Reported bands run S$25,000 to S$50,000 for a 3-room flat and S$51,000 to S$61,800 for a 4-room. Each figure names its publisher and the date it was published.
BTO renovation cost is reported at S$25,000 to S$50,000 for a 3-room flat and S$30,000 to S$65,000 for a 4-room. A separate 4-room study reports S$51,000 to S$61,800 inside an observed S$27,000 to S$145,000 range. Each is dated, from a named source, and none is a quote.
01 PERMIT
Hacking always
needs one
All demolition and hacking of walls, partial or complete, needs HDB’s prior written approval before anything starts.
hdb.gov.sg · read 2026-08-31
02 HOURS
Mon to Fri
9am to 5pm
Restricted works only. General works such as painting and screed run Monday to Saturday until 6pm.
hdb.gov.sg · read 2026-08-31
03 DEADLINE
3 months for
a new block
From the date the permit is granted. Existing blocks get 1 month.
hdb.gov.sg · read 2026-08-31
It means a reported range from a named publisher, with a date attached. It does not mean a price, because a price belongs to a scope and no scope exists for your flat until somebody has measured it.
Every published figure assumes something it usually does not state: a flat type, a set of inclusions, and a year. Change any of those and the number moves, which is why two honest sources can disagree without either being wrong.
Three independently published bands, each attributed and dated. Where two disagree, both appear. An average of two dated ranges is a figure nobody published and nobody will stand behind.
| Item | Reported range |
|---|---|
| 3-room BTO | S$25k to 50k |
| 4-room BTO | S$51k to 62k |
| 5-room BTO | S$40k to 115k |
Ranges as published by each source, not averaged together. Where two sources disagree, both are shown rather than reconciled.
Sources interiordiary.com.sg 2026-08-31qanvast.com 2026-08-31moneysmart.sg 2026-08-31
Use them as a sanity check in one direction or the other. They will tell you quickly whether a quote is unusual, and they will never tell you what your flat costs.
The cost of renovation Singapore homeowners report varies more by scope than by firm. Read any average as a starting price for a conversation about scope, not as a budget you can hold somebody to.
No source we hold publishes a whole-project band for a 2-room flat, so this page does not invent one. The gap is in the data rather than in the market.
What is documented instead is line items. The 2 room BTO renovation page sets those out, and the short version is that kitchens and bathrooms carry fixed trade costs that do not shrink with the floor area.
That is why a small flat rarely halves the budget. The average price per square metre goes up as the flat gets smaller, because the two most expensive rooms stay roughly the same size.
Two publishers, two bands, both dated. One reports S$25,000 to S$50,000. Another reports a higher floor for the same flat type in a later year.
The gap between them is mostly scope and partly time. Neither is corrected here, because correcting a published figure without republishing the method behind it is how a citation quietly becomes an assertion.
For a 3 room flat the practical breakdown is straightforward: carpentry first, wet works second, everything else a long way behind. Build your reno budget in that order and the trade-offs present themselves.
Reported 5-room fit-outs start from around S$45,000 for a new flat. Resale 5-room renovations are reported far higher, at S$58,000 and above.
Those are two different cases and this page keeps them apart. A resale flat carries stripping out and reinstatement that a new flat simply does not have.
A 5 room flat also carries the longest carpentry runs and, in many layouts, a corridor that contributes floor area without contributing anywhere useful to put anything. That is where the extra money goes.
Usually yes for a like-for-like refresh, and usually not once the waterproofing membrane is broken. That single decision changes the basis of the job rather than adding a line to it.
Overlay tiling keeps the membrane intact and keeps the number down. Hacking to the screed means re-waterproofing, re-screeding and making good, and the unit below is the one that finds out if any of it is rushed.
Four groups account for most of any fit-out, and only one of them moves a lot between a cheap job and an expensive one.
Carpentry is where two quotes for the same flat separate. The others move within a relatively narrow band once the scope is fixed.
A 4 room flat is the clearest illustration, because it has the widest published spread of any type. That spread is a scope signal rather than a market one: the same flat can be finished simply or extensively.
Priced per foot run, so run length drives the number more than the rate does. A quote with a low rate and a long run can beat a quote with a high rate and a short one, or lose to it.
The hidden variable is the carcass behind the laminate. Ask what it is in writing, because it is the part of the price you cannot see and the part that decides how the carpentry looks in year three.
Waterproofing sits under the screed, and getting to it means taking up everything above it. Nothing else in a flat is as expensive to revisit.
Budget these properly the first time rather than deferring them. A deferred wet-work decision is not a saving, it is the same work at a later date with the finished floor removed first.
Services follow the same logic. Every additional point is priced, and an Energy Market Authority licence sits behind the electrical work whoever you engage, so it is never the line to shop hardest on.
