Singapore - A couple of bungalows have been transacted lately - a Good Class Bungalow (GCB) along King Albert Park completed a few years ago and which is being sold by upmarket developer Simon Cheong, and an old bungalow along Wilkinson Road that has been bought by Soilbuild Group Holdings for redevelopment.
Both properties are freehold.
In King Albert Park in the Bukit Timah/Clementi Road vicinity, Mr Cheong has sold a two-storey bungalow that he built. The property, which comes with a swimming pool, is said to have been completed in late 2012. It is currently tenanted.
The property fetched S$25 million, which translates to S$1,493 per square foot (psf) based on the land area of 16,750 square feet. The bungalow's built-up area is said to be around 10,000 sq ft.
The buyer, who is expected to occupy the bungalow once the existing lease ends, is Fang Koh Look, founder of Absolute Kinetics Consultancy, an SME that provides workplace safety training and medical services in addition to distributing mobile pre-paid cards.
Now in his his late 40s and a Singapore citizen, Mr Fang arrived in Singapore in 1984 from his hometown of Sepang in Malaysia to study at Nanyang Technological University, from where he graduated as a civil engineer.
He went on to obtain a master of science in health, safety and environment technology from the National University of Singapore - before setting up Absolute Kinetics Consultancy in April 2001.
Mr Cheong, who is most famous for developing luxurious condos such as Seven Palms Sentosa Cove and The Marq on Paterson Hill under the SC Global Developments banner, also develops landed properties under SC Homes.
He recently completed developing a bungalow at Sunset Heights, which is said to have had an "open house" marketing campaign for the past couple of weekends. Its land area is around 8,600 sq ft and the built-up area, 9,200 sq ft. The price tag is understood to be about S$22 million.
Mr Cheong also owns a few GCBs on Peirce Road, all believed to be tenanted. He is believed to be open to selling them for the right price.
Over at Wilkinson Road, off Tanjong Katong Road, a fully owned unit of Soilbuild recently paid S$19.28 million for an old, two-storey bungalow. The price works out to S$1,203 psf based on the freehold land area of 16,031 sq ft.
The bungalow could be easily 40-50 years old, said Lim Chap Huat, executive chairman of Soilbuild, when contacted by The Business Times. "We are buying it from a family."
The site is zoned for two-storey bungalow use. Mr Lim said the group plans to redevelop the site into two brand-new bungalows. Work should start around the middle of this year and the new bungalows should be completed in about two years. Plans are currently in design phase.
One of the bungalows will be larger, with a land area of about 11,000 sq ft and a built-up area of about 6,000 to 8,000 sq ft. It will come with a swimming pool.
The smaller bungalow will sit on approximately 5,000 sq ft of land; its built-up area will also be 5,000 sq ft. Each bungalow will span two storeys and an attic, and have four bedrooms.
The construction cost for the two properties would be close to S$6 million. This will be the group's first landed housing project in more than two decades.
"In the early 1990s, we developed about 40 landed homes in various locations in the Sixth Avenue vicinity. Even before that, in the early 1980s, we built 18 landed houses at Coronation Road," Mr Lim said.
This article was first published on January 19, 2016.
Tuesday, Jan 19, 2016
The Business Times