Indians pay more in down payments and home loan EMIs than Singaporeans! Entrepreneur explains the math

Buying a house is no easy task. It not only involves a lot of paperwork but also a significant amount of money. According to entrepreneur Akshat Shrivastava, it is much easier to buy a house in Singapore than in India.

Akshat Shrivastava explained his rationale behind this claim in a post on X.

"Most real estate is purchased with loans. If someone needs to buy a house worth 1 crore, they don't really need that 1 crore upfront. What you need is a sensible EMI payment option," he wrote.


He then compared the loan calculations for Indian citizens in India versus Singaporean citizens in Singapore.

In Singapore, he said, if the purchase price is assumed to be 1 million SGD, then the down payment would be 25 percent, amounting to 250,000 SGD, while stamp duty, at four percent, would be 25,000-30,000 USD. The stamp duty, he added, is further divided between buyers and sellers.

"A Singaporean citizen pays roughly 27% of the house value upfront," he wrote, adding that the home loan interest rate in such a scenario would be four percent, and you can take a 2-5 year fixed rate and then keep refinancing. So in Singapore, you would pay a home loan EMI of 4,200 SGD to buy a 1 million SGD house or 2.6 lakhs INR, he claimed.

On the other hand, in India, for a house worth Rs 2.56 crore, the 20 percent down payment could be as much as Rs 51.2 lakhs, while stamp duty, at 9-10%, would be Rs 25.6 lakhs, Akshat Shrivastava said in the tweet.

"So we are paying roughly 30% of the house value," he added.

As per his tweet, for the remaining Rs 2 crore, you can take a home loan but you have to pay an EMI of 8-9 percent with a monthly EMI of Rs 3 lakh.

Explaining his reasons for using the figure of Rs 2.56 crore, he says, "PPP data tells us that 1 million SGD equals 2.56 crore in India."

"Also, I forgot to mention one key point: To make 2.56 crore in India, you would most likely be taxed at the 30%+ slab. In contrast, the tax rate in Singapore at 1 million+ would be 22%," he pointed out.