Moving to Singapore: A Local's Guide to Your First 90 Days

The honest overview

Singapore is probably the world's easiest hard move. Everything works, English is the working language, and safety is a non-issue. The difficulty is subtler: costs that ambush you, a housing market that moves in days, and the social effort of building a life in a city where everyone is busy and many expats rotate out within three years.

Visas: the ten-minute version

Professionals typically arrive on an Employment Pass (employer-sponsored, salary-threshold based, assessed under the COMPASS points system), with spouses and children on Dependant's Passes. Tech and finance dominate; approvals hinge on salary, qualifications and your employer's profile. Rules genuinely change, so treat the Ministry of Manpower pages as the only source of truth — including for the current salary thresholds.

Housing: your biggest decision

Rent will be your largest expense by a wide margin. The three-way choice:

• Condos — private developments with pools, gyms and security. The default expat option. SGD 3,500–6,000+ for a two-bed depending on district and age of the building.
• HDB flats — the government-built housing where about 80% of Singaporeans live. Bigger, cheaper (often 30–40% less), embedded in real neighbourhoods with hawker centres downstairs. The under-rated option for anyone who wants to live in Singapore rather than beside it.
• Landed houses — rare, expensive, and mostly for large families with large packages.

Market mechanics: viewings and offers move within days, agents represent landlords, and lease terms are standard (12–24 months, security deposit of one to two months). Before signing anything, spend a weekend walking your shortlisted districts at different hours — the neighbourhoods guide is written for visitors but the character read holds for residents.

Cost of living: where the money actually goes

• Cheap: hawker food (SGD 4–8/meal), public transport, utilities, mobile plans, domestic help relative to Western wages.
• Expensive: rent, cars (the Certificate of Entitlement alone can exceed the price of the car — most expats sensibly don't own one), alcohol (SGD 10–18 for a beer out), international school fees (SGD 25,000–50,000+ per child per year).
• The pattern: live locally and Singapore is moderate; recreate your Sydney/London/New York lifestyle and it's one of the priciest cities on earth. Most new arrivals land somewhere between, and drift local over time.

Healthcare, banking, admin

Healthcare is world-class; as a pass holder you'll rely on employer insurance and private GPs — budget for it, because the public subsidies that make care cheap for citizens don't apply to you. Banking is straightforward once you have your pass card (DBS, OCBC, UOB are the local trio). You'll collect a Singpass digital identity that unlocks nearly all government services — get it early; it turns bureaucracy into an app. For specialist care people ask about most, start with our eye care in Singapore guide — optometry and LASIK here are excellent and competitively priced.

Schools

International schools are excellent, expensive and waitlisted — start applications the moment a move looks likely, not when it's confirmed. Local schools are academically superb and a fraction of the price, but places for foreign children are limited and the system's intensity is a genuine cultural adjustment.

The first 90 days, socially

The infrastructure of your life assembles in two weeks. A life takes longer. What works: say yes to everything in month one, join something recurring (sport, volunteering, a class) rather than relying on one-off expat mixers, and learn your own neighbourhood's hawker centre and wet market — being a regular somewhere is the fastest route to feeling at home in Singapore. Understanding the culture helps too — our guide to Singapore's five Chinese dialect groups explains more about your neighbours in ten minutes than a year of small talk.

If you'd rather compress the learning curve, the New Arrival Retainer (SGD 400/month) gives you a local on call for exactly these decisions — neighbourhood shortlists, school-run logistics, which clinic, which telco, what's normal in a lease. Details on the services page.

Frequently asked questions