Chinese couple buys two adjacent units at The Ritz-Carlton Residences for record $5,3

[New Reporter]

Chinese couple buys two adjacent units at The Ritz-Carlton Residences for record $5,397 psf

January 22, 2024

On Jan 9, two adjacent units on the 33rd floor of the luxury condo, The Ritz-Carlton Residences, changed hands for $16.5 million each, based on caveats lodged. Both are 3,057 sq ft, four-bedroom apartments.

The $16.5 million price worked out to $5,397 psf, the highest psf price achieved since The Ritz-Carlton Residences debuted in December 2007. The 58-unit, freehold condo on Cairnhill Road in prime District 9 was completed in 2011.

At The Ritz-Carlton Residences, typical units are a mix of three-bedroom apartments of 2,831 sq ft (36 units) and four-bedroom apartments of 3,057 sq ft (18 units). On the 34th floor are two junior penthouses of 3,574 sq ft each, while the 35th and 36th floors are occupied by two duplex penthouses of 6,501 sq ft each.

A property title search revealed that one of the four-bedroom apartments on the 33rd floor was purchased by Yuan Yonggang, chairman of Suzhou Dongshan Precision Manufacturing Co. This Shenzhen Stock Exchange-listed company focuses on designing and manufacturing precision sheet metal.

Yuan's wife, Wang Wenjuan, purchased the neighbouring unit. The combined purchase for both units is $33 million. If this is their first home in Singapore, the couple, both Singapore Permanent Residents (PRs), need only pay an additional buyer's stamp duty (ABSD) of 5%. That works out to an ABSD of $825,000 each for their respective units or $1.65 million for both.

The two units were purchased from different sellers. Yuan had purchased his unit from Jayden Jin De. Based on a Google search and his LinkedIn profile, Jin, a Singapore citizen, was a professional race kart driver for nine years and is now a student at UCL.

Wang's unit was purchased from Ong Chih Ching, executive chairman and executive director of listed company KOP Ltd. Ong was also the chairman and co-founder of KOP Properties, the developer of The Ritz-Carlton Residences, regarded as the first Ritz-Carlton branded private residences outside North America.

KOP Properties also developed the nearby Hamilton at Scotts (now known as Reignwood Hamilton Scotts), completed in 2012. It was once the tallest high-rise residential tower with sky garages.

Yuan and Wang are likely to amalgamate their four-bedroom units at The Ritz-Carlton Residences to create a 6,114 sq ft unit with private lift access. It will not be the first time someone has done so.

However, those combined units were mainly the three-bedroom apartments on the lower floors. For instance, in March 2017, a foreign buyer purchased two 2,831 sq ft, three-bedroom units on the 10th floor for $9.41 million ($3,325 psf) each. He intended to combine them into a single unit.

KOP Properties has also sold several units on such a basis by reconfiguring and amalgamating two 2,831 sq ft, three-bedroom units into a single 5,662 sq five-bedroom apartment across an entire floor. Based on caveats lodged, one such 5,662 sq ft unit on the 15th floor was sold for $20 million ($3,532 psf) in Oct 2019, while another on the fifth floor fetched $20.28 million ($3,582 psf) in May 2021.

More at: https://www.edgeprop.sg/property-new...ecord-5397-psf

[New Reporter]

Two units at The Ritz-Carlton Residences sold for S$16.5 million each, or $S5,397 psf

It’s the first time since June 2023 that prime prices have crossed the S$5,000 psf mark

Jan 22, 2024


The two units at The Ritz-Carlton Residences are each 3.057 sq ft in size and on the 33rd floor of the 58-unit freehold development.
PHOTO: THE RITZ-CARLTON

TWO adjacent units in luxury development The Ritz-Carlton Residences Singapore, Cairnhill were recently sold for S$16.5 million each or S$5,397 per square feet (psf) – making it the first time since June 2023 that prices in the prime residential market have crossed the S$5,000 psf mark.

Based on caveats data from URA Realis, the two units are each 3,057 square feet (sq ft) in size and sit on the 33rd floor of the 58-unit freehold development in District 9. They were transacted on Jan 9 for a total of S$33 million.

Last June, when transaction prices for luxury homes in the prime Core Central Region (CCR) last crossed the S$5,000 psf mark, a 6,179 sq ft unit on the second floor of luxury condo Les Maisons Nassim in District 10 was sold for S$32.7 million, or S$5,300 psf.

On a psf basis, CCR prices hit their highest in 2011, when a 3,089 sq ft unit at The Marq on Paterson Hill went for S$6,650 psf or S$20.5 million. The priciest apartment sold in Singapore to date is a Les Maison Nassim penthouse that went for S$75 million or S$6,210 psf, in October 2021.

The latest sale, while not a record for the CCR, marked a new high for the Ritz-Carlton project, where the psf price hit S$4,907 in October 2021, for a 3,057 sq ft unit on the 31st floor. That unit transacted at S$15 million.

Still, some analysts cautioned that this is unlikely to signal a recovery in the prime sector, where foreign buying has evaporated since the hike in Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty (ABSD) last April.

According to EdgeProp, the two Ritz-Carlton units were bought separately by Yuan Yonggang, chairman of Chinese manufacturing company Suzhou Dongshan Precision Manufacturing Co, and his wife, Wang Wenjuan. Both are understood to be permanent residents (PRs) in Singapore.

Alan Cheong, Savills Singapore executive director of research and consultancy, said that if these units are the couple’s first home purchases in Singapore, they would each face an ABSD of 5 per cent. This would amount to around S$825,000 in ABSD for each unit.

The 5 per cent ABSD for PRs is “quite a reasonable amount” compared to other cities in the world, said Cheong. In Hong Kong, for instance, non-permanent residents now pay Buyer’s Stamp Duty of 7.5 per cent. This was lowered from 15 per cent in October last year to revive the property market.

“The elephant in the room (remains) the high ABSD ... Foreigners still need to pay 60 per cent in ABSD. This is a real dampener for demand,” Cheong said. This is especially so for the prime CCR market, demand in which is typically driven by foreign buyers.

The latest Ritz-Carlton deals were brokered by PropNex. Wong Siew Ying, PropNex head of research and content, said the buyers had purchased the property since it “ticked all the boxes” and met their needs.

“That being said, we reckon one swallow doesn’t make a summer, and two such deals do not necessarily signal that wealthy Chinese buyers are returning in a significant way,” she said.

Data from URA Realis showed that since the doubling in ABSD rates for foreigners, the number of foreign home buyers in the CCR has plunged. In December last year, just 14 non-landed private homes were bought by foreign non-permanent residents, compared to 74 such buys in December 2022.

This trend is likely to continue so long as ABSD rates remain “insurmountably” high, said Cheong.

Nonetheless, Huttons’ senior director of data analytics Lee Sze Teck pointed out that there has been a pickup in interest in large, prime luxury homes among China buyers since the start of 2024. “Many of them have made arrangements to view properties during the Chinese New Year period,” he said.

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/pro...h-or-s5397-psf