CapitaLand will remain 'aggressive but disciplined' in land bidding: president & group CEO

CAPITALAND will continue to be "aggressive but disciplined" when tendering for land to build up its Singapore residential land bank, president and group CEO Lim Ming Yan said at the company's results briefing on Thursday.

This was in response to an analyst's question regarding its bullish bid for a mixed-use Bidadari site, which eventually went to a consortium linked to Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and Kajima Development for S$1.132 billion, or S$1,181 per sq ft per plot ratio (psf ppr) in June.

CapitaLand came in fifth in the tender, taking part through its 50 per cent owned subsidiaries, Blossom Commercial Development and Blossom Residential Development. Their bid of S$958.1 million translated to about S$1,000 psf ppr.

Mr Lim said: "As a group, we continue to be interested in Singapore residential space, that's number one. And number two, we will be aggressive but we will stay disciplined in our approach to tender for land.

"In this particular site, there are certain attributes that will allow us to achieve certain returns, therefore we were comfortable to bid at that value."

He also noted that market fundamentals are changing, with residential transaction volume picking up, and the rate of price decline slowing down. At the same time, many other markets outside Singapore - including Hong Kong, London and Australia - have implemented property market cooling measures.

"So balancing everything, I suppose there is still a lot of liquidity in the market looking for a home to park the money. This is very much something that is liquidity driven, very much capital market driven, so we have to look at all these, and we have to balance ultimately the risk-reward of investing in a project like this in Singapore," he said.