SINGAPORE - D’Grove Villas, a 45-unit freehold luxury residential project in Orange Grove Road, is making a fresh bid for a collective sale at a guide price of $420 million, five years after its last attempt at an asking price of $392 million failed.
In mid-July, 80 per cent of unit owners gave consent for the collective sale to proceed, and the tender will be launched on Sept 3, according to joint marketing agents List Sotheby’s International Realty and Strata AMC.
Owners stand to receive between $6 million and $16 million each, depending on the size of the units they own.
The project comprises nine three-bedroom units with a floor area of 157 sq m each, four four-bedroom units at 227 sq m each, 30 four-bedders at 251 sq m each and two penthouses at 485 sq m each.
At $420 million, the guide price would translate to a land rate of $2,976 per sq ft per plot ratio (psf ppr). Including a land betterment charge for bonus gross floor area, the land rate is estimated at $3,099 psf ppr.
This guide price is 7.1 per cent higher than the price tag of $392 million or a unit land rate of $2,908 psf ppr when the project at 8A Orange Grove Road was relaunched for collective sale in September 2019.
The project’s first en bloc tender was launched in March 2019 at $398 million.
Mr Bern Chen, executive director of Strata AMC, representing the joint marketing agents, said D’Grove Villas’ previous attempts in 2019 were unsuccessful because of “weakening sentiments in the property market due to the cooling measures introduced in July 2018”.
“Developers were wary of the risks involved in acquiring collective sale sites as the Government had at the time raised the additional buyer’s stamp duty from 15 per cent to 25 per cent (plus another 5 per cent which is non-remittable),” he said.
Mr Chen added that a prospective bid had emerged during private treaty negotiations, following the close of the second collective sale tender in 2019, but was withdrawn when the pandemic struck.
But overall private residential prices have appreciated since 2019, he noted.
He said the $420 million guide price reflected the strong performance of luxury developments, such as new launches Park Nova in Tomlinson Road and Les Maisons Nassim in Nassim Road, which have achieved median prices of $4,750 psf and $5,565 psf, respectively.
With an estimated site area of 50,400 sq ft, D’Grove Villas is 20 storeys high and is within walking distance of the Orchard Road shopping belt.
According to the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s Masterplan 2019, the site is zoned “residential” with a gross plot ratio of 2.8, which will allow developers to build up to 2.8 times the land area of 50,400 sq ft, he said.
The permissible gross floor area including balconies upon redevelopment is 141,121 sq ft, which is subject to approval.
The collective sales tender for D’Grove Villas will close on Oct 23 at 2pm.
The last successful residential en bloc deal was inked in December 2023, when a project at 132 Sophia Road was sold below its guide price of $35 million – at $33.59 million or a land rate of $1,172 psf ppr.
In May, the 660-unit Pine Grove condo’s fifth bid at a collective sale closed with no takers for its $1.95 billion reserve price.
This came after its collective sale committee failed to get the 80 per cent mandate to lower the reserve price to $1.78 billion.
