Changi Garden sold en bloc to Chip Eng Seng for $248.8m, 27% above asking price

Changi Garden houses 60 apartments. Chip Eng Seng plans to build a low-rise condominium with 320 units. PHOTO: EDMUND TIE & CO

SINGAPORE - Mainboard-listed Chip Eng Seng has won the collective sale tender for Changi Garden with a bid of S$248.8 million, about 27 per cent above the asking price of $196 million.

The freehold property, located at the junction of Upper Changi Road North and Jalan Mariam, houses 60 apartments, 12 penthouses and 12 shops.

With this selling price, an apartment owner will receive between $2.14 million and $2.27 million, while a penthouse owner will receive between $4.03 million and $4.74 million, said consultant Edmund Tie & Co.

Shop owners are expected to receive $4.7 million to $7.08 million.

One big selling point for Changi Garden is that there has not been any residential land sold within a 2.8km radius of the property since 2013, noted Mr Tan Chun Ming, Edmund Tie & Co's director of investment advisory.

The purchase price works out to $888 per sq ft per plot ratio for the 200,093 sq ft site.

The site is zoned residential at a plot ratio of 1.4. Owing to a high development baseline, there is no development charge.

Chip Eng Seng, which made the bid through its unit CEL Real Estate Development, intends to build a low-rise condominium with full facilities, totalling some 320 units and potentially some retail shops.

The company began in the 1960s as a building subcontractor before becoming a major Housing Board contractor. It diversified in the 1990s into property investment and development both locally and overseas.

Most recently, Chip Eng Seng beat out stiff competition to bag a 99-year residential site in Woodleigh Lane just next to Woodleigh MRT for $700.7 million, or $1,110 psf ppr. The government land sale site, which will be adjacent to the upcoming Bidadari New Town, can accommodate 735 units.

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