The latest condominium to climb on the en bloc bandwagon is the Villa D’Este on Dalvey Road in prime district 10. The freehold site currently holds 12 apartment units ranging from 3,456 sq ft to 3,949 sq ft and 10 owners have already agreed to putting the site up for sale. And the asking price? $96 million.
The pros for this site is that there are no development charges and with the $96 million price tag it comes with, that works out to be about $1,730 psf for the 55,480 sq ft land site. Land acquisition moves by developers have been aggressive this year and quite a few collective sales efforts have come to fruition and more mature residential establishments are feeling confident about putting themselves out there.
Other properties which have started their en bloc sales process recently are The Albracca, Serangoon Ville and Tampines Court with the latter 2 being former HUDCs. The Villa D’Este is a private property with relatively few units on site, which could mean each owner getting $7.5 to $8 million from the sale. And its location would attract developers since it is rare to find a site so close to a Good Class Bungalow (GCB) area. This could translate to promising sales of projects eventually launched here as the area is popular with expatriates and also provides the exclusivity of ambience and address. Other private land plots which were sold this year included One Tree Hill Gardens, Goh & Goh Building, Rio Casa and Eunosville.
The Dalvey Road site holds the potential to yield 1 to 3 GCBs or 24 new apartment units sized approximately at 2,000 sq ft. There was a previous collective sale attempt in 2015 for $115 million.
