My understanding is that the median condo in Singapore costs $1M USD. Is this not true, and if it is, then how is $1M USD for a condo considered cheap?
You can get condos next to The Four Seasons in Beverly Hills for that price...
That's for private condos. 80% of people in Singapore live in government built public housing. The cost of the average public apartment is more like $300k which is not that bad for a city like Singapore.
As far as I can tell most comparisons for "the price of housing between Singapore and X" only look at private condos, probably because X doesn't have anything like Singapore's public flats to compare with for almost all values of X.
(When you "buy" a public apartment from the government, you get a 99 year lease, which you can resell. There are restrictions on buying public apartments, if I remember right you have to be a citizen or PR, and you have to be married or 35+. They cannot be bought by corporations.)
You can get condos next to The Four Seasons in Beverly Hills for that price...