Holland Village area could be set if Willyn Ville achieves its asking price of $120 million

AS the collective sales push powers on, a new benchmark for the Holland Village area could be set if Willyn Ville achieves its asking price of $120 million.

This works out to about $2,153 per square foot per plot ratio (psf ppr) for the 39,802 sq ft freehold site with a 1.4 plot ratio and gross floor area of 55,722 sq ft. No development charge is payable.

The breakeven price for the future development would be around $2,500 psf, putting it clearly in the luxury league of homes, said Dev Raj, senior manager of investments at Chesterton International, which is marketing Willyn Ville.

The collective sales market may not be showing signs of a full recovery since the US sub-prime crisis put a damper on investor confidence but Mr Raj says: ‘We have tested the asking price with both local and overseas investors - mainly from the Middle East - and the interest has been strong.’

The asking price is higher than other developments in the area also for sale, including Villa delle Rose at $1,758 psf ppr and The Estoril for $1,536 psf ppr.

However, anyone going to Holland Village will have noticed Willyn Ville’s extremely close proximity to the upcoming Holland Village MRT station and Mr Raj believes this is one of the site’s key attributes.

He estimates that about 25 units of about 2,200 sq ft can be built. This puts the asking price of each unit at about $6 million, based on the indicative price.

Over in the East Coast, on Upper East Coast Road, Credo Real Estate is marketing Rich East Garden for collective sale and the indicative price is between $90 million and $95 million. This works out to about $619 to $653 psf ppr (including development charge) for the 105,000 sq ft site with a 1.4 plot ratio.

Credo managing director Karamjit Singh estimates that the site may be configured into about 100 apartment units with an average size of 1,400 sq ft.

According to a study by an architect Credo commissioned, the developer of the site could also choose to build 3½-storey strata mixed landed houses, with a combination of strata terraces, strata semi-detached and strata detached houses.

The property was put up for sale by tender earlier in July and Mr Singh said that there were a number of interested parties. But market sentiment had turned due to the volatility in the local and global stock markets then. This has impacted the new indicative price $95 million slightly. It was $92 million previously.

‘Now that sentiment has improved significantly, and with the launches of other redevelopment sites recently at relatively high asking prices, we feel that developers will find Rich East Garden to be an attractive proposition,’ he added.

Source : Business Times - 23 October 2007