News by Cecilia Chow

After a two-year drought with zero sales in 2014 and the lone en bloc deal of Thong Sia Building last year, the recent three deals topping S$1 billion foreshadow an awakening of the collective sale market.

Dressed in a monochromatic striped sweater and ensconced in one of the snug leather armchairs in his office, Kenny Tan, chairman and CEO of Link (THM) Group, says: “The property market is very challenging.”

ONE Surin, a strata landed housing project, is a redevelopment of two adjoining sites at 1 Surin Road and 709 Upper Serangoon Road. The sites were formerly owned by the late Tan Gna Chua, a trader in crocodile skins after World War II. The businessman turned his home into a reptile farm, the first of its kind in Singapore. The Singapore Crocodile Farm operated for more than 67 years before closing in 2012. The site was zoned for mixed-landed housing under the 2008 Master Plan.

MOK Wei Wei, managing director of W Architects, can lay claim to being the architect who has designed the most condominium projects in one of Singapore’s most exclusive neighbourhoods, Nassim Hill.

Two years ago, Singaporean David Neubronner moved into his new home at Straits View Residences, a gated landed housing community located in the Permas Jaya housing estate of Johor Bahru. He bought the four-bedroom, semi-detached house from Malaysian property group BRDB Developments when the project was launched in Singapore in 2010. The double-storey house has a built-up area of 3,000 sq ft and sits on a freehold land area of 6,000 sq ft.

On July 1, China’s biggest state-owned developer, Greenland Group, and Amare Investment Manage­ment Group announced that they would be injecting an initial tranche of six hotels worth S$1.3 billion to S$1.5 billion into an investment vehicle, with an eye to setting up and listing a real estate investment trust (REIT) in Singapore. 

Sentosa Cove has some of the priciest waterfront resort homes built on 99-year leasehold reclaimed land. Even among over-the-top homes, there are those that stand out for their sheer extravagance. One such home that has earned the moniker of the “Copper House” belongs to a Singaporean tycoon who built the property on two adjacent plots of 9,000 sq ft each.

A flurry of transactions has lifted the mood in the Singapore office market and points to more investment sales over the next 12 months.

In the near future, you can truly multitask with just a smartphone application: Brush your teeth, check your calendar and email, and watch the news in the bathroom via the monitor screen-cum-mirror. Instead of wearing a fitness tracker on your wrist, you can monitor your sleep with a Samsung sleep monitor underneath your mattress that will analyse your heart and respiratory rates to give you a personalised report and sleep score every morning.