Record bid for Punggol EC site

SINGAPORE - A residential site for an executive condominium (EC) in Punggol East, next to Flo Residence condo, has drawn a record bid for a Punggol EC site in a seven-way contest.

The top bid of $351 per sq ft per plot ratio (psf ppr) exceeded those for more centrally located EC sites in Punggol.

"This shows that EC land prices are trending up," said Mr Ong Teck Hui, Jones Lang LaSalle Real Estate's national director of research and consultancy.

"Optimism in the EC sales market has led to increased interest in EC sites among developers and a willingness to bid more enthusiastically for them."

The top bid of $162.1 million came from Sing Holdings.

Translating to $351 psf ppr, this price easily trumped the $270 to $329 psf ppr range that analysts had predicted when the tender opened in mid-October.

It was nearly 9 per cent higher than the second highest bid of $148.9 million submitted by boutique property developer JBE Holdings.

Most of the other tenders were between $141 million and $144 million.

Other bidders included Frasers Centrepoint unit FCL Place, Qingjian Realty and Bellevue Properties, a unit under City Developments that was incorporated on Nov 19.

The lowest bid was $138.8 million from Chip Eng Seng unit CEL Property.

The 14,306.9 sq m site in Punggol Field Walk has a maximum gross floor area of 42,920.7 sq m and could yield 435 units.

Analysts said this record bid for an EC site in Punggol indicated a trend of rising EC land prices.

The site is more than 2km away from Punggol MRT station and town centre, but the bid price was still higher than those for two closer sites.

One is an EC site in Punggol Way/Punggol Walk which fetched $314 psf ppr in September and went to Qingjian Realty.

The other is the Waterbay EC site which garnered a top bid of $320 psf ppr in March.