The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) announced today that it has accepted an application from a developer to put up the residential site at Hougang Avenue 2 for public tender. The site is one of the sites on the Reserve List of the first half 2010 Government Land Sales (GLS) Programme.

The land parcel has a site area of about 3.02 ha and is slated for a low density condominium, flats or landed housing development. It was made available for sale through the Reserve List system on 25 February 2010. A developer has committed to bid for the land parcel at the public tender at a price of not less than $109.9 million.

Li Hiaw Ho, Executive Director, CBRE Research observed,” The site is situated at the junction of Hougang Avenue 2 and Yio Chu Kang Road, surrounded by mostly landed homes such as Park Villas and Princeton Vale. The apartment developments in the neighbourhood include Nouvelle Park, Toho Green and the soon-to-be completed Fontaine Parry. It is also close to the amenities in Hougang HDB estate. The site is about 10 minutes’ drive from either Hougang or Kovan MRT stations. URA has allowed the site to be developed into a low-rise condominium up to five storeys or three-storey landed homes. “

According to Li, recent new apartment projects launched in the vicinity include Residences Botanique (81 units) and Wembley Residences (33 units) at around $990 psf and $850 psf on the average in the past six months. The terrace and semi-detached houses in the new cluster projects in the neighbourhood, such as Jansen 8 (10 units), Water Villas (15 units) and Verdana Villas (36 units), were sold at between $1.8 million and $3.0 million. All these are freehold projects.

 “Assuming a low-rise condominium of around 400 units will be built on-site, the subject site is likely to fetch a land price of $140 million-$160 million ($310 psf/plot ratio-$350 psf/plot ratio). Alternatively, at about the same land price, around 200 units of cluster houses can be considered for strata landed housing development,” offered Li.

URA will launch the public tender for the site in about two weeks. The tender period for the land parcel will be about four weeks.