City View@Boon Keng Oversubscribed Five Times

Source : Channel NewsAsia, 17 January 2008

The latest series of public housing designed and built by a private developer has been oversubscribed five times.

City View@Boon Keng received over 3,500 applications in all, when submissions closed at midnight on Wednesday.

714 apartments were put up for sale by developer Hoi Hup. They were going at $520 per square foot.

All applications submitted will now be put through a ballot. Only 1,400 applicants will be successful and they are expected to be notified next month.

City View@Boon Keng is the second project under the Design, Build and Sell Scheme by the Housing Development Board.

The first project at Tampines was oversubscribed by 10 times. - CNA/ir

Winning Bid For New Sports Hub To Be Announced On Jan 19

Source : Channel NewsAsia, 17 January 2008

Results of the winning bid for the new Sports Hub will be announced on 19 January.

Singapore Gold's proposal

Community Development, Youth and Sports Minister, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, will reveal the chosen bid.

Three consortiums had submitted their design in November 2007, after the government called for tenders in 2006.

The three include the ‘wrapped’ design by Alpine Mayreder, Singapore Gold’s ‘Lucky Horseshoe’ design and Singapore Sports Hub consortium’s ‘Cool Dome’ design.

Singapore Sports Hub Group's proposal

Authorities have considered various aspects and even visited buildings designed by the three consortiums overseas when evaluating the designs.

Once chosen, the winning consortium will still need to go through a few more processes before construction can begin.

The Sports Hub is expected to cost some S$800 million and is due for completion in 2011. - CNA/vm

Alpine Mayreder's proposal

Another Bid To Stop Sale Of Gillman Heights

Source : The Straits Times, Jan 17, 2008

A GROUP of minority owners at the Gillman Heights condominium is making another bid to stop the $548 million collective sale of the huge estate in Alexandra Road.

They filed a High Court appeal yesterday against last month's decision by the Strata Titles Board (STB) to approve the sale to CapitaLand and other parties.

Among other things, the 22 disgruntled owners are appealing on the grounds that the sale of Gillman Heights should require consent from 90 per cent of owners, rather than the usual 80 per cent.

The rules say consent from 90 per cent of owners is required for estates less than 10 years old to be sold en bloc. For older estates, 80 per cent is needed.

The conflict over the required consent for Gillman Heights comes because it is a former Housing and Urban Development Company estate, said the minority owners' lawyer, Mr Richard Tan, from legal firm Tan Chin Hoe & Co. It has engaged Senior Counsel Michael Hwang to act for the minority owners.

The minority owners point out that although the estate was completed in 1984, it was privatised only after a seven-year process that ended in 2002. They argue that this should be the date from which the age of Gillman Heights is calculated.

Majority owners say that 87.5 per cent of owners at the condominium signed the collective sale agreement, which places it outside a 90 per cent consent mark, Mr Tan said.

However, the minority owners are also contesting this figure. They say the original sale agreement expired before the STB heard the sale application while the subsequent supplementary agreement had signatures from less than 80 per cent of owners.

Another bone of contention is the estate's price, Mr Tan said.

He said the majority owners' valuation report valued the condominium at $530 million as of last February, when the estate was sold. But a separate report commissioned by the minority owners valued it at $660 million.

The Gillman Heights appeal follows similar legal battles over other collective sales.

The most high-profile case is that of Horizon Towers in Leonie Hill, where minority owners earlier this month filed a High Court appeal against STB's go-ahead.

Other estates embroiled in legal collective sale tussles include Finland Gardens in Siglap, Regent Court in Serangoon Road and Airview Towers in St Thomas Walk.

Aljunied Temp Office Plot Draws Single Bid

Source : The Strait Times, Jan 17, 2008

A TEMPORARY office site in Aljunied Road has attracted only one bid - and a far lower-than-expected one at that.

The $7.8 million sole offer that came in for the 1.88ha site by the close of its tender yesterday represented only a quarter of the $30 million or so that experts had predicted.

