Commonwealth Ave site attracts S$562.8m top bid

A residential site (pictured below) at Commonwealth Avenue attracted just three bids when its public tender closed 5th February 2013.

Launched for sale on 18 December, the 99-year leasehold site has a land area of 130,101 sq ft and maximum gross floor area (GFA) of 637,496 sq ft.

A consortium comprising Intrepid Investments, Verwood Holdings and Hong Realty submitted the highest bid of S$562.8 million or S$883 psf on the site’s GFA. This was followed by Acresvale Investment with an offer of S$549.3 million (S$862 psf/GFA).

Desmond Sim, Associate Director, CBRE Research said: “The site is nestled in the Queenstown HDB estate, just across the street from Queenstown MRT Station. It is the first of several pockets of land that are on the GLS’ (Government Land Sales) reserve list. The sale of this site is in line with the government’s plan to rejuvenate the Queenstown-Dawson district and bring in new, young families.”

He added: “The latest cooling measures may have played a part in drawing a lower-than-usual number of bids. However, the large quantum of more than S$500 million filtered out many other players and kept it to a close fight between the bigger players. We expect the breakeven to be around S$1,350 psf and the launch price to be around S$1,600 psf.”

The land parcel is expected to yield around 700 housing units.