CU2 Paper 1

CU2: Dealings with Interests in Land

Last reviewed 12 October 2026

Competency Unit 2 is the largest single block in the RES examination. Thirteen units cover every way an interest in Singapore land can be created, transferred, shared, secured or lost — contract, agency, leases, conveyancing, mortgages, gifts, trusts, succession, co-ownership and planning control.

Key points

CU2’s official syllabus title is Dealings with Interests in Land; it is examined in Paper 1 with CU1.
Thirteen units make it the largest single block in the examination, so it deserves the most revision time in Paper 1.
Paper 1 is 2.5 hours and 100 marks — 60 one-mark questions plus 20 two-mark case-study questions — with a pass mark of 60, subject to review by CEA (as at October 2026).
CU2 supplies most of Paper 1’s case-study material, because its transactions have a sequence and several parties.
Units 2.1 and 2.2 are prerequisites for the rest: contract supplies the machinery, agency supplies the salesperson’s own position.
Units 2.3 and 2.11 are the heaviest scorers and both reward drilling over reading.
Most questions test the boundary between two similar things, so revise in pairs rather than in definitions.
Unit 2.12’s foreign ownership and HDB eligibility rules reappear in Units 3.7 and 4.4 in Paper 2.

What Competency Unit 2 covers

The syllabus titles this competency unit Dealings with Interests in Land. CU1 tells you what interests in land exist; CU2 tells you what can be done with them. It starts with the general law a salesperson works inside — contract, agency, landlord and tenant, negligence — then follows an interest through the dealings that move or burden it, and closes with who may hold land at all and what the planning system permits.

Thirteen units make it roughly 40 per cent of the syllabus by unit count. The difficulty is volume plus precision: the examiner tests the boundary between two similar things, and a half-learnt rule lands on the wrong side of it.

How CU2 is examined

CU2 is examined in Paper 1, which it shares with CU1. The paper is two and a half hours for 100 marks: 60 one-mark questions in Section A, and 20 two-mark questions on one or two case studies in Section B, with a pass mark of 60 subject to review by CEA (as at October 2026).

Because CU2’s dealings have a sequence and a cast of parties, it supplies a disproportionate share of Paper 1’s case-study material: a scenario in which a couple buy a flat, one of them dies and a bank is owed money can draw on co-ownership, succession, mortgage and registration at once. Section A questions are usually single-rule — a formality, a time limit, who bears a burden of proof.

The general law: Units 2.1 to 2.4

Unit 2.1, law of contract, asks precisely when a binding contract came into existence, what writing the law demands for land, and what happens when something goes wrong — offer and acceptance, certainty on parties, property and price, capacity, misrepresentation and remedies.

Unit 2.2, law of agency, is the salesperson’s own legal position. Almost every duty owed to a client flows from the agency relationship rather than the agreement, so the unit covers how agency is created, actual against apparent authority, ratification, fiduciary duties, commission and the effective cause rule.

Unit 2.3, landlord and tenant law, is the heaviest leasing unit in Paper 1: what makes an arrangement a lease rather than a licence, which formalities a lease of a given length needs, which covenants the law implies, and what a landlord must do before forfeiting.

Unit 2.4, negligence, asks when a salesperson is personally liable for getting something wrong. Because negligence is a tort it operates independently of any contract, so a careless statement about a remaining lease can be actionable by someone the salesperson never contracted with.

Moving and burdening land: Units 2.5 to 2.8

Unit 2.5, conveyance inter vivos, follows one transaction from the option to purchase through to registration of the transfer: the deed requirement, requisitions and searches, completion under the standard conditions of sale, and who may hold the buyer’s money.

Unit 2.6, mortgage, rests on one idea: a mortgage is security for a debt, not a sale. The borrower stays the owner and keeps the right to redeem, while the lender gets remedies available only on default — and the CPF charge decides how much cash a seller actually receives.

Unit 2.7, gift, is a transfer made without consideration, and the missing price is what the unit turns on: it changes the formalities, the basis on which stamp duty is computed, and how vulnerable the transfer is if the donor later becomes bankrupt.

