http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/real...r-sale-via-eoi

Farrer Square's last 6 medical suites offered for sale via EOI

The indicative asking price is about S$5,100 psf; five units are 527 to 753 sq ft, and one, a 1,012 sq ft penthouse unit

Sep 6, 2016


THE top two strata floors of medical suites, comprising six units in the Farrer Square development in Little India, are being offered for sale through an expression-of-interest (EOI) exercise that will close on Oct 6.

The six units are the remaining medical suites in the 99-year leasehold project, which also houses ground-floor retail units and the 300-room Park Hotel Farrer Park.

The project, slated to receive Temporary Occupation Permit in the fourth quarter of this year, is opposite the Connexion project, which includes a hospital, a hotel, a medical centre and lifestyle/retail amenities.

Farrer Square's remaining six medical suites are available for sale on a bulk or individual-unit basis; their indicative asking price is about S$5,100 per square foot (psf).

Five units are on Level 11 and have strata areas ranging from 527 sq ft to 753 sq ft; they have indicative asking prices of between S$2.68 million and S$3.84 million. The sixth unit, the sole penthouse on Level 12, has an area of 1,012 sq ft and an asking price of $5.1 million.

RB Capital, the developer of Farrer Square, has appointed Cushman & Wakefield (C&W) as the exclusive marketing agent for these medical suites in the project, which is directly connected to Farrer Park MRT Station.

Shaun Poh, executive director of capital markets at C&W, noted that recent strata transactions of medical suites at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital have been in the high-S$6,000 psf range. That hospital is on a site with 99-year leasehold tenure that began in May 2008.

The Farrer Square site's 99-year leasehold tenure started in July 2012. The 42 strata medical suites, adding up to some 27,500 sq ft in the development, are on Levels 5 to 12 in the project. The second tower, 20 storeys high, is for the hotel.

The lowest three floors of medical suites - Levels 5 to 7 - were bulk sold earlier at slightly more than S$44 million or around S$3,800 psf of the total strata area of 11,674 sq ft, based on the project's brochure.

The buyer was upmarket Malaysian medical group HSC Healthcare.

RB Capital was earlier reported to have granted a long-term lease on the medical suites on Levels 8 to 10 (adding up to 11,685 sqf ft) to a group of specialists.

Mr Poh said he expects that there would be a future imbalance of demand outstripping supply of high-quality, brand-new medical suites, given the lack of new commercial development sites across the island; this stems from the Urban Redevelopment Authority's late-2014 guideline to cap the allowable gross floor area (GFA) for medical clinics in commercial buildings to 3,000 sq m or 20 per cent of the total floor area approved for commercial use, whichever is lower.

"We expect interest for Farrer Square's six remaining medical suites to come from a wide variety of buyers, including high-net worth investors and medical group end-users."