Published January 26, 2006
Hoi Hup bags Kim Yam Mansion in $63m collective sale
By KALPANA RASHIWALA
PROPERTY developer Hoi Hup, part of Straits Construction Group, is understood to have bagged the 877-year leasehold Kim Yam Mansion, off River Valley Road, for about $63 million through a collective sale.
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Kim Yam Mansion is the first collective sale to benefit from a new law that took effect last month, facilitating en bloc sales of estates where the original landowner/developer retains the freehold title despite giving flat owners leases ranging from 850 to just under 999 years.
In such estates, strata titles were not issued under an old law, so the developer issued long leases instead. In the past, some of these landowners demanded hefty payments - amounting to millions of dollars - before they would consent to an en bloc sale.
This ate into proceeds for the flat owners, sometimes effectively blocking an en bloc deal.
Jones Lang LaSalle, Kim Yam's marketing agent, worked with real estate lawyer S K Phang to highlight the anomaly in the law to the authorities.
This was fixed through an amendment to the Land Titles (Strata) Act that took effect on Dec 1, under which such landowners lose all rights to the land upon an en bloc sale.
The Singapore Land Authority has said that in all, 24 sites will be affected by the rule change - but did not identify them to protect the privacy of the present unit owners.