Two good class bungalows were sold at auctions this week - 2A/2B/2C/2D White House Road at $19.03 million or $566 per sq ft of land area

Two good class bungalows were sold at auctions this week - 2A/2B/2C/2D White House Road at $19.03 million or $566 per sq ft of land area, and 3C Swettenham Road, which fetched $16.5 million or $640 psf of land area. Both properties are freehold.

3C Swettenham Road, with a land area of 25,802 sq ft, was sold at a DTZ Debenham Tie Leung auction on Tuesday. The buyer is believed to be a Mr Lim, an industrialist with a factory in Tuas. He is believed to have bought the bungalow to live in after renovations.

It was sold with vacant possession by mortgagee bank HSBC. The opening bid sought for the property at the auction was $17.8 million, but there were no takers at this price. Instead a bidder made a counter offer of $15.8 million. Bids increased gradually to $16.5 million, when it was sold.

3C Swettenham Road had been offered at an auction last year and fetched a top offer of $12 million, which was not high enough for HSBC, BT understands.

DTZ’s auction, conducted at Amara Hotel, also saw two other properties being sold. One was a three-bedroom freehold apartment at Wilkie Vale at Wilkie Road (near Sophia Road) which fetched $1.05 million or $912 psf based on the unit’s 1,151 sq ft strata area. Another was a 1,001-sq ft freehold apartment at Casa Sarina in District 14 which changed hands for $560,000 or $560 psf.

Colliers International successfully sold the White House Road bungalow, with a 33,610 sq ft land area, at an auction yesterday. Two old bungalows stand on the site but provisional permission has been granted for the site to be subdivided into two plots. The new owner, a Singaporean, is expected to build two new bungalows on the site.

Other properties sold at the auction included an office unit on the seventh floor of Peace Centre at Sophia Road, which fetched $2.5 million or $656 psf based on its floor area of 3,810 sq ft. Peace Centre, with a remaining lease of 62 years, has been put up for en bloc sale, together with the next-door Peace Mansions. The expression of interest for the en bloc sale of the two properties closed in May.

At the same auction, a three-bedroom apartment at the 999-year Cashew Heights off Upper Bukit Timah Road was sold for $1.22 million or $736 psf. Cashew Heights, with a land area of over 900,000 sq ft, is also said to have potential for a collective sale.

Source: The Business Times, 12 July 2007