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A Freehold bungalow at 59 Goodman Road put up for sale by UCO Bank changed hands for $8.5 million in an auction last week.

Bungalow in Katong

In all, eight parties ‘bid vigorously from an opening price of $6.4 million’, according to Knight Frank auctioneer Mary Sai.

After 21 incremental bids of $100,000 each, a Singapore couple walked away with the property in the Katong area last Thursday.

The winning bid works out to $626 per square foot (psf) based on the property’s land area of 13,571 square feet - matching the rates achieved in the location during the last peak of 1995-1996, according to Ms Sai. She also observed that the price fetched was in line with current freehold bungalow prices being achieved in the Bukit Timah area.

UCO Bank had owned the 59 Goodman Road property since 1951. The single-storey freehold bungalow can be redeveloped into at least two new bungalows, according to Knight Frank.

The same auction also saw a freehold strata factory unit at Tong Lee Building in Paya Lebar sold for $445,000 or $149 psf of strata area.

The other 20 properties that also went under the hammer at the auction were withdrawn as their reserve prices were not reached. However, some offers were received for private negotiations such as for an HDB shophouse in Ang Mo Kio, and shop units at Sultan Plaza and North Bridge Road.

Source : Business Times - 30 Jan 2007

Record 600 properties go under the gavel this year as sellers use auctions to test market.

This year’s improved economy and property market prompted more home owners to sell their properties at auction - regarded as a hallmark of a strong property market.

Moreover, the value of total auction sales hit a seven-year high, although the total number of auctions, including mortgagee auctions, fell, consultants said.

However, in terms of home owner sales, a record 600 properties went to auction this year, up nearly 68 per cent from 358 properties last year, said consultancy Colliers International.

Of these, 43 properties were sold for $129.5 million in total - nearly double the $68.4 million in such sales last year.

Colliers executive director Grace Ng said these included uncompleted properties put up for sale by recent buyers at sought-after projects such as The Sail @ Marina Bay, The Arc at Draycott and The Berth by the Cove.

Some of these properties might have been sold via private treaty after the owners generated enough publicity and found buyers for their units at the auctions.

‘From 1995 to 1996, when the market was hot, buyers also put up uncompleted units for auction. These included ones in The Blossomvale and Maysprings,’ said Ms Ng.

‘Next year, we expect more owners to use auctions to sell uncompleted units.’

Developers, too, used auctions as a yardstick to test market sentiment and set benchmark prices for prime properties, consultants said.

Sentosa Cove managed to set a benchmark price of $1,039 per sq ft for its seafront bungalow plots through the auction mode.

More recently, the penthouses in Marina Bay Residences were sold at record prices in a closed tender.

Consultants believe that more developers might be exploring other modes of sale, including auctions, to get the best price.

The Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore also adopted the auction method to sell sites to recover unpaid property tax this year.

This shows that the transparent auction method provides good exposure and helps to get the best price, said Knight Frank’s executive director for auctions, Ms Mary Sai.

Looking ahead, she said, a wider variety of properties could be made available in the auction market as vendors’ confidence in this mode increases.

About 175 properties were sold at auction this year, up from 163 last year.

Sales value reached a high of about $320 million - ‘a level not seen since the last market peak in 1999′, said Ms Sai.

The rise was helped by higher bids for apartments seen to have collective sale potential.

Notable among these sales was a penthouse unit at Silver Tower in Cairnhill, where four bidders drove the price to $6.12 million, way above its $4.5 million valuation. That was in late August, about a month before CapitaLand agreed to buy Silver Tower.

Still, repossessed properties make up the bulk of auction sales, though the number of such properties has fallen this year given a better economy.

Apart from declining loan defaults, mortgagors facing cash flow problems were able to dispose of their properties on the open market before bank foreclosures, said Ms Sai, explaining the drop in mortgagee’s sales.

Other properties that were auctioned off included landed homes, office units, shophouses and industrial properties.

Source : Sunday Times - 31 Dec 2006

But Mortgagee Sales Dive 38.8%, Helped By An Improving Economy

It’s like a tale of two cities in the Singapore property auctions market. While the number of properties put up for auction by owners has jumped 68 per cent this year to a record 600, the number of properties put under the hammer by mortgagees fell 38.8 per cent this year to 1,418, according to latest figures issued yesterday by Colliers International.

The property consultancy attributed the decline in the number of properties auctioned off by lenders to a more upbeat economy, buoyant property market and high employment rates.

Colliers said the growing trend for owners to put up their properties at auction, shows that they are increasingly recognising this as an efficient way of selling, especially for prime properties like Good Class Bungalows and even prime development sites.

Colliers also said that the total value of properties actually sold at auctions has jumped 49 per cent from about $213 million in 2005 to $318 million this year.

This is the highest level seen since 1999, when $409.5 million worth of properties were knocked down to the highest bidder. The surge this year was contributed largely by the record sale of 12 bungalow land parcels at Sentosa Cove in August for a total of $86.34 million.

Knight Frank, which also released its auctions report yesterday, offered a further reason for this year’s strong auction sales - increased investor interest in apartments believed to have collective sale potential.

‘They are usually in mature developments that are more than 10 years old, strategically situated in prime locations and are not built to their full development potential as allowed under the new planning regulations in Master Plan 2003.

‘Some examples of such auction transactions include a unit in Tulip Garden which was transacted at $1.73 million, a high-end penthouse unit at Silver Tower in Cairnhill sold for $6.12 million, a $1.38 million studio apartment in The Beaumont and a Braddell Heights apartment,’ Knight Frank observed.

Generally, these properties were knocked down at a premium compared to recently transacted units in the development, indicating that these buyers have priced in an en bloc premium for these units, Knight Frank said.

