Camden Park GCB being sold for S$48 million to Centurion Corp’s Kelvin Teo

[SINGAPORE] A freehold bungalow in the Camden Park Good Class Bungalow (GCB) Area is in the process of being sold, with an option recently signed to purchase the house for S$48 million.

The Camden Park property belonged to the late Singaporean artist and architect Ho Kok Hoe, and was put up for sale by his family.  

Caveat data showed that the GCB was priced at S$48 million, which works out to S$1,604 per square foot (psf) on the freehold land area of 29,922 square feet (sq ft).

This is a discount of nearly 15 per cent from S$55.9 million, the listed price when the property was put up for sale in May. 

The Business Times understands that the buyer is Kelvin Teo, an executive director at Centurion Corporation.

Teo is also chief operating officer of Centurion’s accommodation business, a portfolio which spans purpose-built accommodation for workers in Singapore, Malaysia and China, as well as student housing assets in Australia, the UK, the US and China.

Earlier this year, Centurion parcelled some of its accommodation assets into a real estate investment trust (Reit) and, in September, listed it on the Singapore Exchange’s mainboard.

Centurion Accommodation Reit raised S$771.1 million in proceeds from its offer, making it the second-largest initial public offering of the year.  

On the Camden Park site is a three-storey house with nine en-suite bedrooms, a swimming pool, a large koi pond and a terraced garden.

It was first acquired by Ho in 1968 and transferred to his three sons in 2008. Each son holds a one-third stake. 

One of Ho’s sons, Ho Kah Keh, said in a May interview with EdgeProp that the family was selling the GCB to consolidate their property holdings. 

The elder Ho was the architect of several prominent buildings, including the National Museum of Malaysia, which opened in 1963; the Haw Par Tiger Balm Building in Jurong, built in the early 1970s; and the St Andrew’s Village school complex in Potong Pasir launched in 1997. 

He was president of the Singapore Art Society from 1954 to 1968, and again from 1981 to 1983.

His father, Ho Kwong Yew, was a prominent architect in Singapore as well, and the first local-born Asian to be registered as an architect in Singapore. 

Other GCB transactions

Spanning 588,000 sq ft, the Camden Park GCB Area in prime District 11 comprises 26 houses with an average plot size of 22,615 sq ft. 

In the last decade, just two transactions were made in the area.

The most recent on record was for a 16,607 sq ft GCB site sold for S$32.5 million or S$1,957 psf in September 2021.

Prior to that, another GCB spanning 15,070 sq ft changed hands at S$25 million or S$1,659 psf in February 2013.