Koufu’s Pang family buying Caldecott Hill GCB site for S$58 million

[SINGAPORE] The family of Koufu Group founders Pang Lim and Ng Hoon Tien is understood to be in the early stage of a deal to buy a large freehold site in the Caldecott Hill Estate Good Class Bungalow (GCB) Area for S$58 million.

The price works out to S$1,477 per square foot (psf) on the freehold land area of 39,276 sq ft.

On the regular-shaped site in Joan Road in District 11 are two bungalows.

The property was bought in the 1960s by prominent diamond merchant Chan Kok Kwan and has housed three generations of the Chan family.

Rebuilt around 2000, one bungalow has two storeys and a garden, and is occupied by the family. The other one has two storeys with an attic and a swimming pool, and is tenanted, based on a press release issued in early April 2024 by Cushman & Wakefield.

It had marketed the property through an expression of interest exercise; the indicative price was S$62.8 million or about S$1,599 psf.

The Business Times understands that Realstar Premier was involved with brokering the S$58 million sale that was entered into last month.

The purchase of the Joan Road property is being made by two sons of Pang and Ng, the husband-and-wife team that founded Koufu Group, which operates food courts among other food and beverage businesses.

The site has a depth of about 95 m and a width of about 42 m. The two bungalows on site are separated by a low wall. The site could be redeveloped into a single large bungalow, or subdivided for redevelopment into two separate bungalows, subject to approval.

Bungalows in the 39 gazetted GCB Areas are the most prestigious form of landed housing in Singapore, with strict planning conditions to preserve their exclusivity and low-rise character.

Among other things, a minimum plot size of 1,400 square metres (about 15,070 sq ft) is stipulated as the planning norm for newly created bungalows in GCB Areas. There are only around 2,700 bungalows in these areas. One generally has to be a Singapore citizen to be allowed to buy a landed property in a GCB Area.

The Joan Road property is less than 400 m from the Caldecott MRT station. It is also near MacRitchie Reservoir, Singapore Polo Club and The Singapore Island Country Club (Bukit Location).

Pang and Ng, through Dominus Capital, privatised and delisted Koufu from the mainboard of the Singapore Exchange in 2022.