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THREE Bills with a fiscal flavour were introduced in Parliament yesterday.

The Property Tax (Surcharge Abolition) Bill will annul the property tax surcharge introduced in 1974 to discourage foreigners from owning landed properties.

The Government has said the surcharge is obsolete because most of these landed properties have been sold and the Residential Property Act now regulates foreign property ownership.

The second Bill introduced was the Trade Marks (Amendment) Bill, which alters the Trade Marks Act, including allowing a person to make a single application to register a series of trade marks.

Finally, the Income Tax (Amendment) Bill will bring in the income tax changes announced in this year’s Budget.

Also, second-hand goods dealers caught with stolen property can expect a tougher time. If the Bill passes into law, those found guilty will face a maximum fine of $20,000 and up to 12 months in jail. Currently, the jail term is six months and fines ranging from $100 to $1,000.

The new Bill also empowers police officers to enter a shop at any time without a warrant if they have reason to suspect it is dealing in second-hand goods without a licence. The current Act states that police may enter only during business hours.

A proposed amendment to the Education Endowment Scheme Act will allow the Government to top up the Endowment Fund from time to time. The fund benefits students through cash grants like the Edusave Pupils Fund.

Among other Bills tabled in Parliament yesterday were the Children Development Co-Savings (Amendment) Bill and the Statutes (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill.

Source: Straits Times - 9 Nov 2006

THE Dempsey Road area will remain a rustic bohemian hangout for the next nine years.

Known as Tanglin Village, the former Central Manpower Base currently houses popular hangouts such as alfresco bar Hacienda and trendy celebrity haunt PS Cafe.

On Tuesday, the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) called for ideas to liven up the area’s charm when it launched two new tenders for sites there.

In doing so, it also announced that it has plans for the area up to 2015.

This put paid to earlier speculation - based on the short, three-year leases for most of the existing businesses there - that plans for the area would change quickly, especially as it sits on some of Singapore’s most prime land.

Given the red-hot market for prime residential properties, many had expected that the area would be turned over to private developers to build high-end housing.

But on Tuesday, Senior Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs Ho Peng Kee announced that the SLA had plans for the area for the medium term, and announced the tenders for new niche businesses there.

The two tenders will be called by the year-end. The sites will be earmarked for lifestyle, education or arts purposes.

For the first site, the SLA welcomes ideas to revitalise six blocks of colonial buildings near the Dempsey Road entrance.

The buildings, formerly housing the Civil Service Club, sit on more than 13,000 sqm of land, and SLA is open to having a wide variety of businesses there - including a fencing school and even a pet cafe.

The second tender is for a single colonial building on an 854 sqm site next to Minden Road. This could be used for a dance studio or a childcare centre.

SLA welcomes other ideas too, said Associate Professor Ho.

‘The approach is to be as flexible as we can, but of course keeping to the overall game plan to keep this place rustic,’ he said.

Existing establishments like the St James Kindergarten, with 650 children, and the Overseas Family School, which makes use of a field there for outdoor activities, are expected to liven up the place during the day.

Together with the popular restaurants there, it is hoped that the mix of establishments will create a bustle all day long.

In the last three years, seven tenders have been conducted for various parcels of land on the 40ha site, attracting more than 40 bidders.

SLA is confident of even more bids for the two new sites, said its director for land business and management, Mr Clarence Ti.

Over the past year, SLA has spent about $500,000 on improvements such as landscaped plazas with visitor information signboards.

About half of the nearly 50 buildings there are in use. SLA expects the area to be fully occupied in the next two to three years. Each tenant has a lease of up to nine years.

Tenants are charged a monthly rent instead of paying everything upfront. This helps their cash flow, said Mr Ti. Businesses now pay between $8,500 and $39,999 a month in rent.

Mr Richard Goh, director of Oosh, a new restaurant there, said the location is attractive but the lease is rather short. ‘We’ll just have to take our chances,’ said Mr Goh, who expects to break even in three years.

For more information on Tanglin Village, go to its new website at www.tanglinvillage.com.sg

Source : Straits Times - 9 Nov 2006

112,100 sq ft site one of the biggest collective sale sites in Ardmore Park

TAKING advantage of strong sentiment in the high-end residential sector, Knight Frank is racing to put Anderson 18 on the market this month.

The reserve price for the 112,100 sq ft freehold collective sale site has been set at $411.2 million. This reflects a unit land cost of about $1,450 psf of potential gross floor area, including an estimated development charge (DC) of $43.9 million. The unit land price is almost 6 per cent higher than the $1,369 psf per plot ratio including DC that Wing Tai paid last month for Ardmore Point, just behind Anderson 18.

Anderson 18 is one of the biggest collective sale sites to come on the market in the Ardmore Park area for many years, says Knight Frank executive director Foo Suan Peng. The two preceding collective sale sites in the area - Ardmore Point and Pin Tjoe Court - each had about 60,000 sq ft of land area. If the reserve price of $411.2 million is achieved, Anderson 18 will be the biggest collective transaction in absolute dollar terms so far, according to Mr Foo.

