Conserved black-and-white bungalow on Lady Hill Road put on market with S$110 million price tag

The property, with a freehold land area of 27,465 sq ft, is in the Nassim Road Good Class Bungalow Area

Jul 12, 2023

A CONSERVED black-and-white bungalow along Lady Hill Road on a 27,465 sq ft freehold site has been put on the market. The property is part of the Nassim Road Good Class Bungalow (GCB) Area.

Realstar Premier, the exclusive marketing agent for the bungalow, has indicated a guide price of “at least S$4,000 per square foot” on the site area (amounting to S$109.9 million).

Realstar is conducting an expression of interest exercise for the property.

The property is owned by Cheo Tiong Heng and his wife, Amy.

Cheo’s father, the late Cheo Peng Hong, was behind edible oils refiner Mewah International.

The couple’s bungalow along Lady Hill Road is across four levels and overlooks Nassim Road.

It has three bedrooms, a meeting room, a guest room and a theatre room; all six rooms are spacious and en-suite. In addition, there is a swimming pool, entertainment and living areas, as well as wet and dry kitchens. The built-up area is around 7,000 sq ft.

The property has a wide frontage of about 47.1 metres or 155 feet along Lady Hill Road.

Conservation buildings cannot be torn down and any redevelopment would have to be in accordance with Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) guidelines. Regarding the bungalow along Lady Hill Road, observers point to the potential of building extensions on part of the vacant land, subject to URA approval.

Bungalows in the 39 gazetted GCB Areas are the most prestigious form of landed housing in Singapore, with strict planning conditions to preserve their exclusivity and low-rise character. With only around 2,700 such properties on the island, there is thus “rarity value” to owning one of these homes.

One generally has to be a Singapore citizen to be allowed to buy a landed property in a GCB Area.

Just eight deals totalling S$208m in H1 2023

According to an analysis of URA Realis caveats data by List Sotheby’s International Realty (List SIR), there were eight transactions in GCB Areas totalling S$207.8 million in the first half of this year, down from the 28 deals amounting to S$691.4 million in the first half of 2022.

For the whole of 2022, the tally was 44 deals totalling nearly S$1.2 billion, easing from the banner year of 2021, when 90 transactions adding up to nearly S$2.6 billion were sealed. (List SIR downloaded the URA data on Jul 10, 2023 with the latest transaction dated May 30, 2023.)

These figures exclude transactions for which buyers have not lodged caveats. Examples would be the four bungalows in Nassim Road bought for a total of about S$295 million this year.

The buyer is the Fangiono family behind Singapore-listed palm oil producer First Resources.

The GCB market entered a consolidation phase after the strong run-up in 2021.

“The widening price gap between sellers and buyers’ expectations has slowed deals,” said List SIR research director Han Huan Mei.

“In the aftermath of the latest residential property cooling measures rolled out in late-April, most GCB market participants have moved to the sidelines to assess the situation,” she added.

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