Condos-on-columns the in thing in S’pore

Condos-on-columns the in thing in S’pore
Soleil@Sinaran is latest in new trend for high-rises that enhances privacy

THE upcoming Frasers Centrepoint Homes condo Soleil@Sinaran is the latest to reflect the trend for soaring buildings raised high on columns.

Bigger landscape: For Soleil@Sinaran, Frasers Centrepoint Homes’ upcoming condo, raising the building has allowed to free more space for landscaping
Architects 61, which also designed The Cosmopolitan in the River Valley area, said that by elevating the 417-unit Soleil@Sinaran, ‘the privacy of the units is enhanced to greater heights’.

Considerations in the design of Soleil@Sinaran included a high plot ratio of 3.5, a height restriction of about 40 storeys and high-density living.

The architects also felt that adjacent mid-rise private flats and Novena Square commercial development had large footprints and, therefore, views were minimised.

Architects 61 said: ‘Privacy of the lowest level of units is further enhanced by locating it as high from the ground as possible.’

Like The Cosmopolitan - and many other new condominiums - Soleil@Sinaran will rise from above street level.

But will columns be the only thing visible from street level?

Asked about the impact on the streetscape from buildings raised on columns, the Urban Redevelopment Authority said: ‘Generally, in certain areas within the city centre, urban design guidelines are put in place where the context requires buildings to relate to the street and their surrounding developments.

‘In the case of The Cosmopolitan, it is located in a residential area where the relation of the building to the street is not as critical. Hence the guidelines do not specifically require the building to do so.’

For Soleil@Sinaran, raising the building has allowed Architects 61 to free more space for landscaping that will include lagoons, pool lounges, entertainment pavilions with spa alcoves and spa pavilions to create a ‘green podium’.

‘The landscaping extends into the depth of the tower footprint,’ the architects said. ‘Trees grown within the covered first-

storey terrace provide a human scale to the tower rising above, ‘dissolving’ the boundary between the inside and the outside. It is this landscaped podium that provides the human scale at street level.’

Soleil@Sinaran is expected to be launched mid-August. Prices have not be fixed yet.

The Straits Times, 19 July 2007

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New hotel site near Hong Lim Park up for tender

New hotel site near Hong Lim Park up for tender 
Demand may not be as strong as for housing plots, says consultant
By Fiona Chan, Property Reporter 
A NEW hotel may soon rise beside Hong Lim Park near Chinatown on a fairly large site that the Government released for sale yesterday.
The 74,905 sq ft plot is bounded by Upper Pickering Street and Upper Hokkien Street.

It carries a 99-year lease and has a plot ratio of 4.2, giving it a total potential gross floor area of 315,000 sq ft.

A three-star hotel with 450 to 500 rooms can be built on the site, said Mr Donald Han, managing director of property firm Cushman & Wakefield.

Part of the building may go up to 20 storeys. The height of its other parts, however, has been capped at only 16 storeys.

Mr Han expects bids for the site to come in at about $450 to $500 per sq ft per plot ratio (psf ppr) or about $141.5 million to $157.3 million.

But despite a boom in Singapore’s hotel sector, he believes that interest in the site will be lukewarm at best.

‘I don’t think we’ll see a whole lot of bidders as we would see for commercial or residential sites,’ he said.

‘The thing is, although there are a lot of investors looking at hotels to buy, a developer buying a site to build a hotel would have to be in it for the long term.’

Mr Han predicted that ‘fewer than five bids’ would be submitted for the site, adding that the last hotel site released in nearby Tanjong Pagar area attracted only two bids.

The contract to develop that site went to the Carlton hotel group last month. The group’s $123 million bid worked out to about $573 psf ppr.

The hotel industry in Singapore is seeing a good year. Hotel room rates have reached record highs for the second time this year on the back of rising occupancy rates and a tourism boom.

The Upper Pickering site, however, has been on the Government’s reserve list for land sales for a year without any takers.

Under the current system, a site can be put up for sale only if a developer commits to bid for it at a minimum price acceptable to the Government.

But no developer came forward for the Upper Pickering site. This led the Government to transfer the plot to its confirmed list last month, which meant the site would be put out in the market at a fixed date regardless of developer interest.