Unit 2.8, trust, separates legal from beneficial ownership: the three ways a trust of land arises, what the Trustees Act requires of trustees selling land, and who a buyer must deal with and pay.

Death, timing and shared ownership: Units 2.9 to 2.11

Unit 2.9, succession, deals with what happens to property when its owner dies: whether there is a valid will, who inherits on intestacy, how a Muslim estate is distributed, and who holds authority to sell. For a salesperson the practical question is nearly always who can sign as seller.

Unit 2.10, future interests, is short and productive: almost every question turns on whether a future interest went back to the grantor, making it a reversion, or out to a third party, making it a remainder.

Unit 2.11, co-ownership, is among the most precisely examined units in Paper 1. Questions turn on the four unities, on how survivorship interacts with a will, on exactly what must happen before a joint tenancy is severed, and on the arithmetic of shares after a partial severance.

Capacity and planning: Units 2.12 and 2.13

Unit 2.12, restrictions on capacity to hold land, asks who may hold land in Singapore and on what terms. The Residential Property Act controls what a foreign person may buy and HDB’s conditions control who may own a flat; companies, societies, partnerships, trustees and minors supply the rest.

Unit 2.13, planning and development of land, is the public law of land use: what counts as development, who decides whether it may go ahead, and what the Master Plan does. Most questions reduce to recognising that a proposal needs written permission — including with no building works at all — or identifying which agency does what.

What to study first in CU2

Take Units 2.1 and 2.2 first, in that order. Contract supplies the machinery that 2.3, 2.5 and 2.7 all assume, and agency tells you where you personally stand in every transaction the rest of the paper describes.

After that, work 2.5, then 2.11, then 2.3: conveyance inter vivos gives you the shape of a whole transaction, and co-ownership and landlord and tenant are the heaviest scorers. Leave 2.4, 2.7 and 2.10 until later, revise 2.8 with 2.9, and note that 2.12 pairs with Units 3.7 and 4.4 in Paper 2.

One discipline serves the whole competency unit: keep a page of paired distinctions — lease and licence, joint tenancy and tenancy in common, reversion and remainder, misrepresentation and negligence — and test yourself on the pairs rather than the definitions. That is how the questions are built.

Terms to know

Inter vivos: Between living persons; a conveyance inter vivos is a transfer of land made during the transferor’s lifetime rather than on death.
Fiduciary duty: The duty of loyalty an agent owes a principal, including the duties to avoid conflicts and to account for any secret profit.
Survivorship: The rule by which a deceased joint tenant’s interest passes automatically to the surviving joint tenants, outside the will and the intestacy rules.
Development: Under the Planning Act, building or other operations on land and any material change in the use of land or a building — so a change of use can need permission with no works at all.

Frequently asked questions

Why is CU2 considered the hardest part of the RES exam?

It is the largest competency unit, with thirteen units, and it is examined precisely rather than broadly: questions turn on which formality applies, which party bears a burden, or which of two similar concepts is in play. The difficulty is volume plus precision rather than conceptual depth.

Which units in CU2 come up most often?

Judging by the explanations in the question bank, co-ownership, landlord and tenant law, contract and conveyancing recur the most, and co-ownership in particular is examined in detail. Gift and future interests are small units that nonetheless appear regularly, usually as a stamp duty computation and a reversion-or-remainder question respectively.

Do I need to memorise section numbers for CU2?

A handful carry their own weight because the examiner uses them as shorthand — the writing requirement for land contracts, the overriding interest of a tenant in occupation, the formality for a conveyance. Beyond those, learn the architecture of each statute and what it requires. A rule you can state correctly without its number scores; a number attached to the wrong rule does not.

Is CU2 examined in Paper 1 or Paper 2?

Paper 1, together with CU1. Paper 2 examines CU3 and CU4. The two papers have an identical structure and are graded separately, so a strong Paper 1 does not compensate for a weak Paper 2.

Official sources

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