Commercial Property Loan Singapore — Shophouse, Office, Industrial

Commercial property financing in Singapore plays by different rules than residential. There's no MAS TDSR or MSR cap, no Notice 645 stress test, no ABSD on commercial assets. Instead, banks evaluate the asset class, the borrower's company financials, and the tenant profile. The right bank depends entirely on what you're buying — and we know which lenders win each segment.

What counts as commercial property

For financing purposes, Singapore commercial property splits into:

• Conserved & modern shophouses — typically with retail/F&B on the ground floor and residential or office above. Strong appetite from local banks given residential-component upside.
• Office strata & en-bloc — Grade A and B Singapore CBD strata offices, typically 60–80% LTV.
• B1 / B2 industrial — JTC and freehold industrial. Lease tenure remaining is the key variable; B1 is light industrial / clean, B2 is general industrial.
• F&B and retail strata — heavily tenant-driven; strong covenant tenants get tight pricing.

LTV — up to 80% on residential-commercial

Commercial property is exempt from MAS residential LTV caps, so each bank applies its own credit limit. In practice:

GST — the 9% nobody flags early

Most commercial property purchases in Singapore attract 9% GST when the seller is GST-registered. If your buying entity is also GST-registered and the property is for taxable business use, you can usually reclaim the GST as input tax — but the timing mismatch (you pay GST at completion, reclaim it on the next quarterly filing) means you need the bank to size the financing or a short-term GST bridge accordingly. We pre-coordinate with your accountant on this every time.

F1 vs F2 income docs — and why structure matters

Banks classify commercial borrowers by documentation quality:

• F1 — fully verifiable: audited financial statements, IRAS Notice of Assessment, 6 months of operating bank statements, GST returns. F1 borrowers get the full LTV and tightest spread.
• F2 — partly verifiable: management accounts, GIRO history, director's personal income. Expect a 10–20% LTV haircut and 0.3–0.5% wider spread.

A common pre-engagement step we run is checking whether you have what's needed for F1 treatment — and if not, restructuring documentation over a quarter or two before submitting. The savings on a S$2M loan from F2 to F1 over a 25-year tenure run into low six figures.

Lease-to-own and equity cash-out

For business owners currently leasing premises, lease-to-own structures (where rental payments effectively service a purchase loan, often via a related-party SPV) can be attractive for tax and balance-sheet reasons. We build the structure with your tax advisor and the bank.

For owners of existing commercial property, cash-out refinancing is one of the most flexible sources of business capital in Singapore. LTV up to roughly 80% of current valuation, less existing loan; proceeds can be used for working capital, expansion, acquisition, or even refinancing other debt. We benchmark this against personal property cash-out — for context on the residential equivalent, see our equity / cash-out loan page. Broader rate timing context is in our note on when to refinance in Singapore.

Banks active in SME commercial financing

The three local banks (DBS, OCBC, UOB) and Maybank dominate Singapore SME commercial lending, alongside selected foreign lenders for larger tickets. Each has a distinct appetite — some prefer shophouses, others B1/B2 industrial, others F&B-tenanted retail. We pre-position your file with the bank most likely to approve at the highest LTV with the tightest spread, which materially compresses decision time. Approval cycles are 2–6 weeks depending on complexity. For a parallel comparison of how banks evaluate residential paperwork, our note on TDSR & MSR rules is a useful primer on how Singapore credit teams think generally; the MAS 4% stress test piece covers the residential side of credit policy that banks still echo when sizing director guarantees.