Four detached houses commanded the highest prices among properties transacted in the week of May 22 to 29, according to caveats lodged with URA.

A Good Class Bungalow (GCB) on Swettenham Road was sold for $23.8 million ($1,571 psf) on May 28. A source says the 15,145 sq ft property belonged to Jean Yip, founder and chairman of beauty empire Jean Yip Group.

The latest sale takes the total number of transactions for the GCB on Swettenham Road to four over a span of 14 years. When it was first put on the market in 2004, it went for $4.64 million ($306 psf). The property market was in the doldrums then and the buyer was said to be Raymond Ng, executive chairman of Enviro-Hub Holdings. Ng redeveloped the property and made it his home before selling it for $17 million ($1,122 psf) in February 2010. The house changed hands just four months later for $17.5 million ($1,155 psf), according to a caveat lodged in June 2010.

The latest transacted price of $23.8 million is “reasonable”, considering that Swettenham Road is one of the top three most-coveted GCB areas, says William Wong, founder and managing director of RealStar Premier Group. “The property has a nice house number too,” he notes.

Also located in District 10 is an 8,127 sq ft freehold bungalow on Woollerton Drive that was sold for $14.8 million ($1,818 psf), according to a caveat lodged on May 23. The property is located on a quiet road and near the Singapore Botanic Gardens. It is also near the Farrer Road MRT station on the Circle Line and is just a short distance from Holland Village.

Meanwhile, at Paradise Island in Sentosa Cove, a six-bedroom bungalow on a 99-year leasehold site of 8,170 sq ft changed hands for $12 million ($1,469 psf). This is the second transaction at Paradise Island this year. The last one was in April, when another six-bedroom bungalow, on a slightly bigger site of 8,633 sq ft, was sold for $11.2 million ($1,297 psf). Paradise Island is a reclaimed islet with 29 bungalows developed by Ho Bee Land and completed in 2009.

Over at prime District 11, a bungalow along Dunearn Close changed hands for $11.8 million ($837 psf). The three-storey detached house sits on a freehold land site of 14,090 sq ft in the Chee Hoon Avenue GCB area. It was a mortgagee sale and was last put up for auction by Edmund Tie & Co in January this year. The opening price then was $13.8 million, but it was subsequently withdrawn as there were no bids. The last time the house on Dunearn Close was sold was in September 2008, when it fetched $8.28 million ($588 psf).

K H Tan, managing director of Newsman Realty, says GCB deals in recent months have picked up, as there has been an influx of new citizens and strong demand from local highnet-worth individuals for “super-prime GCBs”.

RealStar’s Wong is of the same opinion. He says the Nassim Road, Dalvey Estate, Cluny Park and Tanglin areas are the most sought after, owing to their proximity to the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Wong also attributes part of the increase in demand for GCBs to the wealth creation stemming from the rise in collective sales of condominiums in prime districts.

This article appeared in the EdgeProp Pullout, Issue #834 (June 11, 2018)