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MCL, Ho Bee team up to buy Holland Hill Mansions

New condo on site set to sell for average of at least $1,300 psf

MCL LAND is partnering Ho Bee Investments for its $292 million acquisition of Holland Hill Mansions.

This is not the first tie-up between the two developers. Their maiden joint-venture was in 2000, when they developed the 716-unit Rio Vista condo in Hougang.

‘And it won’t be the last,’ MCL chief executive officer Koh Teck Chuan said yesterday.

On the freehold Holland Hill Mansions site, the two partners plan to develop about 180 to 200 biggish apartments with balconies. They plan to launch the District 10 condo within a year.

The breakeven cost is expected to be about $1,050 per square foot and the expected average selling price will be at least $1,300 psf, according to Ho Bee executive director Ong Chong Hua.

The project will comprise units of three bedrooms (these will be about 2,000 sq ft), four bedrooms (about 2,300 to 2,500 sq ft) and penthouses

The site is zoned for residential use with 1.6 plot ratio (ratio of potential maximum gross floor area to land area) and has a 12-storey height limit.

BT reported yesterday that the $292 million price for the 243,525 sq ft freehold site reflects a unit land price of about $750 psf per plot ratio.

No development charge is payable, even if MCL and Ho Bee use an additional 10 per cent gross floor area for balcony space.
The $750 psf ppr for Holland Hill Mansions is 36 per cent higher than the $550 psf ppr unit land price MCL paid for the nearby Waterfall Gardens and a couple of smaller adjoining sites at Farrer Road in February.

Both deals were brokered by DTZ Debenham Tie Leung.

The firm’s director Tang Wei Leng says owners of the existing 116 apartments at Holland Hill Mansions will receive sums ranging from $1.77 million to $3.89 million per unit. The sole penthouse owner will walk away with $6.25 million and the owner of the only shop in the development will pocket $1.35 million.

Ms Tang estimates these sums are easily double the values of the respective units had they been sold individually.

Source: Business Times - 30 November 2006

Newly revamped Sentosa is done with its hunt for investors, save for a 5ha hotel site on one of its three beaches.

The site, at Tanjong Beach, is reserved for a beach resort-style hotel, but proposals will be sought only next year, Sentosa Leisure Group’s property director Gurjit Singh said yesterday.

He said the group is waiting for the winner of the integrated resort to be crowned. ‘Then we will be able to understand how to position the site,’ he told reporters at the Leisure Invest Asia conference.

Sentosa had a bumper year last year, setting records with 5.2 million visitors and $520 million in earnings.

It also drew $3.1 billion in net investments, a 68 per cent jump over the previous year.

Source : Straits Times - 30 Nov 2006

The latest plot to be sold at Sentosa Cove has achieved yet another record price.

Boutique developer Ho Bee offered $181.2 million for the 119,501 sq ft Waterfront Collection when the tender for the 99-year leasehold site closed yesterday.

This amounts to $918.92 per sq ft per plot ratio (psf ppr), beating the last benchmark price for a condominium development plot. That was set in September by Indonesia’s Lippo Group, which tendered $817.66 psf ppr for the Marina Collection.

The tender for the Waterfront Collection attracted five ‘aggressive’ bids, said Sentosa Cove, although it would not reveal the other bidders or tender prices.

Property consultants were surprised by Ho Bee’s ‘highly bullish’ bid yesterday.

Mr Nicholas Mak, director of research and consultancy at Knight Frank, said he expects the break-even price to be ‘in the region of $1,300 psf ppr’.

‘They are counting on selling prices going up to maybe $1,700 psf, which is really reaching freehold condo prices in prime districts,’ he said.

Another market watcher who declined to be named, said Ho Bee may be taking a calculated risk with this site, which it can afford as ‘it was the first to enter the Sentosa Cove market and has probably already made big profits on its earlier projects’.

Source : Straits Times - 30 Nov 2006

Ho Bee’s bid price of $181.2m was the highest of five offers for the 119,508.4 sq ft site

A NEW record has been set for 99-year condominium land on Sentosa Cove, with Ho Bee Investments offering the top bid of $919 psf of potential gross floor area for a tender which closed yesterday.

In absolute price terms, its bid price was $181.2 million, and was the highest of five offers for the 119,508.4 sq ft site, which can be developed into a six-storey condo.

The plot has a 1.65 plot ratio (ratio of potential maximum gross floor area to land area).

The $919 per square foot per plot ratio (psf ppr) unit land price for the latest Sentosa Cove condo plot is 12 per cent higher than the $818 psf ppr that a Lippo-led consortium paid two months ago for the Marina Collection site in Sentosa Cove’s Northern Residential Precinct.

Lippo’s site, next to the One Degree 15 Marina Club, can be developed into a four-storey condo.

