Bala's Table: How Much Value Your Lease Loses Each Year

The value you're losing every year has an official name, and it is not folklore. It is the Singapore Land Authority's official Leasehold Table, used since 1948 to calculate the land premium payable when a lease is topped up, converted from one use to another, or when state land is alienated. It is widely believed to have been prepared by a Land Office employee named Bala under British colonial administration, and the name stuck. SLA published the table openly on its website from 31 July 2000, and it has since become the industry's default reference for what a leasehold discount "should" look like.

The logic is simple once it's spelled out. Buying leasehold land really means buying the right to a stream of rent for a fixed number of years, not the land itself. Money received sooner is worth more than money received decades later, so that future rent is discounted back to today's value. The percentage in the table is that discounted value, shown as a share of what the same land would be worth freehold, with no expiry.

Three reference points anchor the whole table, confirmed in Motha and Yuen's Singapore Real Property Guide (1999) and unchanged since: a 99-year lease is worth 96% of freehold value. A 60-year lease is worth 80%. A 30-year lease is worth 60%. Notice the shape. The first 39 years of decay (99 to 60) cost you 16 percentage points. The next 30 years (60 to 30) cost you another 20 points. The curve is not a straight line. It steepens.

Selected values from SLA's Leasehold Table (full table runs year-by-year from 1 to 99). Source: Centre for Liveable Cities, 2017, Appendix 1.

Where the Numbers Come From

CLC researchers who reverse-engineered the table found that it is closely. But not exactly. Approximated by a standard present-value formula at a 3.5% discount rate: the leasehold percentage equals 1 minus (1 divided by 1.035, raised to the power of the remaining years). At 99 years that formula produces 96.7%, essentially matching the table's 96.0%. But in the middle of the curve, 35 to 55 years remaining. The formula and the official table diverge by 5 to 7 percentage points, because the table's author rounded the six landmark years (10, 15, 20, 30, 60, 99) to convenient whole numbers and interpolated everything else by hand. That is why this article gives you both the real table and a rough formula. They are close, but not identical, and knowing the difference matters for Move 3 below.

You don't need the full 99-row table to get a usable estimate of what you're losing. Here is the method, in five steps, using Braddell View's real numbers as the worked example.

This method is intentionally rough. It assumes two different buildings in two different locations are otherwise comparable, which they never fully are. Use it to sense-check a listing or your own unit before a conversation with a valuer, not as a substitute for one.

Reading the Cliff, Not Just the Curve

The curve tells you what you're losing. The cliff tells you when that loss stops being theoretical and starts shrinking the number of people who can actually buy from you. Two markers are worth watching, both grounded in policy mechanics rather than sentiment: the point where your remaining lease starts failing to cover a 25-year-old buyer to age 95 under CPF rules (pro-ration begins), and the point where mainstream bank loan tenures compress because the lease itself is running out faster than a standard loan term. For most 99-year leasehold properties, the first marker lands somewhere in the 50s-remaining band; the second tightens hard once you're inside 30 years.

James's own position, based on the mechanics above rather than any forecast of where prices are headed: owners sitting in the 45 to 60 year band are the ones with the most room to plan calmly. A full pool of financeable buyers, and enough runway to decide between holding, right-sizing, or exiting on their own timeline rather than the cliff's. That is an observation about financing mechanics, not a recommendation to sell. Whether holding, right-sizing, or exiting makes sense for your specific unit depends on your own numbers. Run them, or have them run, before the pool narrows rather than after.