Singapore’s NTUC Selling Commercial Building Near Dhoby Ghaut for $109M

Singapore’s NTUC Enterprise is continuing the sell-down of its property holdings with a deal to dispose of an office building near Dhoby Ghaut MRT interchange for S$147 million ($109 million), according to sources familiar with the transaction who spoke with Mingtiandi.

Income Insurance, a unit of NTUC Enterprise, is selling Prinsep House, a commercial block which measures 48,974 square feet (4,550 square metres) by net lettable area, to a company belonging to the Lim family which controls Midview Group, the sources said, confirming an earlier report by the Business Times.

With the 999-year leasehold building trading at the equivalent of just over S$3000 per square foot of net lettable area, property consultants see the deal as sign that investors in the city-state are ready to make deals.

“Buyers have been coming out of hibernation this year and many are actively looking for deals in Singapore albeit some are more cautious than others,” said Jeremy Lake, a managing director who heads the investment sales and capital markets team at Savills.

Buy to Hold

Income Insurance had put the 11-storey building at 30 Prinsep Street on the market at the beginning of the year through a formal expression of interest exercise at an asking price of S$157 million. The expression of interest exercise had been scheduled to conclude on 7 February, with inquiries to Income Insurance regarding the transaction not having received a response by the time of publication.

The Lim family, who are said to be acquiring the property, have developed industrial projects such as Midview City in Sin Ming Lane and Tradehub21 on Boon Lay Way.

The clan has also built a number of landed homes on Upper Changi Road in northeastern Singapore, according to market sources, as well as controlling an office project at Mountbatten Square under a short term lease from the Urban Redevelopment Authority.

The family is said to acquiring the property as a long-term investment or potentially for use as their corporate headquarters, with the location benefiting from close proximity to MRT stations at Bencoolen and Bras Basah in addition to the Dhoby Ghaut interchange.

The 1992-vintage asset occupies a 15,000 square foot site and hosts a WeWork location across six of its office floors, with retail space on the ground level. Refurbished in 2013, the property has parking on its second through fifth levels.

Everything Must Go

The sale of Prinsep House, which had formerly been known as NTUC Income Prinsep Street, is the latest in a series of property disposals by entities linked to NTUC Enterprise.

In December NTUC Enterprise agreed to sell 18 neighborhood shopping centres in a pair of deals totalling S$255 million, with those transactions reducing its retail holdings to 12 supermarkets spanning 185,000 square feet.

During 2022 and 2023, Mercatus, which formerly served as the property investment management unit of NTUC Enterprise sold $3.8 billion in commercial properties.

In January of last year Mercatus divested its half-stake in the NEX mall in Serangoon district to Frasers Property and Frasers Centrepoint Trust for S$652.5 million, with that deal coming shortly after it sold the Jurong Point and Swing By @ Thomson Plaza retail assets to Link REIT in December 2022.

In July 2022, Income Insurance sold the 16 Collyer Quay office tower in Raffles Place to Bright Ruby Resources for S$1 billion. CBRE Investment Management took over managing Income Insurance’s real estate portfolio in January 2023.