The
Business Times - February 20, 2014
ACTIVITY in the Good Class Bungalow market is starting to pick
up with a few deals done recently.
Along Margoliouth Road off
Stevens Road, a two-storey, old bungalow has changed hands for
$30.8 million. This works out to $1,696 per square foot on its land
area of 18,161 sq ft.
Located at a cul de sac, the
freehold property has a swimming pool, five bedrooms and a maid's
room. It is likely to be redeveloped.
The property is being sold by a
retiree couple. The buyer is understood to be Imelda Tanoto. The
Singapore citizen owns an adjoining bungalow while her parents are
said to own another bungalow nearby.
Ms Tanoto is the eldest daughter
of Singapore-based Indonesian tycoon Sukanto Tanoto of the Royal
Golden Eagle International group, a holding company with businesses
in a range of industries including paper, palm oil, construction
and energy. It owns Singapore-headquartered Asia Pacific Resources
International Limited, one of the world's biggest producers of
fibre, pulp and fine paper.
Over at Bin Tong Park,
philanthropist Saw Swee Hock is said to have sold a two-storey
bungalow for $31.5 million or $1,551 psf on land area of 20,315 sq
ft. The buyer is believed to be Singaporean tycoon Goh Cheng Liang
of Nippon Paint fame.
The property is said to be one
of three adjacent bungalows held by Professor Saw as investment
properties.
The demographer and
statistician's philanthropic acts include a $30-million donation in
2011 to the National University of Singapore for establishing the
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.
The market is also abuzz with
talk of a deal in the early stages for a two-storey bungalow in the
Cluny area. Its pricing of about $30 million reflects slightly
under $2,000 psf on land area. Standing on the site is a five to
six-year old bungalow. Like the Margoliouth and Bin Tong Park
properties, the Cluny bungalow is freehold.
Including this property, there
would be at least six transactions in GCB Areas since the start of
the year, totalling about $170 million. That is a quarter of the
$687.8 million of deals in GCB Areas sealed last year, according to
data from CBRE, which also showed 29 transactions for
2013.
Last year's showing was a sharp
slowdown from the 54 transactions totalling $1.17 billion in 2012 -
blamed on the January 2013 property cooling measures which raised
additional buyer's stamp duty on purchases of residential
properties, including those by Singaporean investors. Loan-to value
limits were also lowered and minimum cash downpayments increased
for those applying for their second or subsequent home
mortgages.
A bigger blow came in late June,
when the total debt servicing ratio (TDSR) framework was announced,
along with the shutting of a loophole that some property investors
had been using to avoid paying higher ABSD rates and to circumvent
the tighter LTV limits.
Based on CBRE's GCB transaction
data for 2013, only seven properties changed hands after the TDSR
rollout, compared with 22 before that.
"The GCB market has been quite
active lately, probably because of pent-up demand from a lack of
activity in the last few months of 2013," said William Wong,
managing director of RealStar Premier. His company brokered the
Margoliouth transaction but declined to comment on the buyer's
identity.
"I think the situation in the
GCB market has stabilised. Any price decline since last June has
been pretty marginal; buyers are not expecting a big price drop and
they're more prepared to come into the market right
now."
This is unlike the situation for
smaller bungalows in non-GCB Areas and semi-detached houses, where
the price drop has been bigger, around 5-8 per cent between June
and December last year. So potential buyers would be more inclined
to wait for a further price decline with most prepared to go into
the market only in the later part of this year. "GCBs have more
scarcity and rarity value," said Mr Wong.
Newsman Realty managing director
K H Tan too said that the level of activity in the GCB market
lately has surpassed his earlier expectation. "We're getting more
viewings compared with last month. Some buyers have been waiting to
enter the market for several months and lately some listings have
surfaced at fair-market price (resulting in more
transactions)."
Would you pay $30m to buy a property in SINGAPORE?
It's crazy... No wonder many real estate companies owners become
the richest in Singapore now...
Where would you spend $30m to buy a property?
