Court Clears UOL, CapitaLand to Complete $637M Purchase of Singapore Condo Complex

A joint venture of UOL and CapitaLand Development is a step closer to the collective purchase of a Singapore condo complex for S$810 million ($637.4 million) after the city-state’s High Court granted a sale order on Tuesday.

The collective sale of Thomson View on Bright Hill Drive had hit a snag over clerical errors in May after receiving the required support and consent from at least 80 percent of residents at the 1987-vintage building.

Last October the JV revealed plans to transform the Thomson View site — comprising 54 townhouses and a 29-storey block of 200 apartments — into a 1,240-unit condominium to capitalise on limited supply in the Upper Thomson area. More details on the development plans are to be announced in due course, according to a joint statement released Tuesday by UOL CEO Liam Wee Sin and CapitaLand Development Singapore CEO Ronald Tay.

“We are pleased to expand our joint venture portfolio with this strategic acquisition,” they said. “The progress of this sale puts us on track to leverage our combined expertise to rejuvenate and contribute to the vibrancy of this prime estate.”

Winding Road

The 50:50 JV is split between Temasek-controlled CapitaLand Development and an 80:20 vehicle of SGX-listed UOL and its SingLand affiliate. The partners previously teamed up to win a condo site on Holland Drive for S$805.4 million in May of last year and a mixed-use site in Tampines for S$1.2 billion in 2023.

Located less than a 10-minute walk from Upper Thomson MRT station, Thomson View first went up for collective sale in November 2021 at a reserve price of S$950 million. That failed exercise was followed by a May 2022 relaunch at the same price, but no deal materialised.

The owners initiated a third attempt at a collective sale in February of last year at a S$918 million reserve price and again in July at the same price. After a further attempt closed without a bid in September, sale advisor Edmund Tie (now ETC) announced that 60 percent of the owners had agreed to reduce the reserve price to $808 million.

UOL and CapitaLand signed an option agreement for the collective purchase at a price of S$810 million in October and exercised the option in November.

“The collective sale journey is rarely linear, but we are proud to have guided the owners through the challenges with clarity and conviction — especially under our first appointment acting as the estate’s exclusive marketing agent,” said Swee Shou Fern, head of investment advisory at ETC. “We’re deeply grateful for their trust in ETC and pleased to have brought the sale successfully across the line.”

Hard to Come By

As the only residential collective sale deal last year, Thomson View marks Singapore’s largest residential collective sale transaction since Chuan Park in Serangoon sold to Chinese builders Kingsford and MCC for S$860 million in May 2023, according to ETC.

In February of this year, River Valley Apartments on River Valley Road in District 10 changed hands for S$56 million in a collective sale, matching the tender’s guide price just over a month and a half after the sale effort began.

Three months later, the collective sale of Hillcrest Arcadia in Bukit Timah moved into private treaty talks after a tender closed with no bids. The condominium received expressions of interest from several parties that were below the S$920 million asking price, Huttons Asia told the Business Times.