The Straits Times, 19 July 2007

Penny stock rally screeches to a halt amid rumours of trading curbs

Penny stock rally screeches to a halt amid rumours of trading curbs 
Some Sesdaq counters dive by as much as 25% as investor sentiment sours suddenly in late afternoon
By Goh Eng Yeow, Markets Correspondent 
A SUPER bull run by penny stocks was stopped in its tracks yesterday, at least for now, as some counters slumped by up to 25 per cent from intra-day highs.
These stocks suffered an even sharper downturn than the wider market, following a government announcement seen by some as a measure to cool the property market. Development charges, levied when a land user enhances the value of a site, were raised from 50 per cent to 70 per cent.

The UOB Sesdaq Index, which tracks small-capitalised shares, has surged by about half in the past three months.

At the opening bell yesterday, it was still all roses for penny stock investors as they pursued reverse takeover targets such as Rowsley and Ban Joo.

But at about 3.15 pm, sentiment suddenly soured. Sesdaq crashed by about 10 per cent from an intra-day high of 308.11 in just over an hour. It finally closed 7.4 per cent lower at 278.04.

But the frenzied trading helped lift market volume to a stunning record of 9.14 billion shares - causing online trading at some brokerages to slow down considerably. ‘It went from unbelievably bullish to unbelievably bearish in just hours,’ said a brokerage dealer, Mr Burnie Lee.
Traders were unnerved by a sharp selldown of property stocks by institutional investors reacting to the Government’s move to raise development charges.

The benchmark Straits Times Index tumbled 1.8 per cent, sparking a panic sell-off of penny stocks, amid fears over a trading clampdown. ‘There are rumours that some broking houses are clamping down on the credit limits they give to remisiers for trading penny stocks,’ said local brokerage dealer Jenny Lee.

In June 1999, a similar rally in penny stocks ground to a halt after many broking houses imposed trading curbs.

But a check yesterday showed that ‘it is business as usual’ at UOB Kay Hian, Kim Eng Securities, Phillip Securities and OCBC Securities, Ms Lee said.

Phillip Securities’ managing director, Mr Loh Hoon Sun, had another explanation for the sudden correction. ‘This is a trading market. People are not buying shares for investments. They are trading penny stocks and watching price movements like a hawk. And the fall is aggravated by a stampede of people all wanting to get out at the same time,’ he said.

But one brokerage’s head of risk management said punting in penny stocks is so intense that it reflects a certain degree of irrational exuberance. The volumes of some stocks have far exceeded their number of shares freely floating in the market.

She also noted: ‘Many punters don’t even know what sort of businesses these companies are in.’

Many heavily traded stocks are those belonging to financially strapped companies with poor earnings records. These stocks are riding high only because of hopes that the companies would be revived by the new businesses which would be purportedly injected into them.

‘Reverse takeovers can take as long as a year. You won’t want to be caught holding their shares if their deals are suddenly called off, or if the market suddenly nosedives,’ she said.
The Straits Times, 19 July 2007

Prices at 8 HDB towns up by 5% or more

Prices at 8 HDB towns up by 5% or more 
But second-quarter figures from two agencies show some estates yet to pick up
By Jessica Cheam 
THE long dormant public housing market has bounced back with a vengeance, although some areas remain sluggish.
New figures from property agencies show that prices of flats sold in Queenstown, for example, shot up by 11.8 per cent on average in the second quarter over the first quarter.

Another hot spot was the Kallang/Whampoa area, which was in second place with a 10.2 per cent rise.

As many as eight Housing and Development Board (HDB) estates registered quarterly price rises of 5 per cent or more on average.

Prices in Ang Mo Kio, Serangoon and Marine Parade grew by about 7 to 9 per cent. One 116 sq m sea-view flat in Marine Parade sold at a record of $695,000 for the area.

Property agency PropNex’s chief executive Mohamed Ismail said the strong upswing in prices was not surprising as many buyers, cash-rich from recent collective sales, were paying premium prices for HDB flats in prime locations, or with good views.
 
Other estates such as Clementi, Bukit Merah, Jurong East and Bishan also posted a healthy growth of about 4 to 6 per cent.

One executive flat in Queenstown sold for $628,000, well above the average of $559,000 for the area.

These figures were released to The Straits Times yesterday by two of the largest property agencies ERA Singapore and PropNex. Both claimed to have a 30 to 40 per cent share of the HDB market.

The agencies say they give a clearer picture of recent HDB price movements.

