UOL Teams With CapitaLand to Buy Singapore Condo Complex for Reduced $612M

A joint venture of UOL and CapitaLand has signed an option agreement for the collective purchase of a Singapore condo complex for S$810 million ($611.7 million), with the two heavyweights set to pick up the property at an 11.8 percent discount to the reserve price.

The JV 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, according to a joint statement released Saturday by UOL CEO Liam Wee Sin and CapitaLand Development Singapore CEO Tan Yew Chin.

The 1987-vintage Thomson View on Bright Hill Drive was relaunched for collective sale 10 days ago by Edmund Tie at an unchanged reserve price of S$918 million, with the consultancy noting that 65 percent of the owners had consented to lowering the reserve price to S$808 million. The option deal, which hinges on securing consent from 80 percent of the owners, would mark Singapore’s biggest collective sale of 2024 if completed.

“If 80 percent consent is secured, this acquisition adds another prime land parcel into our portfolio of JV sites with its strategic location and exceptional attributes,” the CEOs said.

Three-Year Effort

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

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 this year at the S$918 million reserve price and again in July at the same price. After the most recent attempt closed without a bid on 6 September, Edmund Tie announced that 60 percent of the owners had agreed to reduce the reserve price to $808 million.

The Thomson View site can yield a total gross floor area of 112,792 square metres (1.2 million square feet) with an average unit size of 85 square metres, according to Edmund Tie, which had not responded to a request for comment by the time of publication.

Collective Struggle

A quiet year for Singapore collective sales got a boost earlier this month when Fragrance Group acquired the retail-residential Katong Plaza in Marine Parade for S$180 million. The win followed closely on the failed collective sale of the Roxy Square complex next-door, with that attempted S$1.25 billion tender concluding in September with no bids.

In June, an attempted collective sale of the Far East Shopping Centre failed for the second time in three months, with owners rejecting an offer of roughly S$880 million for the strata-titled property on Orchard Road.

Mingtiandi reported in May that an Indonesian developer new to the Singapore market was offering S$850 million for the property near the intersection with Paterson Road, citing sources familiar with the deal. The offer came on the heels of Du Shuanghua’s Bright Ruby Resources withdrawing its S$908 million bid after failing to win approval to expand the floor area permitted for a new project on the 999-year leasehold site.

Also in May, City Developments Ltd was awarded the rights to Delfi Orchard, a strata-titled 11-storey commercial building near the intersection with Claymore Road, after bidding S$439 million ($325.6 million) in a collective sale. CDL already held 126 of the 150 strata units in the 1985-vintage building.