An equity home loan, which MAS officially calls a mortgage equity withdrawal loan (MWL), lets you borrow cash against a private property you have largely paid off, secured at home-loan rates of around 1.5% p.a. in mid-2026 rather than the 6% to 12% you would pay on a personal loan. The catch is that you cannot touch the whole gap between your property's value and your mortgage. A 75% loan-to-value ceiling, the CPF you have already poured in plus its accrued interest, and your TDSR all shrink the figure. HDB flats are shut out entirely. This guide works through the exact 2026 caps, the fees, a real cash-out example, and when borrowing against your home is sensible rather than reckless.
An equity home loan is a fresh loan secured against the slice of your property you genuinely own, the equity. If a condo is worth $2 million and you owe $700,000, the paper equity is $1.3 million. A bank lets you borrow part of that as a lump sum and you keep repaying it like a mortgage. The Monetary Authority of Singapore regulates this as a mortgage equity withdrawal loan, and you will also hear it called cash-out refinancing or an equity term loan.
It works because property is collateral. The bank already holds a charge over your home, so the risk is low and the pricing follows mortgage rates, not unsecured-lending rates. That gap is the whole point: an equity home loan is one of the cheapest large sums a homeowner can raise in Singapore, which is why it sits well below the rates on a personal loan or a renovation loan.
The flip side is that the loan is tied to your roof. Miss enough payments and the bank can force a sale. You are converting an illiquid asset into spendable cash, and the bank is converting your home into recoverable security.
Equity home loans are a private-property tool. Banks lend against private condominiums, landed homes, executive condominiums that have cleared their five-year minimum occupation period, and commercial or industrial units. The property must have real equity, which usually means a substantial chunk of the original mortgage is repaid or the home is fully owned.
HDB flats do not qualify. HDB rules restrict borrowing against a flat to financing its purchase, so you cannot draw cash out of an HDB flat the way you can a condo, regardless of how much you have paid down. If your only property is an HDB flat, this product is not open to you. Owners weighing the broader difference between the two financing tracks can read our breakdown of the HDB loan versus bank loan choice.
Two limits do most of the work. First is the loan-to-value (LTV) ceiling. For a borrower with no other outstanding housing loan, total borrowing against the property is capped at 75% of its current value. If you already have one outstanding housing loan elsewhere the cap falls to 45%, and to 35% with two or more. Stretch the tenure beyond 30 years or borrow past age 65 and the no-loan cap drops to 55%.
Second, and the part most people miss, is CPF. You cannot cash out the portion of your home funded by CPF. Any CPF Ordinary Account savings you used for the down payment and monthly instalments, plus the accrued interest you would owe yourself, are carved out of what you can withdraw. Those CPF monies are not real spare equity; on a sale they must be refunded to your CPF account.
Put the two together and the working formula is:
Cash available = (75% x property value) - outstanding mortgage - (CPF used + accrued interest). The result is usually well below the paper equity, and on a property where you leaned heavily on CPF it can be close to zero. To gauge headroom across your whole borrowing picture first, our mortgage calculator shows the monthly cost of any new loan amount.
| Borrower situation | Standard LTV cap | If tenure >30 yrs or age >65 |
|---|---|---|
| No other outstanding housing loan | 75% | 55% |
| 1 outstanding housing loan | 45% | 25% |
| 2 or more outstanding housing loans | 35% | 15% |
Suppose your condo is valued at $2,000,000 today. You have no other housing loan, an outstanding mortgage of $700,000, and you used $250,000 of CPF (with, say, $80,000 of accrued interest) to buy and service it over the years.
Maximum total borrowing at 75% LTV is $1,500,000. Subtract the $700,000 you still owe and the gross headroom is $800,000. Now subtract the CPF used plus accrued interest of $330,000. Your cashable amount is about $470,000, not the $1.3 million of paper equity you might have assumed.
On top of that, the bank checks affordability. If your new total borrowing of $1.17 million is more than 50% of the $2 million valuation, the loan must pass TDSR (explained next). If you keep total borrowing at or under 50% of value, MAS exempts the withdrawal from TDSR, which is the lever many retirees use to monetise a fully paid home without an income test.
The Total Debt Servicing Ratio normally caps all your monthly debt repayments at 55% of gross monthly income, and only 70% of variable income counts. Banks stress-test the new, larger loan at a 4% floor rate to confirm you can still afford it. For working borrowers, weak TDSR headroom is the usual reason a cash-out request gets trimmed.
MAS carves out one important exemption: if the equity withdrawal, combined with any other loan secured on the same property, does not exceed 50% of the property's current value, TDSR does not apply. The regulator added this so older owners with little active income can still draw cash from a property they largely own. Keep your total borrowing at or below half the home's value and the income test falls away.
Tenure for these loans is capped at 35 years, longer than the 30-year limit on a normal private housing loan, though pushing tenure past 30 years or beyond age 65 lowers your LTV ceiling as shown above.
Because the loan is priced like a mortgage, an equity home loan in mid-2026 lands far cheaper than any unsecured option. As of June 2026, the lowest private-property home-loan rates were around 1.27% p.a. floating (3-month SORA plus a thin spread) and roughly 1.40% to 1.45% p.a. on a two-year fixed package, per market trackers. By contrast a personal loan runs about 6% to 12% p.a. and a renovation loan about 3.5% to 6% p.a. On a six-figure sum, that spread is thousands of dollars a year. If you are choosing how the rate behaves, weigh a fixed versus floating mortgage structure before you lock in.
Rates move, so treat any figure as indicative and confirm the live package with the bank. The product is offered by the major lenders that already do refinancing, including DBS, OCBC, UOB, HSBC, Maybank, Standard Chartered and Citi.
An equity home loan makes sense when the cash earns more, or costs less, than the loan. Funding the down payment on a second property, injecting capital into a business, or clearing high-interest credit-card and unsecured debt at a fraction of the rate are the textbook cases. Replacing 12% to 26% debt with sub-2% secured debt is real arbitrage. If debt consolidation is your goal, compare this route against a dedicated debt consolidation plan first.
It is a poor idea when the money funds consumption that leaves nothing behind. Borrowing against your home for a holiday, a wedding, or a car turns a depreciating or one-off expense into a 35-year liability secured on your roof. The two structural risks never go away: a default can cost you the property, and all repayments must be made in cash because CPF cannot service this loan.
No. HDB rules restrict borrowing against a flat to financing its purchase, so you cannot cash out equity from an HDB flat. Equity home loans, or mortgage equity withdrawal loans, are available only on private property such as condos, landed homes, ECs past their MOP, and commercial units.
Two limits shrink it. The 75% loan-to-value cap restricts total borrowing against the property, and any CPF you used to buy or service the home, plus its accrued interest, is carved out because it must be refunded to CPF on a sale. The cash you can actually withdraw is the LTV ceiling minus your outstanding mortgage minus that CPF amount.
Usually yes, at the 55% Total Debt Servicing Ratio limit with a 4% stress-test rate. But MAS exempts the withdrawal from TDSR if your total borrowing secured on that property, including the new loan, does not exceed 50% of the property's current value. This lets owners with little income monetise a largely paid-off home.
An equity home loan is priced like a mortgage, around 1.3% to 1.5% p.a. in mid-2026, versus roughly 6% to 12% p.a. on a personal loan. On a large sum the saving is thousands of dollars a year, which is the main reason homeowners use it for big-ticket needs or to consolidate costlier debt.
This is general financial information for Singapore, not personal financial advice. Figures change — verify current rates against the official sources above before acting. See our full disclaimer.