This follows similarly cool responses for other transitional office sites released recently. Property consultants said it could signal that such plots - introduced last year to relieve the severe shortage of office space - are no longer necessary.

All eyes are now on whether the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) will award the 15-year leasehold site to Mezzo Development, a small development and construction firm that was the sole bidder.

A related firm, Mezzo Properties, turned in the top bid for a transitional office site in Mountbatten Road last week. Although the offers for the Mountbatten parcel also came in lower than predicted, the site drew a better response with three bids.

URA awarded the site to Mezzo the day after the tender closed.

But the offer for the Aljunied site is only about half the top bid for the Mountbatten plot.

The Aljunied bid works out to just $38.37 per sq ft of gross floor area - close to the level of some industrial space, said Mr Nicholas Mak, director of research and consultancy at Knight Frank.

He said the market may have reached a saturation point for such transitional office space. 'All these temporary sites attract only certain types of tenants', who may have had their fill of the four short-term sites that URA has pushed out to date.

Besides the Aljunied and Mountbatten sites, URA released a plot in Tampines late last year that drew only one bid. The first such site, in Scotts Road, elicited a strong 11-bid response.

Mr Mak added that market uncertainties arising from the recent stock-market turbulence could also be a reason for the cool response.

Another factor could be that construction costs have gone up more quickly than the expected rise in office rentals in Aljunied, making this site less attractive as an investment, suggested Mr Ku Swee Yong, director of marketing and business development at Savills Singapore.

He also agreed that 'we probably do not need any more transitional office sites'. Any new sites released in the coming months are unlikely to help relieve the current space crunch anyway, Mr Ku said. Construction on them will be finished only in late 2009 or beyond - when a flood of office space is already expected. 'You don't want your transitional building to be competing with a whole lot of new Grade A premium space,' he added.

URA said yesterday that it would 'consider releasing more transitional office sites if there is demand for such office space'. It also said the last time it did not award a tender for a sale site was in 2001, for a white site - where developers can choose whether they want to put up a residential or commercial building - at Central Boulevard.

Transitional Office Site Fetches Just One Bid

Source : The Business Times, January 17, 2008

INTRODUCED as a quick fix to address the shortage of office space, the new transitional office sites may just as quickly become redundant.

The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) closed the tender for the fourth transitional office site at Aljunied Road and Geylang East Avenue 1 yesterday with only one bid received.

The bid price was also below earlier market expectations at $7.8 million or a unit land price of $38.35 per square foot per plot ratio (psf ppr).

The bidder was Mezzo Development, which also put in the top bid for the third transitional office site at Mountbatten earlier this month. Only three bids were received then with the top bid coming in at $69.17 psf ppr.

In November 2007, the second transitional site in Tampines also received a single bid of $80.65 psf ppr.

The recent tenders are a stark comparison to the first one, which saw 11 bids received in August 2007 and a top bid of $219 psf ppr.

That the site was next to Newton MRT Station may have had something to do with it.

Cushman & Wakefield managing director Donald Han said that demand (and prices) could increase if the transitional office sites are more attractive. But at the going rate, these sites could well be phased out. Mr Han said: 'At some stage if demand (and prices) drops even further, the government will have to decide if these sites are relevant.'

As at December 2007, the URA had said in its H1 2008 land sales press release that, 'more sites in a number of locations will be made available for the development of transitional offices'.

But as Mr Han notes, the closer in time these sites are released to 2010, when projected new office supply comes onstream, the higher the risks involved in developing them. 'The window of opportunity for whoever buys these sites is getting narrower,' he added.

While Savills Singapore director (marketing and business development) Ku Swee Yong does not believe that there would be an oversupply of office space in 2010, he does feel that transitional offices are not entirely feasible either.

'Especially when you consider construction time and rising construction costs,' he said.

Mr Ku, who estimated that construction time alone could take between 9 and 12 months, added: 'I don't think we need to keep launching these (transitional) sites.'