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New Bugis GLS site set to be hotly contested

/ EdgeProp |

March 29, 2019 5:03 PM SGT

The government has released a site along Tan Quee Lan Street for sale by public tender under the Confirmed List of the 1H2019 Government Land Sale (GLS). The 99-year leasehold site in the Bugis area is zoned for residential with commercial on the first storey, and occupies a 124,117.5 sq ft plot.

Picture: URA

This site is expected to be the most attractive of all the sites on the 1H2019 GLS Confirmed List and is expected to be hotly contested, says Tay Huey Ying, head of research and consultancy at JLL Singapore.

The site has a high-rise zone with a maximum building height of 30 storeys, as well as a low-rise zone for a six-storey building. The new development has a maximum gross floor area of 521,295.7 sq ft, and is estimated to comprise up to 580 residential units. The development will not be subject to the rule on minimum unit size as it is located in the Central Area. Up to 21,528 sq ft of the total GFA will be set aside for commercial use.

The successful tender is expected to set “benchmark land pricing for a residential site in the area”, and the site benefits from its superior city-centre location and good connectivity, says Tricia Song, head of research for Singapore at Colliers International.

Credit: URA

The site is located beside the Bugis MRT Interchange on the Downtown and East-West Lines, and will be close to completed integrated developments like DUO by M+S as well as South Beach by City Developments Ltd. It will also be near GuocoLand’s upcoming new integrated development on Beach Road, Guoco Midtown.

The site is expected to contribute to the ongoing makeover in the Beach Road area and offer private housing to support the growing commercial enclave in the area, says Song.

“Taking a leaf from the response to the public tender for the nearby Middle Road site (which closed on 28 March 2019), we expect similarly healthy interest for the Tan Quee Lan Street plot,” she says. “We project that the site could attract 10 or more bidders, with a potential top bid of $834 million, translating to $1,600 per square foot per plot ratio (psf ppr).”

This would be 10% higher than the top bid for the Middle Road site, as the Tan Quee Lan site is in an arguably more attractive location and more units could be sold there, she adds. The Middle Road site is expected to comprise 375 residential units.

Most of the developers which bid for the Middle Road site are expected to bid for the new site, says JLL’s Tay. “The low pipeline supply of available residential units for sale, amounting to less than 800 units (in the immediate locality), could embolden interested bidders to be bullish in their bids in spite of the cooling measures in place,” she says.

Table: JLL

Meanwhile, URA also announced that the tender for the site at one-north Gateway has been rescheduled to June this year, rather than March this year as previously announced.

It is likely that the rescheduling is to allow URA to incorporate new changes into the tender conditions and documents, as the site has been changed from full-residential, to residential with commercial on the first storey, says Tay.

The tender for the Tan Quee Lan GLS site will close on Sep 5 at 12 noon.

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