The Housing & Development Board (HDB) has accepted an application under the Reserve List system to put up an Executive Condominium (EC) residential land parcel at Sengkang East Avenue / Buangkok Drive for public tender. HDB will launch the tender for the land parcel in about two weeks' time.

The land parcel has a site area of 17,001.3 sq m with a maximum Gross Floor Area of 51,003.9 sq m. It is estimated to hold 465 units. The minimum bid is $103.8 million.

PropNex CEO Mohamed Ismail commented,” The minimum bid price is about $189 psf so the successful bid should be between $200 psf and $230 psf. Developers should be able to break even at around $500 psf after construction and other costs, and the selling price should be around $550 – 600 psf, which is still about 25% below similar mass market prices for private properties.”

Given the slowly increasing gap between private property and HDB prices, Ismail feels that the time is right for the launch of more ECs to cater to the sandwich class of those who may not qualify for a HDB flat yet are unable to afford a private property.

There are two remaining EC sites in Jurong West and Punggol in the Reserve List of the 1H2010 Government Land Sales (GLS) programme. They can yield about 1,080 dwelling units.

URA stated that the Government will continue to monitor the EC market closely and more sites will be made available in the 2nd Half 2010 GLS programme.