TDSR & MSR Explained: Singapore Property Loan Limits

TDSR and MSR are the two rules that decide how much a buyer can actually borrow to buy property in Singapore, and LTV decides how much of the price a bank will lend at all. They confuse plenty of candidates because they sound similar but work differently — and RES Paper 2 loves testing the difference. This guide gives you the plain-English version with the current figures, a worked example, and the classic trap examiners set. Memorise these alongside the one-page RES cheat sheet.

TDSR — Total Debt Servicing Ratio (55%)

TDSR caps a borrower's total monthly debt repayments at 55% of gross monthly income. Total means everything: the new home loan, plus any car loan, personal loans, student loans and the minimum payments on credit cards. The point is to stop people over-extending across all their obligations, not just the mortgage.

The key fact for the exam: TDSR applies to every property purchase — private condo, landed, HDB or EC. There is no property type that escapes it.

MSR — Mortgage Servicing Ratio (30%)

MSR is narrower and stricter. It caps the housing loan repayment alone at 30% of gross monthly income, and it applies only to HDB flats and Executive Condominiums (ECs) bought from a developer. Private, non-EC property has no MSR at all.

When a buyer purchases an HDB flat or a new EC, both rules apply at once, and the lower resulting cap governs. In practice MSR (30% of income for housing alone) usually bites before TDSR (55% of income for all debt), so MSR is often the binding constraint.

TDSR vs MSR at a glance

LTV — Loan-to-Value limit

TDSR and MSR limit affordability from your income. LTV limits it from the property price: it caps how much of the price you can borrow, so the rest must come from your down payment. The limit tightens with each additional housing loan you already hold.

The stress-test rate

Banks don't run these ratios at today's advertised rate. They assess affordability against a medium-term interest rate floor of 4% p.a. for residential property (5% for non-residential), or the actual rate if it is higher. That means the loan a buyer actually qualifies for is usually lower than a naive calculation at the headline rate would suggest — a detail worth remembering when a question hands you a low promotional rate.

How this connects to the rest of Paper 2

Financing rules sit alongside the stamp duties in the calc-heavy part of the syllabus, and questions often bundle them into a single case study. Make sure you can also handle Buyer’s Stamp Duty, Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty and Seller’s Stamp Duty, because a Section B scenario can test upfront cash (LTV down payment + BSD/ABSD) and monthly affordability (TDSR/MSR) in the same set of facts.

Practise until the numbers are automatic

You won't get these right under time pressure by reading alone. Plug real numbers into our TDSR / MSR affordability calculator to see how income, existing debt and the stress rate interact, then drill financing scenarios in the practice topics. When you feel ready, sit a free timed mock to test whether you can spot the MSR-versus-private trap under exam conditions.

Create a free account and start today — the first 15 questions in every topic are free.

Figures current as at 2026 and aligned to the public CEA syllabus — not financial advice. Limits change with cooling measures; confirm the latest with MAS or your bank.