Living in Singapore.

A deposit, an agent's fee and the first months of rent tend to fall due before your local account is open, and in Singapore those numbers are large. Getting money in at a good rate matters from the start.

Your home bank's wire is rarely the cheapest way in. Compare what each provider actually pays out in Singapore dollars, and our guide to money in Singapore goes deeper.

Only through a handful of routes, and each has a bar to clear. There is no general residence permit and no way to move over just because you want to. We cover the detail in our Singapore visa guide; the usual ways in are:

• Employment Pass, for professionals earning at least SGD 5,600 a month (more in finance, and more with age), sponsored by an employer and scored on the COMPASS framework.
• S Pass, for mid-skilled staff on at least SGD 3,300 a month, subject to an employer quota and levy.
• ONE Pass, a five-year, employer-agnostic pass for top earners on SGD 30,000 a month or standouts in their field.
• EntrePass, for founders building a funded or innovative company here.
• Permanent Residence, usually applied for after a year or two on an Employment Pass or S Pass, or through the Global Investor Programme for those putting in from SGD 10 million.
• Family passes, a Long-Term Visit Pass for the spouse, child or parent of a citizen, PR or eligible pass holder.

Singapore has no retirement visa and no digital-nomad visa, and working remotely for an overseas employer on a tourist entry is not allowed. If you are retired, your realistic options are an employer-sponsored pass (which most retirees will not get), the Global Investor Programme (if you are wealthy enough), or a family pass sponsored by a Singaporean child.

Plenty of people love the idea of retiring to a safe, English-speaking, well-run city in Asia. Singapore is that city, and it offers no way to do it. Malaysia's MM2H programme next door is where people usually end up looking instead.

Most people start on a work pass, then apply for Permanent Residence once they have a track record here. Approval is far from automatic: the criteria are unpublished, and a strong CV and steady local income count for a lot. PR, once you have it, lets you change jobs freely, buy a resale HDB flat with a spouse, and stop worrying about pass renewals. You keep it with a Re-Entry Permit, usually valid five years and renewed on your ties and contribution; there is no fixed days-per-year rule, but weak local ties hurt at renewal.

Citizenship comes after that. You can apply once you have held PR for two years, though in practice most successful applicants have held it four to six years or more. Adults complete the Singapore Citizenship Journey, a set of online modules and a community component, rather than a written exam.

The catch sits at the top of the ladder: Singapore does not allow dual citizenship. Becoming a citizen means giving up the passport you already hold, which is why many long-term PRs stop at residency and never take the last step.

Singapore is light on personal tax, and the reason people move here for it. Resident rates are progressive from 0% to a top of 24%, and that 24% only bites above SGD 1,000,000 of income. There is no capital gains tax, so gains on shares, property and crypto are normally untaxed, and dividends reach you tax-free under the one-tier system. There is no wealth tax, and estate duty was abolished in 2008.

For foreign income the answer is better still. Singapore is effectively territorial for individuals. Foreign-source income received by a resident is exempt, with one narrow exception: income earned through a Singapore partnership. So a foreign salary, foreign dividends or a foreign pension brought into the country are generally not taxed here. Tax residency itself is a pure day count, 183 days of presence or work in a calendar year, and it does not turn on your pass. Below that you are taxed as a non-resident at a flat 24%.

Two caveats keep it honest. If the tax office decides you are trading rather than investing, those gains can be treated as ordinary income, and the same logic applies to frequent crypto trading. And Singapore takes part in the Common Reporting Standard, so your home tax authority and Singapore can exchange account information. The old Not Ordinarily Resident concession is gone, closed to new entrants, so do not plan around it.

Singapore is consistently one of the most expensive cities in the world, and housing is the line that hurts. Rents ran up hard between 2022 and 2024 and have stayed high. A one-bedroom condo in a central area costs about SGD 3,500 to 5,000 a month; a family-sized three-bedroom in Orchard or River Valley can clear SGD 10,000.

The rest follows from the rent. A hawker meal is still SGD 5 or 6 and the MRT is cheap, so a modest life is genuinely doable. Push past that and it bites: a beer in a bar is around SGD 15, a cocktail closer to SGD 25, international-school fees reach the tens of thousands a year, and owning a car is a six-figure decision before you have driven anywhere. Our guide to money in Singapore gets into the day-to-day numbers. The low tax rate is real, and for most people it does not come close to covering what the rent costs.

Almost everyone rents. Foreigners can buy a condo, but the 60% stamp duty (below) makes it a very large bet on staying, so renting is the default even for people who own homes elsewhere.

The rental market is formal and tightly regulated, so there is little of the scam risk you get elsewhere in the region. Agents must be licensed by the Council for Estate Agencies (CEA), tenancy agreements follow a standard template, and your deposit is held against a documented inventory rather than a landlord's goodwill. After the 2022 to 2024 run-up, rents have come off the peak, so modest negotiation is realistic again, often in the region of 3 to 5% on a fair asking price.

Leases are one or two years. The security deposit is one month's rent for each year of the lease, so two months on a two-year lease, paid with the first month up front. A clean handover gets it back within about two weeks. If an agent represents you, their fee is commonly around one month's rent on a one-year lease, and often waived on a two-year lease where the landlord's agent takes the commission. A whole condo or HDB flat is the family option; a single room in an HDB flat is how many singles keep the cost down.

Read the maintenance clauses before signing, because Singapore has its own conventions. Tenants are usually liable for minor repairs up to a set figure per item, typically SGD 150 to 250. The landlord covers anything above that, and quarterly air-conditioning servicing falls on the tenant too, at a few hundred dollars a year.

Buying is the harder call. You can buy a private condominium without government approval, but a foreigner pays an Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty of 60% on top of the standard duty, so on a SGD 2 million condo that is SGD 1.2 million in ABSD alone. US nationals, and nationals or PRs of a few countries with trade agreements, are treated as citizens and can skip the surcharge on a first home, so check your own status. A Singapore bank will lend a foreigner up to about 75% of the price on a first property, but with no access to CPF the whole down payment and every monthly repayment come out of cash. Landed houses need government approval and are mostly off-limits, the one exception being leasehold homes on Sentosa Cove; public HDB flats are closed to foreigners entirely.

The market is online and agent-led:

• Property portals. PropertyGuru, 99.co and SRX carry almost the whole market, in English and with reliable asking prices. Rents by area are in the cost-of-living section above.
• Agents. Every agent must be CEA-licensed; check the name on the public register before you deal with them. Using one is standard and low-risk.
• Rooms and flatshares. For a single room, the portals' room listings and the usual chat groups hold the cheaper options; meet the tenant or owner and see the room before paying.

Bringing your life over is easy by regional standards. Used personal effects generally come in free of duty and GST within the relocation window, and sea-freight moves are routine. The one thing not to ship is a car: between the Certificate of Entitlement and the duties, owning a vehicle here is among the most expensive in the world, and almost everyone relies on the trains and buses instead.

For a skilled worker or someone with real capital, Singapore is close to the best-run place you could move to: safe, efficient, excellent on healthcare and schools, and light on tax. None of that is in doubt. The bill arrives as rent, and it is large enough that the tax savings rarely cover it.

Come with an employer or a business and the numbers add up. Come hoping to retire on a nomad budget and there is no door: no retirement visa, no nomad visa, and a one-bedroom that costs more than a whole house would in most of the region.