News At A Glance

Co-working space by IWG opened at Plus Building in Raffles Place Co-working space provider IWG has opened a new centre in CapitaLand’s Plus Building at 20 Cecil Street in Raffles Place.  Operating under the Regus brand, the 22,000 sq ft co-working space spreads over two floors in the 28-storey building. This is the 16th centre under the brand in Singapore. The Great Room opened its 5 th centre at Afro-Asia Building The Great Room opened a 37,000 sq ft space in the newly completed Afro-Asia Building located at the junction of Robinson Road and McCallum Street. With 600 workspaces occup...

Sixth Avenue Centre seeks S$85mil in en bloc tender Located at 805 Bukit Timah Road, Sixth Avenue Centre, was launched for collective sale via tender with a reserve price of S$85 mil. The mixed-use development sits on a trapezoidal land plot of 15,009 sq ft, which is zoned for commercial and residential use. Based on a plot ratio of 3.0, it has a maximum allowable gross floor area (GFA) of 45,028 sq ft. Up to 40% of the total GFA is allowed for commercial use with the remaining 60% for residential purposes. The reserve price translates to a land rate of S$1,861 per square foot per plot rati...

Singapore’s population shrank 4.1% between June 2020 and June 2021 to 5.45 million, largely due to a decline in non-residents during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the annual Population in Brief 2021. The report was published by the National Population and Talent Division (NPTD). This is the first time there has been a year-on-year decrease in both the citizen and resident populations since these data were first collected in 1970. It is also the largest decline in percentage terms and the third time the population has shrunk since 1950, according to data from the Department of Statis...

Source: OneMap, List SIR The tender for a state land parcel at Marina View which closed on 21 September drew just one sole bid. The sole bid of S$1.508b or $1,379 psf/plot ratio was submitted by a unit of IOI Properties Group, and was only S$101 more than the price which the group successfully applied for the site to be released for sale back in June 2021. Industry players felt that the lack of participation by other developers was mainly because developers were wary of the large minimum requirement for a hotel on this site. The 0.78-hectare (about 84,000 sq ft) site can generate...

Kheng Leong Group, the private real estate arm of the family of veteran banker and UOB chairman emeritus Wee Cho Yaw, has bought over 21 Anderson from Hong Kong-listed Far East Consortium International Limited (FEC) for S$213 million. The price works out to S$2,490 psf based on the strata area of 85,552 sq ft for the 10-storey freehold condominium block of 34 units. The development, on land area of slightly over 49,000 sq ft, was completed in the late-1990s and has been refurbished along the way. Kheng Leong is likely to hold the asset for rental income in the short to mid-term, keeping i...

In its second attempt at collective sale, Flynn Park successfully found a buyer in the joint venture between Hoi Hup Realty and Sunway Developments. Based on the winning bid of $371 mil, the land rate works out to be $1,355 psf/plot ratio for the 208,443 sq ft site with a plot ratio of 1.4. The price was marginally higher than the reserve price of $365 mil, and also higher than the $363.5 mil set for the first attempt in June 2018. Built on elevated ground, the site can be redeveloped into a new condominium with around 271 units. It is about 350m from the Pasir Panjang MRT station and is...

The recent winding up of Greatearth Corporation and Greatearth Construction and their affiliated companies showed the severity of the headwinds that have been plaguing the construction sector. Since the pandemic started, construction companies have seen work disrupted by the circuit breaker as well as stringent safe-distancing measures at worksites. The biggest challenge is probably the tighter border controls which have restricted the flow of foreign workers and resulted in a manpower shortage. Companies have had to hike salaries to retain their existing workers. Workers have to be teste...

The government has increased the development charge (DC) rates for landed by 6.3 per cent and 10.9 per cent for non-landed residential use groups on the average. This is the second consecutive increase for both groups, after a milder 1.5 per cent rise for landed and 0.3 per cent rise for non-landed residential use starting March 1. The steeper revision was likely prompted by the brisk private home sales with new price points in certain locations, as well as bullish top bids in recent government land sales (GLS). The higher residential DC rates will add to the development costs of new cond...

From the COVID-19 outbreak in migrant worker dormitories last year to disruptions in the supply chain for construction materials and restrictions on the entry of foreign labour, the ongoing pandemic has impacted the supply of both public and private housing. With demand remaining strong and outstripping supply, it is unsurprising that home prices have been hiking up throughout the pandemic period. Year-on-year, flash estimates by HDB showed that resale flat prices have risen by 10.8% as at Q2 2021 while URA ‘s data showed that private home prices climbed by 7.3% over the same period. ...

The Ministry of National Development (MND) announced on 10 June 2021 that under its H2 2021 Government land Sales (GLS) Programme, it will offer land that can potentially yield about 2,000 private homes (including executive condominium or EC units) on the Confirmed List. This is an increase of almost 25% per cent from 1,605 units for the H1 2021 GLS Programme. MND said it decided to increase the supply moderately because even though the unsold inventory of private housing units has declined amidst strong demand, the economy is still recovering from the recession in 2020.  There are c...