This follows HDB’s unexpected move on Monday to disclose average resale prices and the average cash-over-valuation (COV) - the sum paid over market valuation - of flats by region on its website www.hdb.gov.sg

Property experts expressed misgivings over the HDB figures, which were grouped according to five clusters of towns, instead of individual towns. ‘The figures may not be the true reflection of what the current market is willing to pay for specific estates,’ said Mr Ismail.

For example, the overall average COV for the West region is $7,400, but in Clementi, the current average market price is $20,000 over valuation, he said.

The property agencies’ figures show that some areas are still sluggish. One group of estates, which includes Bedok, the Central area and Geylang, had slower growth at about 1 to 3 per cent. Prices at other towns such as Bukit Batok, Pasir Ris and Yishun hardly moved.

Mr Ismail said this was probably because the ‘excitement and price awakening’ of the second quarter had not reached the outskirts yet. He expects prices in most HDB towns to move upwards in the third quarter.

One effect of the new statistics released from the agencies and HDB is that they serve as a reality check for sellers currently demanding unreasonably high prices due to ‘headline’ sales reported in some areas recently, analysts say.

A five-room flat in Bukit Merah, for example, sold for a mind-boggling $720,000 recently. But the average price for such flats is far lower at $467,000.

ERA assistant vice-president Eugene Lim said sales volumes could have been higher if not for flat-owners looking to ‘catch on the initial euphoria’.

Buyers and sellers are now beginning to digest the deluge of information. But ‘it will take a few weeks for the dust to settle’, and for the market to see the real effects, said Mr Lim.

An HDB spokesman said yesterday that it is monitoring the market very closely, and will assess the need to provide such data on a regular basis.

The Straits Times, 19 July 2007

Property charge hike may cool en bloc fever

Property charge hike may cool en bloc fever 
Tax payable to enhance use of sites to be raised from 50% to 70%
By Joyce Teo, Property Correspondent 
THE Government sprung a surprise on property developers yesterday by dramatically ramping up a tax payable to enhance the use of a site.
The move triggered a selldown of property shares on the Singapore Exchange.

Developers pay the tax - called a development charge - if they want to enhance the value of a site by building a bigger project, for example.

The rise in the land’s value was taxed at 50 per cent, but will now be levied at 70 per cent, similar to what it was in 1985. The same rate will also apply to fees paid to rewind a site’s lease back to 99 years.

For example, a site that rises in value by $2 million will now be taxed $1.4 million, compared to $1 million previously.

Its broader effect will be to make certain sites more costly, and perhaps take some heat out of a roaring property market that has seen record prices across many housing types.

Astounding rental growth and rising values were cited as reasons for the strong showing for the first half of this year.
… more
Analyst David Lum from Daiwa Institute of Research said the move is ‘another piece of evidence that the Government might be a little uncomfortable with the rapid appreciation in certain segments of the market’.

An immediate casualty could be the buoyant en bloc market, which has seen developers pay huge sums for estates over the past 12 months.

And by stemming en bloc sales, which reduce housing stock in the short-term, the hike may even take pressure off rents.

Developers will have to recrunch their numbers now - and hopeful owners might have to lower expectations of a bumper en bloc bonanza.

Sing Holdings said yesterday that with the change, it expects the land cost for acquiring Hillcourt Apartments to rise by about 1.2 per cent - from $1,444 per sq ft of potential gross floor area to $1,461.

‘The rate revision will add a few percentage points to the total costs of some developments,’ said a Savills Singapore director, Mr Ku Swee Yong, who felt the impact on developers will not be great.

Knight Frank’s head of research and consultancy, Mr Nicholas Mak, agreed: ‘There was a knee-jerk reaction, but it’s not going to derail the property boom.’

Still, property shares took a hit yesterday. Giants such as CapitaLand and City Developments fell by around 2 per cent or more, while the sector index plunged 2.7 per cent.

The rate rise is a double whammy for some firms. Deve- lopment charges are reviewed every six months, with new rates due on Sept 1.

These charges are designed to mirror property values and are almost certain to rise, given the surging market, thus adding more costs to developers over and above yesterday’s rise.

Yesterday’s change took immediate effect.

It will hit developments that have yet to receive provisional permission to enhance land value, or those granted an extension to their provisional permission from yesterday.

This means developers which have done deals over the past two to three months could be hit, said Credo Real Estate managing director Karamjit Singh.
 
The Straits Times, 19 July 2007