Ho Bee’s breakeven cost for a six-storey condo on the Waterfront Collection site could be about $1,250 psf, reckon market watchers. It is expected to be eyeing an average selling price of around $2,000 psf or even more by the time it is ready to launch the project, say, in next September.

Its 249-unit The Coast condo on Sentosa Cove released early last month is about 90 per cent sold, at an average price of about $1,600 psf.

Yesterday’s provisional tender result cements Ho Bee’s position as the leading developer in the upscale waterfront housing district, where it has been buying land since master developer Sentosa Cove Pte Ltd began selling land parcels in the location in late 2003.

Assuming it is awarded the latest Waterfront Collection site, Ho Bee would have spent about $724 million buying slightly more than one million sq ft of land on Sentosa Cove - which it is developing into over 600 homes. This is about a quarter of the total 2,446 homes planned for Sentosa Cove.

The Waterfront Collection site is the first of four condo plots in Sentosa Cove’s Southern Residential Precinct.

With fewer and fewer sites left in the location, the scarcity value is expected to continue driving up property prices on Sentosa Cove.

Ho Bee clinched its maiden condo plot (which it has developed into The Berth By The Cove, and received Temporary Occupation Permit recently) in late 2003 for $351 psf ppr. The group has achieved an average selling price of about $900 psf for the 200-unit condo, which is fully sold.

Ho Bee’s other projects in the location include eight terrace houses (The Berthside) which are all sold, and two man-made islands with luxury villas.

To date, Ho Bee has sold 20 of the 21 bungalows on Coral Island at prices between $5.3 million and $14 million each.

On average, the price works out to about $800 psf of land area. Ho Bee is getting ready to release 29 bungalows on Paradise Island early next year.

Bidders at yesterday’s tender for the Waterfront Collection site - besides Ho Bee - are said to have included City Developments, CapitaLand and Frasers Centrepoint. The site will be awarded based solely on price.

While up to 117 homes can be built on the plot, Ho Bee is expected to build about 100 to 110 units as it opts for mostly large units - three and four-bedroom units and penthouses given current strong demand for bigger apartments.

Units on the third storey and upwards will be able to enjoy views of Tanjong Golf Course.

Ho Bee will have 21 berths in the development.

In fact, all of Ho Bee’s condo developments at Sentosa Cove will have berthing facilities.

Source : Business Times - 30 Nov 2006

It signs Spore’s second-largest office rental deal for space in Mapletree’s new development 

SINGAPORE’S second-biggest rental deal ever, Merrill Lynch is leasing 200,000 sq ft of space in a new HarbourFront office building.

News of the mega deal was announced by the United States investment bank’s head of global infrastructure solutions, Ms Diane Schueneman, at a ground-breaking ceremony yesterday for the new six-storey building.

Details of the amount of rent to be paid by Merrill were not disclosed.

It is the second-largest office deal here after Deutsche Bank’s tenancy at One Raffles Quay, said Mr Moray Armstrong of CB Richard Ellis, which helped Merrill secure the space.

Deutsche took up about 280,000 sq ft of space at One Raffles Quay, he said. The latest deal comes as rental levels for quality office space are rising amid tightening supply.

The new Mapletree Investments office building in HarbourFront, to be completed around the third quarter of 2008, will house Merrill’s global support centre for its private banking and global markets businesses.

It aims to have 900 staff there by then. In the meantime, it has set up a 55,000 sq ft support centre at HarbourFront Centre next door.

Mapletree said the new building, tentatively called Mapletree Lighthouse, could be injected into a $2.5 billion diversified real estate investment trust (Reit) that it is planning to push out by the end of next year.

The nearby mega VivoCity will be the key asset for the Reit. The other assets will include ‘a few office buildings here and in the Alexandra area’, said Mapletree chief operating officer Tan Boon Leong.

He said Mapletree is expecting office rents to rise by 20 per cent to 30 per cent next year.

To cash in on the improving office market, Mapletree will be developing a second office building in the HarbourFront precinct.

This will be built on the site of the existing SPI Building, which will be torn down as soon as approvals are in. Mapletree had once wanted to convert this waterfront building into a tourist-class hotel, and later an office-cum-residential development.

But the latest plan is to develop it into an office block, which will have a gross floor area of about 350,000 sq ft and a height of four storeys.

Mapletree chief executive officer Hiew Yoon Khong said the new 2.4ha waterfront office building will be partly build on reclaimed land.

The HarbourFront precinct, which includes St James Power Station, will boast 2.35 million sq ft of office space in HarbourFront Tower One, HarbourFront Tower Two, Keppel Bay Tower, HarbourFront Centre and SPI Building.

Mapletree will also have space to build about 300 residential units on a strip of land next to Keppel Bay Tower, which it co-owns with Keppel Land.

Source : Straits Times - 29 Nov 2006