A mere month after an Orchard Road commercial building set a new city-wide mark, an office tower in downtown Singapore has recorded its highest-ever price paid per square foot after a set of strata units in the building sold for a total of S$32.68 million ($24.7 million).
The commercial units in the Southpoint building at 200 Cantonment Road in Tanjong Pagar span more than 10,893 square feet (1,012 square metres), which sets the deal at a record-high S$3,000 per square foot, according to Savills Singapore. The names of the buyers and sellers were not disclosed.
The sale price for the units in the 16-storey building represents a nearly 23 percent increase on the S$2,444 per square foot paid in 2019 for the 10th and 11th floors at Southpoint, which has a total area of 239,927 square feet. The previous deal and this latest sale were both brokered by Yap Hui Yee, executive director of investment sales and capital markets at Savills Singapore.
“It’s a strong testament that with Savills’ unparalleled local market knowledge, we are able to advise our clients to achieve the highest price and best exit strategy for their acquisition,” Yap said Wednesday in a release.
Fragrance Project Next Door
Located near the junction of Cantonment Link and Hoe Chiang Road, Southpoint overlooks where Koh Wee Meng’s Fragrance Group is building a combined hotel and commercial project on the former Tower Fifteen site at 15 Hoe Chiang Road.
Built in 1985, Southpoint is situated within a 15-minute walk of the Tanjong Pagar and Outram MRT stations, as well as the future Cantonment station, which will close the Circle Line gap between the HarbourFront and Marina Bay stations upon its opening in 2026.
Savills also highlighted the freehold commercial property’s proximity to the Greater Southern Waterfront, a key redevelopment project that envisions 9,000 new homes along the nearby coast.
The win for Yap comes after her recent promotion from director of investment sales and capital markets to executive director. Before joining Savills in 2019, the National University of Singapore grad spent more than five years at rival CBRE, where her last title was associate director.
Ming Arcade Milestone
The strata sale at Southpoint follows closely after last month’s news that Royal Group had agreed to buy the Ming Arcade commercial building near the Orchard Road shopping strip for S$172 million ($126.7 million), or S$3,125 per square foot of accommodation.
The amount paid by the firm controlled by local property magnate Asok Kumar Hiranandani will surpass the previous all-time high of S$2,910 per square foot for an en-bloc deal, which was set by Hong Kong’s Shun Tak Holdings when it purchased the Park House residential project on Nassim Road in 2018.
Royal Group is likely to demolish the 1982-vintage building and begin developing a new structure on the freehold site around the second half of 2023, according to Jeremy Lake, managing director of investment sales and capital markets at Savills Singapore, who brokered the deal.
Booking record deals at a time of heightened economic uncertainty is both a sign of Singapore’s resilient commercial property market and of the growing importance of private investors in the city-state, Lake said in December.
In November, Indonesia’s Widjaja family had set a record when it sold a set of strata office assets in the Thong Teck Building at 15 Scotts Road, near the intersection with Orchard Road, for the equivalent of S$4,028 per square foot.
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