http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/spec...hands-20130926

Published September 26, 2013

House of Tan Yeok Nee changing hands

Buyer said to be Pua Seck Guan's Perennial; price said to be below $90m


THE House of Tan Yeok Nee - a gazetted national monument along Penang Road - is being sold, and the buyer is tipped as Pua Seck Guan's Perennial Real Estate Holdings, BT understands.

The price is said to be under $90 million.

The asset is being sold by a special purpose vehicle of ERC Holdings, which in turn is majority owned by Andy Ong. He bought the two-storey freehold property at slightly over $60 million last year from German fund manager Union Investment Real Estate AG.

The House of Tan Yeok Nee was restored in 2000.

It is fully leased to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. In July this year, it was reported that the school will be pulling its prestigious executive MBA programme out of Singapore and setting up in Hong Kong to be closer to the booming Chinese economy.

The school will carry on teaching the 166 students now enrolled in Singapore and the last cohort will graduate in 2015 - which is also when the lease at The House of Tan Yeok Nee expires.

This means that the incoming owner will have some time to mull over plans to reposition the asset.

Under Master Plan 2008, the property is zoned for commercial use. Observers reckon a restaurant, entertainment or cultural establishment could be among potential uses for the property.

Perennial also has a stake in Chijmes along Victoria Street which includes two gazetted national monuments - Chijmes Hall (the former CHIJ Chapel) and Caldwell House. Chijmes is currently undergoing a $45-million spruce-up.

The House of Tan Yeok Nee has a land area of about 32,000 sq ft and a strata area of about 58,000 sq ft.

Its net lettable area, however, is only 23,000 sq ft, but observers expect Mr Pua, with his real estate ingenuity, to expand this figure.

The last remaining traditional Chinese courtyard house in Singapore, The House of Tan Yeok Nee is named after a wealthy Teochew businessman who built it in the 1880s.

The Salvation Army bought the property before World War II but it was soon occupied by the invading Japanese army. When the war ended in 1945, the Salvation Army moved back into the property, which remained as its headquarters until it sold the premises in 1991 to the late Teo Lay Swee.

In 1996, Teo divested the property, along with the adjacent Cockpit Hotel and open-air carpark, to a Wing Tai-led consortium for $380 million.

The consortium developed the Cockpit Hotel and carpark site into Vision Crest Commercial (an 11-storey office block) and Vision Crest Residential (comprising apartments) and restored The House of Tan Yeok Nee. The conservation of The House of Tan Yeok Nee earned the project a special mention under the Specialised Category in Paris-based Fiabci's (International Real Estate Federation) Prix d'Excellence 2002.