S-REIT yield vs T-bill yield: how to read the spread

Informational only, not financial advice. This page explains a calculation. It does not rank, score, or suggest any REIT, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell anything. Figures are live from our latest data; verify against the primary sources before acting.

The largest Singapore REITs we track currently yield 5.74% on a trailing 12-month basis — a cap-weighted figure we compute ourselves, not an index. The latest 6-month T-bill cut-off was 1.59%. That is a gap of roughly 4.15 percentage points.

That gap is not free money. It is the price of risk. The T-bill is a Singapore Government obligation that repays a known amount on a known date. A REIT is a listed company whose price moves every day and whose payout can be cut. The spread is what the market charges for the difference — and, as this page explains, a wider gap does not mean REITs have become a better deal.

What the spread is

The spread is one number minus another:

Component	Current	What it is
S-REIT aggregate yield	5.74%	Cap-weighted trailing-12m distributions ÷ unit price, computed from issuer results
6-month T-bill cut-off	1.59%	The yield every successful bidder received at the latest auction
Spread vs T-bill	4.15 pp	The first minus the second
10-year SGS benchmark	2.28%	MAS’s benchmark yield at the long end
Spread vs SGS 10y	3.46 pp	The REIT yield minus the 10-year

Two housekeeping notes before anything is read into it.

We compute the REIT figure ourselves. It is not an SGX index and not a live market feed — every input comes from each REIT’s own investor-relations publications, combined with plain arithmetic. REITs under review after a material corporate event are excluded rather than carried at a misleading figure. The full method is on the methodology page.

Always read the gap in percentage points, not percent. 4.15 percentage points is the difference between the two yields. It is not “4.15% more” in any relative sense, and the two are easy to confuse.

The two numbers are not the same kind of number

This is the one most yield comparisons skip.

The T-bill cut-off is forward-looking and locked. Bid successfully at 1.59% and that is what you get, on a fixed date, provided you hold to maturity. It is a contractual return from the Singapore Government.

The REIT yield is backward-looking and floating. It is the distributions that were already paid over the past twelve months, divided by a unit price snapshot. Nothing about it is promised. Next year’s distributions may be higher, lower, or absent. The price in the denominator changes daily.

So the spread compares a known future against an unrepeatable past. That does not make it meaningless — it is a reasonable gauge of what the market is paying for property risk — but it is not two versions of the same measurement. Treating it as one is the single easiest way to be misled by it.

Why a gap exists at all

Different instruments, different risk. Walking from safest to least:

• SSB — redeemable any month at face value plus accrued interest. Currently 1.52% in year 1 (GX26090V).
• T-bills and SGS bonds — Singapore Government obligations, repaid in full at maturity.
• S-REITs — listed securities with no capital guarantee and no promised payout.

The government legs sit at the safe end because the issuer is the Singapore Government, which carries a AAA sovereign rating. The REIT leg does not. Investors generally demand more yield to hold the riskier asset, and the spread is roughly what “more” currently costs.

What you give up to earn it

Distributions are not guaranteed. MoneySense — Singapore’s national financial education programme — puts it plainly: “Distributions are not guaranteed and are subject to fluctuations in the REIT’s income.” Source A T-bill’s return is contractual. A REIT’s payout is a decision made each period against whatever cash the properties actually produced.

The price moves, and capital is not protected. REIT units trade on the exchange and their prices are “subject to demand and supply conditions” Source. There is no mechanism that returns your capital at a set date.

Yield is not total return. The yield figure counts distributions only. What you actually earn is distributions plus or minus the change in the unit price. A 5% yield alongside a 10% price fall is a loss, and the yield number alone will never show it.

Borrowing costs feed straight through. REITs are financed with debt, so they are sensitive to interest rates in a way government paper is not. Again via MoneySense: “If the underlying properties are financed by debts, there is a refinancing risk when cost of debt varies. A higher cost of debt may also reduce the income distributions to unit holders.” Source Higher rates also mean bonds compete harder for the same income-seeking buyers. All else equal, REIT prices tend to fall as rates rise — though “all else” frequently isn’t equal, and rate moves driven by a strengthening economy have coincided with REIT gains before.

A very high yield can be a warning, not a bargain. Yield rises when price falls. If the market expects a payout cut or sees refinancing trouble, the price drops first and the trailing yield rises — the number looks better precisely as the situation gets worse. This is a “yield trap.” One objective check is the interest coverage ratio. MAS applies a minimum ICR of 1.5× to all REITs alongside a single aggregate leverage limit of 50%, and where a REIT’s ICR falls below 1.8× the manager should have plans in place to improve it and must disclose them. Source We flag that 1.8× level on each REIT’s page and in the screener, where the issuer reports it.

Distributions can include a return of your own capital. Trailing payouts may contain components beyond operating income, which flatters the yield. The methodology page sets out what we include and exclude.

One more, in the other direction: the government legs are only “capital guaranteed” at maturity. Sell a T-bill or an SGS bond early and you take the market price — MoneySense again: “You may lose a part of your invested amount if you sell your bonds before it matures.” Source SSB is the exception that redeems at face value in any month.

Reading a change in the spread

This is the most important thing on the page, and it is pure arithmetic.

The spread can widen for opposite reasons. It is REIT yield minus government yield, so it goes up when either:

• REIT yields rise — usually because unit prices fell, which is not good news for anyone already holding; or
• Government yields fall — the T-bill repriced lower at auction, and the REIT side did nothing at all.

A wider gap therefore tells you nothing on its own about whether REITs have “got better”. It could mean the market marked property down. It could mean short rates fell. It is one number produced by two moving parts, and reading it without asking which part moved is how people misread it.

Our two legs move at different speeds. T-bill and SGS yields refresh on a regular schedule — a fresh auction every fortnight, a daily benchmark. REIT prices in our data are dated snapshots, because we compute yields from issuer-published figures rather than licensing a live feed. So a short-term move in the spread is often entirely the government side. The dates are shown on the spread tracker and in the methodology; check them before reading anything into a small move.

We only started logging this recently. The spread is logged daily, with the series beginning in mid-July 2026. That history is not yet long enough to say whether today’s gap is wide or narrow by any standard, and this page makes no such claim. A history view will follow as the record accumulates.

How the four compare

Not by yield — by the things that differ:

	SSB	T-bill	SGS bond	S-REIT
Capital repaid in full	Any month, at face value	At maturity	At maturity	No mechanism
If sold/exited early	Face value + accrued interest	Market price	Market price	Market price
Income	Fixed step-up schedule, known upfront	Fixed, known at auction	Fixed coupon	Variable, not guaranteed
Price before exit	Does not move	Moves with rates	Moves with rates	Moves daily
Issuer	Singapore Government	Singapore Government	Singapore Government	Listed company
Minimum	S$500	S$1,000	S$1,000	One board lot

Tax is different too, and the difference is structural rather than cosmetic: SGS, T-bill and SSB interest sits under the QDS scheme, while S-REIT distributions follow a component-based tax-transparency regime with its own conditions and exceptions. They are not the same rule and should not be reasoned about as though they were — see IRAS for REIT distributions and MAS for SGS.

Where these numbers come from

The government figures come from MAS, ingested automatically and refreshed through the day. The REIT figures are curated by hand from each issuer’s own investor-relations publications and recomputed at every build — never from a licensed market feed.

• S-REIT yield spread tracker — the live figure and both spreads
• How we compute it — the full method, inputs, and exclusions
• T-bill tracker · SGS tracker · SSB tracker

Every figure on this page is checkable against those sources. That is the point of it: the spread is arithmetic you can redo yourself, not a verdict we are asking you to accept.