figure: location, size, floor, age, tenure. A small unit in a prime project can carry a fearsome PSF and a manageable total price; a large suburban unit can look cheap per foot and still be the bigger financial commitment. Quoting PSF to decide what you can afford is like judging a grocery bill by the price per gram of its most expensive item.

The number that constrains you is the quantum: the total price, and what it demands from you monthly.

The three numbers

One: the quantum you can hold comfortably. Not the maximum a bank will lend you. The loan a bank approves is a ceiling, not a recommendation. Work backwards instead from the monthly repayment your household absorbs without wincing, stress-tested at a higher rate than today's, and see what total price that supports at current loan rules. That figure, not any project's pricing, is your entry price.

Two: the true monthly cost of holding. Repayment is the headline, but private property carries a supporting cast: maintenance fees, property tax, insurance, the sinking-fund realities of older projects. Two homes at the same purchase price can differ meaningfully in what they cost to keep. Ask for these figures per project; they are knowable before you commit.

Three: the buffer that survives the purchase. Stamp duties, legal fees, renovation, furniture, and then the reserve that stays untouched afterwards. A purchase that consumes every dollar of savings works only in a world without job changes, medical surprises or rate movements. That is not the world.

Using the framework against a real project

Armed with your three numbers, the market stops being a wall of scary headlines and becomes a filter. A project either fits inside your comfortable quantum or it does not. A unit type either holds monthly or it does not. You will discard some projects everyone else is excited about, and you will notice value in places the headlines skip, because headlines are written about PSF and you have stopped shopping by PSF.

The buyers who get hurt are rarely the ones who bought "expensive". They are the ones who bought more quantum than their life could hold. Know your three numbers before you know any project's, and the entry price question answers itself.