ADVERTISEMENT

Singapore Land Gets Record S$1 Billion Bid From China Buyers

Singapore Land Gets Record S$1 Billion Bid From Chinese Buyers

(Bloomberg) -- A residential plot in Singapore may fetch a record price for a government land sale, with a Chinese consortium putting in the highest bid at S$1 billion ($718 million).

Logan Property (Singapore) Co. and Nanshan Group Singapore Co. submitted the highest bid in the Stirling Road land auction that closed Thursday, according to a statement from the Urban Redevelopment Authority. The winning bid will be decided once the offers have been evaluated.

The price would be equivalent to S$1,050 per square foot of gross floor area, translating into the highest absolute price paid for a residential plot, according to Cushman & Wakefield Inc. The plot can house about 1,110 units, according to URA estimates.

“It’s the first time for a pure residential site to cross the S$1 billion mark,” said Christine Li, director of research for Singapore at Cushman & Wakefield. “The participation from 13 local and foreign developers shows the sheer amount of liquidity in the market as S$11 billion is going after a plum site.”

Hunger for Singapore land is adding to signs the city’s housing market is making a comeback after three years of declining prices. With new home sales surging after an easing of property restrictions in March, developers are becoming more aggressive in bidding at land auctions. On average, they’ve paid a 29 percent premium, the highest level in at least five years, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

“The strong bid and healthy local participation reflects developers’ optimism on Singapore residential property,” UOB Kay Hian Pte. analysts Vikrant Pandey and Derek Chang said in a note. They expect housing prices to move in line with GDP growth of 2 percent to 4 percent in 2018, after bottoming out this year at about 15 percent to 20 percent below the peak set in the third quarter of 2013.

Top Bid

The top bid came from a joint venture between Logan Property Holdings Co., a Hong Kong-listed developer which has developments in Shenzhen and the Pearl River Delta region, and China’s Nanshan Group. Nanshan has been active in Singapore’s government land auctions, participating in eight of 11 tenders in the past 12 months, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

“The winning bid is an anticipatory one -- looking forward to a possible tweak of measures in the pipeline or some form of market recovery,” said Desmond Sim, head of research for Singapore and South East Asia at CBRE Group Inc.

Logan Property shares rose 2.2 percent as of 10:36 a.m. in Hong Kong, taking this year’s gain to 45 percent.

MCL Land (Everbright) Pte. was the second-highest bidder at S$925.7 million.

To contact the reporter on this story: Pooja Thakur in Singapore at pthakur@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam at sbhaktavatsa@bloomberg.net, Peter Vercoe