Raffles Place commercial building seeking new owner

Chevron House, a commercial building located near the entrances to the Raffles Place MRT station, is reportedly available for sale. The building owner, Deka Immobilien GmbH — a unit of DekaBank Group of Germany — bought the premises in 2010 for around S$420M. The previous owner was a Goldman SachGroup-managed property fund.

The market price was understood to be S$700M based on anonymous sources. Recent prominent completed commercial deals includes:
– S$2.6B bid led by Malaysian IOI on a Marina Bay white site
– Sale of Sime Darby Centre in Bt Timah area by Blackstone to Tuan Sing
– Purchase of Wilkie Edge from Capitaland by Lian Beng Group

Chevron House is a skyscraper building in CBD housing Chevron Corp. The 262,650 sqft building consists of a 4-storey retail podium with a basement as well as a 29-storey office block.

Woodleigh site attracts top bid of $700.7M

A unit of Chip Eng Seng Corp and Unique Real Estate has put in the top bid for a plum site in Woodleigh Lane. Unique Real Estate is a joint venture of Heeton Holdings and KSH Holdings units.

The 99-year leasehold site launched on May 30 under the confirmed list for the first half of this year drew a top bid of $700.7 million from CEL Unique Development, which is 60 per cent owned by Chip Eng Seng Corp, and 40 per cent by Unique Real Estate.

The Government land sales site tender attracted 15 bidders. The land is next to Woodleigh MRT station, adjacent to Bidadari New Town and near amenities such as Nex shopping mall. The 19,547 sq m site has a maximum gross floor area of 58,641 sq m.

The selling price of the proposed development to expected to range from $1,720 psf to $1,800 psf and could face some competition from the mixed-use site in Bidadari estate linked to Singapore Press Holdings and Kajima Development.

Top Japanese Shipping lines taking up Marina One space bigly

OCEAN Network Express is said to be taking up some 50,000 sq ft of office space at Marina One. The joint-venture company of Japan’s “Big Three” shipping lines, is a consolidation of the container shipping businesses of Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha (K Line), Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL) and Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (NYK Line). It includes their worldwide terminal operation businesses, except those in Japan. Ocean Network Express is planning to use the new office spanning 1½ floors as its regional and global headquarters.

Macquarie Bank, which is now at Marina Bay Financial Centre Tower 2, is also said to be in advanced negotiations for some 50,000 sq ft of office space at Marina One.

The two new office towers at Marina One, an integrated development in downtown Marina Bay, are due to be completed soon. Developed by M+S, Marina One’s 1.88 million sq ft Grade-A office space is said to be about 70 per cent pre-leased ahead of its completion.

The first-half of 2017 saw a good volume of pre-committed space in the upcoming premium developments such as Marina One and UIC Building in the CBD.

At Guoco Tower of Tanjong Pagar Centre, which is already 90 % committed, Thai rubber group Sri Trang Agro-Industry Public Company is moving into close to 6,000 sq ft of office space on the 25th floor in early December, letting go of its existing 5,100 sq ft office at One Raffles Place where it has been operating for more than 10 years.

Grade-A CBD rents rose by 1.7 % in Q2 2017 to about S$8.51 psf pm, the first increase in nine quarters, led by a 5.8 % rise in premium office rents in Marina Bay.

The Urban Redevelopment Authority is slated to release the second-quarter real estate statistics on July 28.

Super Penthouse in Singapore for S$100M

Who will be buying the most expensive apartment or “bungalow in the sky” in Singapore? The asking price for a new three-storey Singapore penthouse, complete with a private pool on the 64th floor, has reached more than $100 million. This amount of money can well easily buy one a few good-class bungalows (GCBs) in District 9/10.

The Wallich Residence’s penthouse is in the tallest building in Singapore, the island of well-heeled stability that attracts the super-rich from its less-developed South-east Asian neighbours, as well as multi-millionaires from mainland China.

It will test the endurance of demand for luxury property in the city-state – the part of the market that has taken the biggest hit from measures aimed at cooling down prices in recent years.

Prices for luxury homes in Singapore have fallen 15-20 % from a 2013 peak. However the recent events has cause optimism among market insiders to foresee a turnaround – at least at the top end of the market – and is forecasting a 3-5 % increase in luxury prices this year, citing demand from both locals and foreigners who feel the market is bottoming out.

The volume of transactions in the first four months of the year in Singapore’s core central region was 35% higher than in the same period last year. The Core Central Region includes the popular areas among wealthy foreigners — the Orchard Road shopping area and Sentosa island.

Buying by foreigners has picked up since the start of the year at the developer’s high-end Leedon Residence project, near the 150-year-old Singapore Botanic Gardens. GuocoLand is part of Malaysian conglomerate Hong Leong Group, headed by billionaire Quek Leng Chan.

The recent tightening of property market controls in places like Hong Kong and Australia played a part in attracting foreign demand to Singapore’s luxury property this year. While prices in Hong Kong tripled and Sydney’s doubled over the past decade, Singapore prices rose just 29 %.

City Developments (CDL), one of the largest Singapore developers, also said the average sales price at its high-end Gramercy Park project has risen to more than $2,800 per sq ft in recent months, up 8 % from a year ago, and foreign buyers accounted for three-quarters of the project so far.

