Derrick LiewPrivate Property GPS

Everyone is heading to a private property. Nobody starts from the same place.

The GPS framework is the route between the two: goals set the destination, the property is the vehicle, the strategy is how you get there without losing ground.

Book a GPS consultationWatch the GPS series

Derrick Liew, ERA Realty Network Pte Ltd, Singapore

Derrick Liew, property advisor
Start

A property is the largest purchase most Singaporean households will ever sign for, and the one they research the least on their own terms. This is where that changes.

The detour

The plan you are following was probably built for someone else

Market noise, a colleague's success story and a confident video clip are not a plan. They are fragments of other people's circumstances, borrowed and applied to yours.

Derrick calls the harder version of this a wrong plan: having no plan at all is often still solvable, because you know you need one. A borrowed plan holds up until the moment it matters.

Watch: no plan, or the wrong one

"I hear my friends say this, my family tell me this, I saw a YouTuber say this, I watch this on TikTok. These are all hearsays and these are not customized plan to fit into your situation."

Derrick Liew
The route

G, P, S. In that order, on purpose.

G, goals

Where are you actually heading

"The property is actually a vehicle that brings you from where you are to reaching your endpoint. A lot of buyers will say their goal is, 'I want to have a condo. I want to have a landed.' But that is not a goal. That is a transaction. When you say that you want a goal, it must be something that's tangible. For example, by 45, I want to be mortgage-free."

P, property

The variable, not the fixed point

"You're falling in love with the property and then you're changing the end goals that you have in mind so that you are able to justify yourself buying that property. The property should be a variable that can be changed but your end goal should not be changing along the way."

S, strategy

Entry, exit, and who buys from you next

"You are very clear of what is your entry price, what is your exit strategy, who will be the buyers that will buy from you in the future, where would they come from, how would their affordability like. Even before you make the purchase today."

Read the full framework
Your position

Three starting points, one destination

01

First-time buyers

No roadmap, and plenty of advice arriving from friends, family and a feed. The question underneath is usually whether you are ready at all, and nobody has put the numbers in one place to answer it.

02

HDB upgraders moving to private

Timing anxiety, the sell-first-or-buy-first knot, equity that is trapped until it is not, and MOP and eligibility traps that only reveal themselves when you try to move.

03

Private upgraders moving again

The move itself is not the hard part. Sequencing it so the next property advances your position instead of resetting it is.

Destination: a private property that fits the goal

Mileage

Two households, two very different outcomes

The couple who nearly took the wrong BTO

A young first-time couple balloted well for a BTO under the PLUS model. It read as a straightforward win until the conditions were laid alongside their goal.

A PLUS flat carries a 10-year MOP and a subsidy clawback, and accepting it would have made them second-timers for any future Executive Condominium. Their real goal was wealth accumulation, not that specific flat.

With the alternatives mapped against the goal, they bought a new Executive Condominium as first-timers instead.

The client who came too late

Before buying, this couple had been looking at a new launch condominium. Fear and a lack of direction stopped them, and they bought a resale HDB instead.

Had they moved then, they would be roughly $600K further ahead in capital appreciation today.

They have not reached MOP, so the Executive Condominium and private launches currently on the market are closed to them. That one is not solvable, only waited out.

Your guide

Commando officer, then property advisor

"There's a lot of similarities in planning a Commando mission as well as helping a family with their property planning. It always starts off with what is our end goal, what is the target that we have. Then mapping out the step-by-step mission and that everybody knows what is their tasking. And the next thing is to have contingencies set in place because anything can go wrong. In a nutshell, it's having the risk management set in place and to protect the people in high-stake environments."

Read the full story
The journey

How working together goes

  1. 1

    The goals conversation

    No shortlist, no floor plans. We establish what you want to be true by a specific age or year, and write it down in a form you can measure.

  2. 2

    Property positioning and finances

    Where you stand now: current property, eligibility, ABSD exposure, loan-to-value, CPF usage and cash timing. This is where most surprises surface.

  3. 3

    The strategy map

    Entry price, holding period, exit, and the profile of the buyer who takes it off your hands, all agreed before you commit.

  4. 4

    Quarterly GPS reports

    For as long as Derrick is your advisor: a personalised read on your property position and how market movements have affected it.

Briefings

The GPS series

Watch the GPS series
Checkpoints

The four questions that come up first

I'm not ready yet. Should I still talk to you?
"Usually when people say that they are not ready, it's never about the money. Most of the time it's because they lack the clarity. When we really map everything out with them, they find that they are more ready than they thought they were."
I'd rather wait and see what the market does.
"There's a very big opportunity cost when it comes to waiting. The market might already have moved while you're sitting on the fence. I know of someone who has been waiting since 2019. Should he have made the move back then and exited in the recent years, he would have already been sitting on half a million of profits. The market will not wait for you."
Should I sell first or buy first?
"It's a case-by-case basis. Are you eligible to buy? Do you meet the finances requirements? Does the numbers allow for it in terms of the ABSD, in terms of your loan-to-value ratio, as well as the CPF limits? Every family situation is very different. Anyone that can give you a one-liner answer is just doing guesswork."
How should I think about cooling measures and interest rates in 2026?
"There's a lot of market buzz going around, a lot of noise. First of all, you have to really see how it might or might not even be relevant to you in the first place. Following my GPS framework, I would already have identified all these potential pitfalls so that regardless of what happens, you will not be caught by surprise."
Destination

Start with the goal, not the listing

Here is exactly what happens after you book. The first conversation is about where you are heading and where you currently stand. It is not a property pitch, and there is no shortlist waiting at the end of it.

Book a GPS consultationWatch the GPS series

Derrick Liew
CEA Reg. No. R066896D
ERA Realty Network Pte Ltd