What Income Does a Marina Gardens Crescent Home Need? Working Back From Your Salary Under TDSR

Most affordability guides start with a price and ask whether you can afford it. Marina Gardens Crescent has no price to start from. No developer has been appointed, so there is no price list, no unit sizes and no launch date. This guide turns the question around: it starts with your household income, applies the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) loan rules, and shows the loan and purchase budget that income can support. When the project's real prices are released, you can hold them against the budget you have already worked out.

First, what Marina Gardens Crescent is today

It is not a plain private condominium site. URA lists the land as a White site, not a residential site:

• Zoning: Plot 1 (17,319.2 m²) is zoned White and Plot 2 (5,410.5 m²) is zoned Open Space. URA describes the allowable development as a mix of residential and commercial uses, with a maximum gross floor area of 72,741 m².
• Lease: 99 years.
• Sale status: URA's list of current Government Land Sales sites (last updated 29 September 2026) shows Marina Gardens Crescent under the Reserve List's White Sites, 1.73 ha at a gross plot ratio of 4.2, marked "Available for application". Reserve List sites go to tender only after a successful application.
• History: the January 2024 tender drew one bid, from GuocoLand (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Intrepid Investments Pte. Ltd. and TID Residential Pte. Ltd. URA judged it too low and did not award the site, which then moved to the Reserve List.
• Build time: URA allows 72 months from acceptance of a tender to the Temporary Occupation Permit (TOP) for the whole development.

Two things follow for your budget. Homes here can only go on sale after a developer wins the land, holds a housing developer's sale licence and has building plans approved, as URA's guide for buyers of uncompleted homes explains. And because the scheme will mix homes with commercial space, it helps to know which rules attach to which kind of unit.

Homes and commercial units are financed under different rules

The developer has not announced whether any commercial units will be sold to individual buyers. If they are, MAS and IRAS treat them differently from homes:

The rest of this guide covers buying a home.

Which income test applies: TDSR, not MSR

MAS caps the Mortgage Servicing Ratio (MSR) at 30% of gross monthly income, but only for HDB flats and Executive Condominiums still within their minimum occupation period. A home at Marina Gardens Crescent is neither, so the MSR does not apply. The test is the Total Debt Servicing Ratio (TDSR): all your monthly debt repayments, including the new home loan, must stay at or below 55% of gross monthly income.

Two details decide what counts as income and debt:

• Income is gross monthly income before tax, without your employer's CPF contribution. Banks must apply a haircut of at least 30% to variable income such as bonuses, commissions and allowances (averaged over the past 12 months), and to rental income.
• Debts include car loans, student loans, renovation loans, credit card debt and any other loans. Each one reduces the room left for the home loan.

Working back from income to a loan and a budget

The table below takes four sample households and runs the MAS rules in order. Assumptions: the bank uses the 4% floor rate; the loan runs 30 years and ends before the borrowers turn 65, so the 75% loan-to-value (LTV) limit applies; and the buyers have no other housing loan. The figures are rounded. They show what a given income can borrow, not what any unit here will cost.

The third row shows how much existing debt matters. A S$1,200 monthly car repayment cuts the purchase budget by about S$335,000 at the same salary. Variable pay counts for less too. A household earning S$15,000 in fixed pay plus S$3,000 a month in average bonus is assessed at S$17,100, not S$18,000.

The budget only works if you can also pay your own share. At 75% LTV you pay 25% of the price yourself, and at least 5% of the price must be cash; the rest can come from cash or CPF Ordinary Account savings within CPF's limits. If the loan runs longer than 30 years, or past the borrower's 65th birthday, the LTV limit drops to 55% and the minimum cash rises to 10%. Buyers who already have one housing loan face a 45% (or 25%) limit and a 25% minimum cash down payment.

Stamp duty on a hypothetical S$2.4 million home

To show the stamp duty step, take a hypothetical S$2,400,000 purchase, which is close to the budget of the S$18,000 household with a car loan. It is a round figure for the arithmetic only, not an estimate of what a Marina Gardens Crescent home will cost. Prices are not announced yet.

BSD on S$2,400,000 at IRAS's residential rates is S$89,600 (1% on the first S$180,000, 2% on the next S$180,000, 3% on the next S$640,000, 4% on the next S$500,000 and 5% on the remaining S$900,000). ABSD then depends on who is buying, at the rates in force since 27 April 2023:

Joint buyers pay the highest rate among them on the whole price. IRAS also notes that some nationals are treated like Singapore Citizens under free trade agreements; its own example is a US citizen. BSD and ABSD are due within 14 days of signing the sale and purchase agreement (30 days if it is signed overseas), so budget for them on top of your own share of the price.

Why timing matters more here than at most launches

MAS requires banks to work out your TDSR when you apply for the loan, using the rate at that time if it is above 4%. For Marina Gardens Crescent that date is still some way off: the site has to be applied for, tendered and awarded, and the developer then needs a sale licence and approved plans before any unit can be sold. Your income and debts at that point are what count, so the useful step now is to keep your debts low rather than plan around today's rates.

After you buy, the standard sale and purchase agreement for strata units spreads the price over the build: 20% (including the booking fee of 5% to 10%) on signing or within 8 weeks of the Option, then 10%, 10%, 5%, 5%, 5% and 5% as construction stages are completed, 25% at TOP and the last 15% at the Certificate of Statutory Completion. With 72 months allowed from tender award to TOP, these stages can stretch over several years, and the loan is drawn down step by step. The payment scheme page sets out the stages, and the progressive payment calculator spreads them for your own figures.

Checklist before prices are released

1. Work out your assessed income: fixed pay, plus 70% of average variable pay.
2. List every monthly debt repayment, and consider clearing small loans before you apply.
3. Run your own numbers in the mortgage calculator at a 4% rate, and in the stamp duty calculator with your buyer profile.
4. Set aside at least 5% of your budget in cash, plus BSD and any ABSD.
5. When the developer releases figures, compare them with your budget on the price page and check unit sizes on the floor plans.
6. Register on the showflat page to hear when previews open, and follow the registration status page for news on the site's tender.