Developers in fierce competition for Sembawang Greenvale site

by Travis Teo
05:55 AM Oct 29, 2010

SINGAPORE - The private landed-property sector shows no sign of cooling, with nearly a hundred developers vying for a piece of the Sembawang Greenvale site.

Held by the Urban Redevelopment Authority yesterday (URA), the auction saw fierce bidding for the 14 land parcels at the site.

Winning bids fetched between $2.25 million and $26.15 million at URA's first landed-property land-sales auction in more than two years.

The land parcels range from 417 sq m to nearly 3,800 sq m and can potentially yield about 115 landed housing units.

On average each parcel received about 50 bids, with each bid adding between $20,000 and $50,000 to the price.

Analysts said that winning prices were higher then they had expected.

They said this is due to strong pent-up demand from developers in the landed-property segment.

"From today's auction's results we can see that some of the small developers are very confident of the landed housing market in the months ahead," said Mr Nicholas Mak, executive director of research and consultancy at SLP International.

"Going forward, this segment of the market will be quite resilient, even with the recent government cooling measures," he added.

The winners were mostly smaller developers and construction firms.

They were drawn to the sites as they have the flexibility to pre-design and manufacture the homes off-site and put them together on-site.

"We are going to use a pre-cast concept, so that we can come up with the building in a very short period," said Mr Vincent Chua, managing director of Techcom Construction & Trading, adding that he aimed to complete the project in six to nine months.

Analysts said developers will build terrace houses that will likely fetch up to $2.2 million, while bungalows will fetch up to $4 million each.

Industry watchers expect private home prices to rise by 32 to 38 per cent this year.

In light of the highly favourable response, analysts expect the URA to organise more private land-sales auctions, if more land becomes available.

Source: http://www.todayonline.com