The firm predicts that the number of properties put up for auction by owners in 2007 is expected to further catch up with the number of mortgagee properties that go under the hammer. It also suggested that following the successful sale of highly sought-after penthouses at Marina Bay Residences earlier this month through a closed tender, there is a possibility of developers exploring other sales modes such as auction to obtain the highest prices for their properties.

In its report, Colliers highlighted that auction has also started to gain popularity among owners trying to find buyers in the subsale market for uncompleted properties in highly sought-after projects such as The Sail @ Marina Bay, The Arc at Draycott and The Berth by The Cove.

However, the numbers so far have been small. Fewer than 10 such units - or just 0.5 per cent of the total 2,018 properties put up for auction this year - went under the hammer, according to Colliers International executive director and auctioneer Grace Ng. None of these properties was actually sold during auctions, although some may have changed hands afterwards through private treaty deals, she added.

‘Most owners will do the actual transaction through private treaty but will use auction as a platform to generate publicity for their properties and source for buyers,’ Ms Ng said.

Colliers said the biggest percentage decline in mortgagee properties going to auction was in the office sector, as many owners who were in default with their bank loans were able to find buyers in the open market, thanks to the current shortage of office space.

Source : Business Times - 29 Dec 2006

FEATURE Land, a member of the Tong Eng Group, yesterday snapped up two adjoining freehold sites in Sixth Avenue for $2.5 million at a Colliers International auction where three other properties - including a freehold walk-up maisonette at Tanglin Hill Condominium that fetched $2.5 million - were also sold.

The 7,565 sq ft site bought by Feature Land was put up for auction by the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) to recover unpaid property taxes.

And IRAS said yesterday it may put another two lots of property on the auction block later this year for the same reason.

One is a pre-war terrace house at 27 Onan Road, for which IRAS has been owed $12,832 in property tax since 1997.

The other comprises two pre-war houses at 19 and 21 Emerald Hill, for which the taxman is owed $25,212 in tax for the period July 2002 to December 2006.

In both cases, IRAS has not been paid tax despite numerous attempts to collect it.

On the Sixth Avenue site, Feature Land plans to build a pair of semi-detached houses it hopes to sell for about $2.5 million to $2.6 million each.

The property was sold after six bids.

But the most hotly-contested property at yesterday’s auction was a walk-up maisonette at Tanglin Hill Condominium at 11A Tanglin Rise.

Bidding started at $1.7 million and raced up before the property was knocked down at $2.5 million. The unit attracted 16 bids in total and was picked up by a foreigner.

BT understands that a similar unit in the development changed hands for $1.665 million in March this year.

‘In fact, similar-size units in the development were going for around $2.38 million in 1995, so the price for the latest deal has surpassed prices during the market peak,’ a source told BT.

On selling or auctioning properties to recover outstanding tax, an IRAS spokeswoman stressed yesterday that the authority only does this as a last resort.

The same applies to property tax on HDB flats, although these make up a very small part of total property tax collections.

‘We issue reminders, notices to pay, make phone calls and appoint banks as agents to try to recover the taxes due,’ the spokeswoman said in a statement.

‘We even visit the owners with the objective of helping them settle their taxes. It is only when all such attempts fail to get the taxes settled that we would resort to recovering outstanding property tax through the sale/auction of property.’

IRAS said total property tax arrears have hovered around 5 per cent of the total property tax collection and 0.4 per cent of total collections of all tax types for the past few years.

‘The tax arrears attributable to HDB cases are not large since HDB property tax accounts for about 3.4 per cent of the property tax assessed,’ it said.

Source : Business Times - 28 Sep 2006

Record figures driven by sale of Sentosa Cove bungalow plots

A TOTAL of $133.9 million of property was sold at auctions in the double Hungry Ghost Month that ended on Thursday.

This was the highest figure in at least nine years, says Colliers International.

Colliers executive director and auctioneer Grace Ng credited the record sales to the double Ghost Month - in each of the preceding eight years, there was only one Ghost Month - and the auction of a dozen bungalow plots on Sentosa Cove on Aug 25, which fetched record unit land prices of up to $1,039 psf of land area and a total of $86.34 million.

The Sentosa Cove auction helped drive up auction sales of residential properties to $108.4 million during the double Ghost Month - comprising $4.9 million in the first month (July 25 to Aug 23) and $103.6 million in the second month (Aug 24 to Sept 21). The latter figure is the highest in nine years, surpassing the $16.8 million recorded in 1999 when the property market was recovering after the Asian financial crisis.

The figure also exceeds highs registered during Ghost Months in 2002 ($15 million) and 2005 ($14.3 million). In both years, important policy changes easing the funding of residential property were announced before the Ghost Month.

Besides the Sentosa Cove auction, a transaction that boosted auction sales in the second Ghost Month this year was the Aug 30 sale of a penthouse at Silver Tower in Cairnhill for $6.12 million, reflecting a premium of over 30 per cent that the buyer paid to factor in the potential of an en bloc sale of Silver Tower.

This trend may have been seen again on Thursday when a unit at Tulip Garden in Farrer Road was sold at auction by Knight Frank auction at $1.73 million. The firm estimates this price was about 5 per cent higher than the individual sales value of the unit.

‘The bidders saw en bloc potential in the freehold estate, which has a land area of 317,000 sq ft,’ said Knight Frank auctioneer Mary Sai.

The opening price was $1.63 million and after competitive bidding among three parties, the property was sold.

Colliers’ figures show that 359 properties were put up for auction during this year’s double Ghost Month - 181 properties in the first month and 178 in the second.

‘This confirms that the stigma against the Ghost Month being a taboo period for property deals is wearing off,’ said Ms Ng.

Source : Business Times - 23 Sep 2006