7 Best Renovation Loans in Singapore (September 2026)

Five things, and the first two are the ones that catch people out.

• The money goes to the contractor, not to you. Unlike a personal loan, which lands in your account as cash, a renovation loan is disbursed as cashier's orders made out to your appointed renovation firm, often in tranches tied to project milestones. DBS caps this at four cashier's orders, with additional ones at S$5 each. If you are managing several trades yourself rather than using one main contractor, count your payees before you pick a lender.
• The ceiling is lower than people expect. Under current rules the limit is the lower of six months' income or S$30,000, and it includes any outstanding renovation loan you already hold with the same bank. On a S$5,000 monthly salary that is S$30,000 against a typical four-room renovation, so treat this as partial financing rather than the budget.
• Fixed works only. Flooring, tiling, plumbing, electrical, false ceilings, carpentry, painting and structural changes qualify. Furniture, appliances, curtains and anything movable do not. People routinely budget the loan for the whole project and then discover the sofa and the fridge are on them.
• Your contractor has to qualify too. For HDB flats, banks will not disburse to a firm that is not in the Directory of Renovation Contractors. Getting listed requires ACRA registration for at least a year, three years of renovation experience and the Renovation for Public Housing course at BCA Academy. That is a real quality filter, and it is being applied to your shortlist by your bank.
• Compare the EIR. The advertised rate excludes fees; the effective interest rate includes them. A typical structure is a handling fee around 2% of the approved amount plus a compulsory insurance premium of about 1%, both taken off the top. That is why a 5.08% headline becomes a 6.16% EIR, and why one product on this list advertises around 5.42% while its EIR sits near 10.96%.

Worth knowing on the regulatory side: renovation borrowing sits inside your overall unsecured limit, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore frames total unsecured credit against your annual income while lenders assess your total monthly debt servicing. If you are already carrying a car loan and a credit card balance, that is what decides your approval, not the renovation quote. MoneySense is the government's own free guidance on this, and it is genuinely good.

This is general information about how these products work, not financial advice. Your circumstances decide what is sensible, and the bank's current terms always override anything written here.

Two cautions on that table. Rates in this category change monthly and promotions come and go, so treat these as the shape of the market and check the bank's own page before applying. And the last column is the one that actually sorts the list: the top three restrict what the money can buy and who it can be paid to, while the bottom four hand you cash and let you spend it on the sofa.

A renovation loan in Singapore is capped at the lower of six times your monthly income or S$30,000, across every major bank, with a maximum tenure of five years. On a S$5,000 monthly salary the six-times figure is S$30,000, so the cap binds for most applicants. Any renovation loan still outstanding with the same bank counts against that ceiling.

Set against a typical four-room HDB renovation, that is partial financing rather than the whole budget, which is the planning point most people miss. The realistic structure is cash or CPF for part of the job, a renovation loan for the fixed works, and separate provision for furniture and appliances, which the loan will not cover.

Your approval also depends on borrowing you already carry. Renovation debt sits within your overall unsecured credit position, so an existing car loan, credit card balance or personal loan reduces what a bank will extend, regardless of how modest the renovation quotation is.

A renovation loan is usually cheaper on rate, and a personal loan is usually more useful. Renovation loans price lower because the bank controls where the money goes, disbursing by cashier's order against a contractor's quotation for fixed works only. Personal loans cost more in principle but arrive as cash you can spend on anything, including the furniture and appliances a renovation loan excludes.

In practice the gap has narrowed enough that the comparison is worth running properly. Some personal loan promotions here advertise effective rates below the renovation loans, and once you add a renovation loan's 2% handling fee and 1% insurance premium deducted up front, the supposedly cheaper product is not always cheaper.

My rule of thumb: if you are using one main contractor on a registered list, doing mostly fixed works, and one of the renovation loan promotions applies to you, take the renovation loan. If you are paying multiple trades directly, buying a lot of furniture, or renovating a condo where the DRC requirement does not apply, take the personal loan and enjoy not managing cashier's orders.

I read the banks' own product pages and terms rather than the comparison sites, because this is a category where affiliate tables go stale and quietly keep listing products that no longer exist. That is how I found that one of the local three has no renovation loan on its pages at all, while plenty of current articles still list one.

Rates here are indicative and were what the lenders were showing at the time of writing. This category re-prices constantly and runs limited promotions, the DBS offer being a live example with an end date on it, so please check the bank's own page before applying rather than treating any table, mine included, as current.

Two entries have no screenshot: OCBC's renovation loan page is script-driven and renders blank to automated capture, and Maybank's site returned a protocol error on repeated attempts. I have said so on those entries rather than leaving an unexplained gap. Nothing here is paid placement and none of these links earns me a commission, which is worth saying in a category where most comparison pages are monetised on exactly that basis.

If you hold a DBS home loan, take the 3.38% promotion before it closes on 30 September 2026. Nothing else here comes close and the condition is one you either meet or do not. Failing that, the honest answer for most people is to get one renovation loan quote and one personal loan quote and compare the total repayable across the full tenure, because the ranking genuinely flips depending on fees and promotions in any given month.

Do the sequencing in the right order, though. Work out your contractor shortlist and get a proper itemised quotation first, because the loan is written against that quotation, and for an HDB flat the bank will check the firm is on the Directory of Renovation Contractors before releasing a cent. My picks of the best renovation contractors in Singapore and the best interior design firms in Singapore are the place to start, and if you are working to a property type there are dedicated shortlists for HDB BTO and resale HDB flats.

And budget separately for everything the loan will not buy. The flooring and the carpentry are financed; the sofa, the fridge and the curtains are not. If you are furnishing at the same time, my picks of the best furniture shops in Singapore and the best lighting shops in Singapore cover the part of the budget people forget until the keys are in hand.

One note on why I write these guides. I build websites for Singapore businesses, and I keep noticing that the pages ranking for financial terms are mostly built to earn a commission rather than to answer the question. If your business would rather rank by being genuinely useful, take a look at my web design services in Singapore, or get a quote.