Anderson 18 is next to Raffles Girls’ Secondary School and close to Shangri-La Hotel. It can be redeveloped into a new condo of about 175 units averaging 1,800 sq ft. The site is zoned for residential use with a 2.8 plot ratio and 36-storey height limit.

Anderson 18, completed about 15 years ago, was developed by Bonvests Holdings, whose chairman Henry Ngo and his associates are said to own five of the 71 units in the existing development. BT understands that Mr Ngo and his friends are said to be considering signing the collective sale agreement.

Knight Frank expects to obtain signatures from the owners of six other units this month. This, along with signatures it has already obtained, should give it the requisite consent from owners controlling at least 80 per cent of share values to proceed with launching the tender for Anderson 18.

Source : Business Times - 9 Nov 2006

Foreign buyers now account for 22 per cent of all residential property transactions here - an increase of 24 per cent from a year ago.

According to a report by Savills Singapore, 22 per cent or 3,143 of the 14,286 homes sold in the first nine months of the year were bought by foreigners. And the full-year figure is likely to be a record high, says Savills’ director of marketing and business development, Ku Swee Yong.

The report does not break down foreign buyers into nationalities - but Mr Ku says Indonesians and Malaysians account for most of the transactions. Malaysians favour mid-market homes, while Indonesians are inclined to target the top end.

Mr Ku estimates that 25-40 per cent of new luxury homes launched in the past few months were bought by foreigners, helping to lift capital values in the segment by 10 per cent in Q3.

He is so bullish about the ‘luxury’ market that he believes prices will exceed $4,000 psf by 2010. So far, the highest price paid is $3,000 psf for a small unit at St Regis Residences.

Mr Ku reckons Singapore will continue to attract high net worth individuals from overseas, adding: ‘I also believe more high net worth foreign investors’ money will be managed here.’ He says high-end prices will also rise because the supply of large apartments in the prime districts is diminishing.

Savills estimates that some 5,500 apartments will be removed from the market between 2006 and 2008 through collective sales. A significant number of these will be old but upmarket developments like Nassim Park.

Mr Ku says there is already a shortage of large apartments in the prime districts and points out that even in new developments like The Cosmopolitan, Newton Suites and Arc at Draycott, ‘most of the units are less than 2,000 sq ft’.

Interestingly, he notes that about 50 per cent of those who benefit most from collective sales, such as that of Nassim Park, are likely to move out of the posh neighbourhood.

Source : Business Times - 8 Nov 2006

THE fourth hotel development site this year will soon be put up for sale by tender after an unnamed developer committed to bid at least $92 million for it.

That is way above market expectations of about $40 million to $55 million earlier this year and is the latest sign of an improving hotel market.

The 0.58ha Sinaran Drive plot is behind Novena Square, opposite Tan Tock Seng Hospital.

Sited next to Square 2, a commercial property with 145 medical suites, the new hotel site has a plot ratio of 4.2 which allows it to generate a maximum gross floor area of about 24,313 sq m.

A four-star hotel with up to 500 rooms could be built on the 99-year leasehold site, say property consultants.

The plot was the first hotel site to be made available on the Government’s reserve list this year.

Sites on this list are put up for tender only if a developer shows firm interest by committing a bid at a level deemed acceptable by the Government.

While other hotel sites put on the list later have attracted satisfactory triggering bids and were put up for sale, the Sinaran Drive site has stayed on the list since April.

But the site now appears hot, considering that consultants had expected it to fetch bids of only about $40 million to $55 million back in April.

The market has shifted markedly since then. For instance, in late August, Hong Kong’s Park Hotel Group paid $55.5 million or a whopping $466 per sq ft (psf) of potential gross floor area for a hotel site at the corner of Clemenceau Avenue and Unity Street.

The price was more than double the $25 million trigger bid made for the site just two months earlier in June. This worked out to just $210 psf of potential gross floor area.

‘Sentiment in the hotel market has improved significantly in the past few months,’ said Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels executive vice-president Chee Hok Yean.

The tenders for two other hotel sites - at Mohamed Sultan Road/Nanson Road and Bencoolen Street - will close on Nov 21 and Nov 30 respectively.

Late last month, another hotel site in Balestier Road was also released but no triggering bid has been made yet.

On the Sinaran Drive site, Mr Nicholas Mak of property consultancy Knight Frank said: ‘With a trigger bid of about $352 psf, the interested party is quite aggressive and expects a fairly strong rise in hotel rates.

‘As the site is very near the MRT station and hospitals, a hotel on that site could cater to medical, business and budget-conscious tourists,’ said Mr Mak, the firm’s director of research and consultancy.

Considering that four-star hotel room rates are now around $160 a night, the Sinaran Drive site’s hotel, being new and set to be ready only in two to three years’ time, should be able to charge more, said Ms Chee.

The Urban Redevelopment Authority will launch the tender for the site in about two weeks’ time.

Source : Straits Times - 7 Nov 2006