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Spanish Village condo up for collective sale for second time

This article is more than 12 months old

226-unit freehold property in Farrer Road still has guide price of $882 million

The Spanish Village condominium in Farrer Road has been put up for collective sale for the second time in recent months, with no change to its $882 million guide price.

The 226-unit freehold property in affluent District 10 made its first attempt to sell en bloc in June but had no takers.

Mr Tan Chun Ming, senior director of investment advisory at market agent Edmund Tie & Company, said the site has an in-principle approval for 703 units from the Land Transport Authority.

The relaunch comes as the collective sale fever that started in 2016 shows signs of slowing.

Colliers International said 54 collective sale tenders - seven with commercial components - have closed without a sale so far this year.

This compares with 33 deals worth $9.89 billion that have been completed, said Cushman & Wakefield Singapore senior director Christine Li.

Ms Li said 64 sales worth $19.1 billion were completed from the second quarter of 2016, when collective sale deals started taking off, to Oct 15.

The collective sale tender for the Windy Heights freehold condo in Kembangan closed on Oct 10 without a taker too, The Straits Times understands.

Spanish Village's relaunch also follows the move, announced last Wednesday, to cut the maximum number of residential units allowed in new private condo developments.

This would reduce the number of shoebox units built, with the aim of preventing local infrastructure from being overtaxed by excessive development.

The revised rules will apply for development applications submitted to the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) from Jan 17 next year, so a developer that buys Spanish Village may skirt the more stringent guidelines before they kick in.

The URA move is the latest in a series of measures this year that has helped slow down the property market.

A heftier additional buyer's stamp duty was imposed in July, a move that shocked industry players, who had been holding out hope for the opposite to happen.

And last month, the development charge rates for redeveloping land were raised. These included an increase of 9.8 per cent for non-landed residential areas on average for 118 sectors.

Edmund Tie & Company, which is Spanish Village's marketing agent, said in a statement that development charge rates for the property's sector in Farrer Road remained unchanged.

The condo, which was completed in the 1980s, is on a sprawling 331,457 sq ft site directly across the Empress Road Market & Food Centre and near Holland Village, Chip Bee Gardens and Dempsey Hill.

It is also within 1km of Nanyang Primary School.

The tender closes on Nov 20 at 3pm.

Property