Competency Unit 4
Property Transactions
Stamp duties, financing, the sale process, strata management, collective sale and the rules on foreign ownership.
Built for the RES examination syllabus that applies from 1 January 2027. CEA has published a revised syllabus for examinations from that date. Examinations held in 2026 and earlier use the RES Examination Syllabus 2017 instead. The remaining 2026 papers are sat on 31 October 2026 and 1 November 2026; if that is your sitting, treat this as revision of the law rather than as a rehearsal of your blueprint, because the two syllabuses examine the same statutes under a different structure.
What changed between the two syllabuses · CEA's own statement of which syllabus applies
What CEA expects of you here
Most of this unit — 53 of 81 outcomes — is examined at Level 3, applying. It carries no Level 1 outcomes at all, so nothing here is tested by straight recall.
| Cognitive level | Outcomes | Share of the unit |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1 — Remembering | 0 | 0% |
| Level 2 — Understanding | 28 | 34% |
| Level 3 — Applying | 53 | 65% |
Every figure a client asks about lives here, and it is the unit where a stale number does the most damage. Freehold keys the rule rather than the administratively-set number wherever the two differ - a candidate who knows a contract made inside the minimum occupation period is void under section 55 is better prepared than one who memorised a duration the Board can change.
Topics in this unit
8 syllabus topics, 15.0 recommended teaching hours, 81 published learning outcomes, and 218 Freehold questions of which 28 are Section B.
| Topic | Recommended hours | Learning outcomes | Freehold questions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4.1 | 2.0 | 2 | 11 |
| 4.2 | 2.0 | 15 | 18 |
| 4.3 | 1.0 | 5 | 9 |
| 4.4 | 3.0 | 14 | 31 |
| 4.5 | 1.5 | 9 | 9 |
| 4.6 | 2.0 | 7 | 28 |
| 4.7 | 1.5 | 12 | 68 |
| 4.8 | 2.0 | 17 | 44 |
Hours and learning outcomes are CEA's, from the examination syllabus. Question counts are Freehold's own bank. You can drill any single topic in this unit from the practice page.
Study the rules behind Unit 4
Primary-source guides for the topics this unit is examined on, taught from the same Acts and regulator pages used to review these questions.
Stamp duties
BSD, ABSD and SSD are separate duties with different triggers, rates and timing. Learn which duty the facts engage before doing arithmetic.HDB transactions
Treat eligibility, occupation, resale and agency duties as separate questions. A case study often supplies one fact for each.Property financing
Separate the security, the loan terms and the buyer's affordability rules. Do not turn an administrative limit into a timeless number.Unit 4 questions
How many questions does Unit 4 carry in the examination?
CEA publishes no per-unit question count. What it does publish is a recommended 15.0 hours of teaching for this unit, which is 20.27% of the course. Freehold uses that as a documented proxy for how many questions a practice paper draws from each unit, and labels it as a proxy rather than as a published weight, because it is one.
Which paper is Unit 4 in?
Paper 2. The two papers are sat separately and a pass in one carries forward on its own, so you can concentrate on the paper you have not yet cleared.
What is a cognitive level?
CEA states, against every learning outcome, the depth of knowledge expected: Level 1 remembering, Level 2 understanding, Level 3 applying. It is the syllabus's own statement of whether a topic is examined by recall or by working through a client's situation, and it is a better guide to how to study than any difficulty label a practice provider assigns.
Free practice, no account needed
Every RES question cites the Act, regulation or CEA page it comes from, with the section and the date we checked it. No ads, no subscriptions.
RES practice runs here in your browser today. Freehold RES is also available on the App Store with the same bank, the same citations and offline practice.