Tell us the flat type and when you collect keys. You get a scope discussion and an indicative cost band within one working day.
or email hello@btorenovation.sg
Making good is not optional tidying. A cut edge is jagged and somebody has to re-plaster and re-finish it before the next trade can start.
The scheme supplies flooring and sanitary fittings pre-installed at a price folded into the flat price, set per BTO launch rather than fixed across the scheme.
One documented project paid this for a whole-flat flooring package. Against that, weigh removal plus making good, which comparisons routinely leave out.
A new flat starts from a finished shell. A resale flat has to be stripped before it can be built, and reinstating somebody else’s finishes is real, priced work.
That is the whole of the gap in most comparisons. It narrows as soon as a new flat owner opts out of the Optional Component Scheme and has a floor to remove after all.
Four things, and a quote missing any of them is describing a different job from the one beside it.
And a quote produced without a site measure is a guess. If nobody has been to the flat, you are holding a brochure with a number printed on it.
Ask for all four before you shortlist rather than after. A firm that will not itemise at quotation stage will not itemise at variation stage either, and variation stage is when it costs you real money.
Because no two firms scope the same job from the same brief. One assumes the flooring stays, another prices removing it. One measures nine feet of carpentry, another thirteen.
Normalise the scope and the numbers move towards each other immediately. Most of what looks like a price difference is a scope difference nobody wrote down.
An interior design firm will usually quote a bundled figure and a direct contractor a longer list. Neither is cheaper by nature. The average difference between them is coordination, which is a real service with a real price.
A provisional sum is an allowance rather than a price: a placeholder for work whose quantity is not known until the measure or until something is opened up.
A provisional sum is legitimate when it is labelled and carries the rate that will apply on resolution. Unlabelled, it is just a number that will move.
Two kinds. Site conditions found once a wall is open, which nobody could have quoted. And scope you never described, which somebody could have.
The first belongs in a contingency. The second belongs in a better brief, and it is the one you can actually control before signing anything.
Write the brief before you collect quotes rather than after. A scope described once, in writing, is the cheapest cost control available to you and it costs nothing but an evening.
Tie payments to stages you can walk into and inspect, never to dates in a calendar.
Write the staging into the contract rather than agreeing it on a call. A firm that wants most of the money before the wet works are finished is describing its own cash position, and you would be the one funding it.
The HDB renovation permit sets the outside date, and a compressed schedule is an expensive schedule. The week-by-week renovation timeline shows where that pressure lands.
A programme that plans to use every available day has no room for the conditions found once a wall is open. That is not pessimism, it is the single most common reason a renovation runs past its window.
Tell us the flat type and when you collect keys. You get a scope discussion and an indicative cost band within one working day.
or email hello@btorenovation.sg
General renovation works run Monday to Saturday, 9am to 6pm. Restricted renovation works, meaning demolition, removing finishes and cutting tiles, run Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm only.
Sources MyNiceHome by HDB 2026-08-31
Restricted works are additionally banned on five named festival eves. Fewer lawful hours for the noisiest trades means a longer programme, and a longer programme is a more expensive one.
Only a firm listed in the Housing & Development Board’s Directory of Renovation Contractors, under the Housing and Development (Renovation Control) Rules 2006.
Contravening the rules carries a fine on conviction plus other penalties, and the liability attaches to the flat owner as well as to the contractor.
The money lands inside a short permit window rather than across a year, so financing spread over twelve months does not match what actually happens on site.
This page names no bank and recommends no lender. Size the borrowing against an itemised quote and a named contingency instead of a headline figure.
Borrow against the measured scope, not against the highest band you read. The published ranges on this page describe other people’s flats, and the only budget that matters is the one attached to yours.
Start from scope rather than from a number you read somewhere, including the numbers on this page.
Do them in that order and the budget survives contact with a real quote. Do them backwards, starting from a number you liked, and every later decision becomes an argument with a figure you have already committed to emotionally.
Every cost band on this page is a dated third-party range with its publisher named. None of them is a quotation, and none is an average of numbers we could not check.
Every number carries a named publisher and the date it was published. Regulatory claims cite HDB directly with the date the page was read.
Where sources conflict, both are shown and neither is averaged. The same method applies across every page on this site.
No licence number, no accreditation, no review, no rating and no photograph captioned as our own completed project. None exists for BTO Renovation SG, so none appears.
No quote is given on this page either. Everything above is editorial content with a source and a date, which is a different thing from a price.
That distinction is the whole method. A dated range tells you what the market reported. A price tells you what somebody will do for you, and only a measured scope produces one.
Tell us which BTO project, which flat type, when you collect keys and what you decided about the Optional Component Scheme.
You get a reply within one working day with a scope discussion and an indicative cost band. That band will be narrower than anything on this page, because it will be about your flat.
Checked against primary sources · updated 2026-09-01
