PROPERTY developer GuocoLand has bought Toho Garden, a condominium near Serangoon Gardens, for $62.5 million through a collective sale.

PROPERTY developer GuocoLand has bought Toho Garden, a condominium near Serangoon Gardens, for $62.5 million through a collective sale.

The acquisition price works out to $594 per sq ft per plot ratio, including a development charge of $9.8 million.

Toho Garden is located on Yio Chu Kang Road, near the junction of Ang Mo Kio Avenue 3 and Hougang Avenue 2.

It is the smallest of five major residential land purchases made in Singapore by GuocoLand in the past two years.

The purchase price comes below its March acquisition of Palm Beach Garden in the East Coast area for $75 million.

The company’s other land purchases are:

The former Casa Rosita site on Bukit Timah Road, where the firm is building Goodwood Residence;

Sophia Court, near the Dhoby Ghaut MRT Station; and

Leedon Heights, off Holland Road.

All five plots are freehold sites and bring GuocoLand’s land bank in Singapore to just below two million sq ft.

They give GuocoLand ‘a strong and interesting pipeline of projects on freehold land’, said GuocoLand Singapore managing director Trina Loh.

Toho Garden sits on a 86,900 sq ft plot and has a plot ratio of 1.4, giving it a gross floor area of 121,600 sq ft.

GuocoLand plans to build a mid-range five-storey condominium comprising about 100 apartments on the site.

The plot is located in an area of mostly landed properties and is near the Central and Seletar expressways.

GuocoLand’s luxury condominium, Goodwood Residence - which has not been launched yet - recently won Singapore’s highest accolade for green buildings.

The developer clinched the Building and Construction Authority’s Green Mark Platinum Award for its high environmental standards.

Shares of GuocoLand ended unchanged at $5.55 last Friday.

Source : Straits Times - 22 Oct 2007