Blossoms By The Park: China buyers pick up 4 units despite doubling in foreigner ABSD rate to 60%

EIGHT of the 198 apartments that EL Development sold at the launch of its 275-unit Blossoms By The Park project on Saturday (Apr 29) were bought by foreigners.

Buyers from China picked up four apartments – either two-bedroom units or two-bedroom-with-study units; they will have to pay the 60 per cent additional buyer’s stamp duty (ABSD) rate that kicked in on Apr 27 for foreign buyers of any residential property here.

The other four units were bought by American citizens.

US nationals are accorded the same stamp duty treatment as Singapore citizens under the free trade agreement between the US and Singapore.

The 198 units in the 99-year leasehold project near Buona Vista MRT station were sold at an average price of S$2,423 per square foot (psf). Some 85 per cent of the buyers were Singaporeans, 11 per cent were Singapore permanent residents (PRs) and the balance 4 per cent, foreigners.

The above average price is net of a 12 per cent early-bird discount.

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The public launch for Blossoms By The Park began on Saturday morning, and sales closed at 6 pm the same day. Following that, prices of the balance units were raised by 2 per cent for sales from Sunday onwards. As at 5 pm on Sunday, another seven apartments were sold, said Lim Yew Soon, managing director of EL Development.

“On the launch day itself on Saturday, we maintained our prices throughout the day,” he added.

The 72 per cent take-up rate on the project’s launch day is similar to what he had expected, before cooling measures were announced late at night on Apr 26. “After the measures were announced, I thought we should proceed with our launch plans and sell as much as we can; I was expecting to move maybe 40 per cent to 50 per cent of the 275 residential units on the launch day,” he added.

745 cheques collected before e-balloting

EL Development’s four appointed marketing agents for this project had collected 745 expressions of interest accompanied with cheques from potential buyers between Apr 14 (when the preview began) and Apr 25. Electronic balloting – to determine the priority of buyers in selection of units – was conducted on Apr 27 after the cooling measures had been announced.

PropNex, ERA, Huttons and SRI are EL Development’s marketing agents for Blossoms By The Park.

F&B/retail strata lot to be priced about S$13m

Besides the 275 residential units, the project will include four food and beverage/retail units to be sold under a single strata lot of 5,145 sq ft (inclusive of five car parking spaces). This commercial strata lot, which has yet to be released for sale, will be priced at about S$13 million, said Lim.

The 198 units for which options were granted on Saturday include all 25 one-bedroom-with-study apartments and 97 of the 100 units of two-bedroom and two-bedroom-with-study apartments. The remaining units that were sold on Saturday comprise three- and four-bedders.

Prices started from nearly S$1.3 million for a 549 sq ft one-bedroom-with-study unit; this works out to S$2,352 psf.

The 60 per cent ABSD that foreigners pay for any residential property purchase from Apr 27 is double the 30 per cent rate previously.

The ABSD rates for Singapore citizens and PRs buying their first residential property remain unchanged at 0 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively. ABSD for Singaporeans on their second residential property purchase has gone up from 17 per cent previously to 20 per cent. On third and subsequent residential properties, the rate has been raised by five percentage points to 30 per cent. ABSD for PRs on their second property has gone up from 25 per cent to 30 per cent; on the third and subsequent properties, the rate has increased from 30 per cent to 35 per cent.

Kingsford’s neighbouring project slated for launch in H2

Blossoms By The Park is coming up on a site that EL Development clinched at an Urban Redevelopment Authority tender that closed in September 2021. Its winning bid of S$320.1 million worked out to S$1,246 per square foot per plot ratio (psf ppr).

At the same tender exercise, Kingsford Group clinched a nearby plot for S$162.4 million or S$1,210 psf ppr.

Kingsford’s 142-unit project, The Hill@One-North, likely to be launched in the second half of this year.