One may note though that the Singapore’s residential market has fallen for 15 straight quarters to log its longest losing streak since official records began in 1975. Analysts expect a bottoming of prices in the year 2017.

Singapore introduced property price cooling measures to curb speculation for the past 7 years. Some measures were relaxed slightly this year but the authorities announced that there would be no more rolling back of the remaining measures for now.

More information of the Penthouse can be found at the following link.

Click to access Wallich_PentHse.pdf

Golden Shoe Carpark’s billion-dollar redevelopment plan finally unveiled

A highly anticipated redevelopment project in Raffles Place, touted for years, was finally unveiled over the week by the press. A 51-storey mixed-use development – slated for completion in the first half of 2021 – will be built on the site. It will comprise office space, serviced residences, a multi-storey carpark, a food centre and shops.

The redevelopment will be led by CapitaLand in a joint venture (JV) for an estimated cost of $1.82 billion. The JV partners are: CapitaLand, CapitaLand Commercial Trust (CCT) and Mitsubishi Estate Co (MEC).

Of the $1.82 billion development cost, about 52.6 %, or $957.8 million, was attributed to charges for the intensification of land use and other land-related costs.

At 280m high, it will be among the tallest buildings in the heart of the Central Business District. The other highlights of the plan include:

– 635,000 sq ft of net lettable area
– 29 floors of Grade A office space
– 299 serviced residences over eight storeys managed by CapitaLand’s The Ascott – five floors of carpark space
– 12,000 sq ft of retail space at ground level
– a shared four-storey-high “Green Oasis”, where tenants can hold meetings or other activities amid lush greenery
– a new food centre owned by the government, which will house former stallholders of Market Street Food Centre in Golden Shoe Car Park on the second and third levels of the new building’s podium. In the meantime, starting from 1 Aug, the stallholders will be at an interim centre next to Telok Ayer MRT station
– flexible offices and co-working spaces.

J Gateway for rent at $2.98K

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Robertson Quay’s newest “garden in the city”

Rents bottomed for CBD offices?

Based on recent estimates from JLL, the average rental values for its overall CBD Grade A and Marina Bay offices rose for the first time in Q2 2017 since 2 years ago. The area of concern, which includes Raffles Place, Marina Bay, Tanjong Pagar/Shenton Way and Marina Centre, rose 0.6% quarter-on-quarter in Q2 2017, at $8.49 psf. The major signings include FAcebook’s takeup of more than 250,000 sqft in Marina One, and Uber’s 55,000 sqft in Guoco Tower. The space at Asia Square vacated by Google last year has also been filled. Microsoft signed up 125,000 sqft in Frasers Tower which is due for completion in 2018.

Wilkie Edge sold to Lian Beng and Apricot Capital

Located at the junction of Wilkie Road and Selegie Road, Wilkie Edge is a leasehold 12-storey development comprising office and retail units as well as a serviced residence, Citadines Mount Sophia Singapore. It has 88 years left on the lease. The mixed-use commercial and residential building located near Little India, is being sold for S$280 million — works out to a price of S$1,812 per square foot (psf) based on the building’s net lettable area, and a price of S$1,299 psf based on gross floor area.

Lian Beng Group and Apricot Capital, the private investment firm of Super Group’s Teo family, have agreed to acquire Wilkie Edge from CapitaLand Commercial Trust (CCT).

The sale is expected to be completed in September. The sale consideration is 39.3 % above Wilkie Edge’s valuation of S$201 million or S$1,301 psf as at Dec 31, and 53.3 % higher than its original purchase price of S$182.7 million in 2008.

URA statistics indicating private home market bottoming

The quarter-on-quarter drop of 0.3 % in URA’s overall private home price index, based on its Q2 flash estimate released on Monday, follows a 0.4 % decline in the index in Q1. The 0.3 % fall in the second quarter is the smallest of the 15 quarters since the peak in Q3 2013. The general sentiment among the property circles is that the private housing market is close to its trough given the statistics.

The Urban Redevelopment Authority’s overall private home price index is expected to start increasing next year, as projects on sites bought at high land prices come to the market.

 

The market is bottoming out with the cooling measures expected to stay put. While private home sales volumes are expected to remain healthy, the price index is expected to flatline, while the affordability in terms of absolute price quantum is expected to remain the key driver for sales volume – given the current muted market sentiment amid soft economic growth, and policy conditions.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s comments last week that the “calibrated adjustments” in March to the seller’s stamp duty and TDSR do not signal the start of an unwinding of the property cooling measures.

 

Based on its Q2 flash estimate, URA’s overall private home price index has slipped 11.8 % from the recent peak in Q3 2013.

URA’s data also showed that prices of non-landed private residential properties in the Core Central Region (CCR) or prime areas fell by 0.9 %  in Q2, after easing 0.4 % in Q1. In the city fringe or Rest of Central Region (RCR), prices rose 0.5 %, after registering an increase of 0.3 % in the previous quarter. Prices in the suburbs or Outside Central Region (OCR) retreated 0.4 %, after inching up 0.1 % in Q1.

 

https://www.ura.gov.sg/uol/media-room/news/2017/Apr/pr17-24