OK Lim's Second Avenue bungalow being sold for S$33.39m

BELEAGUERED Hin Leong group founder Lim Oon Kuin and his wife are selling their freehold bungalow in Second Avenue near Sixth Avenue MRT station for nearly S$33.39 million. The price works out to almost S$1,671 per square foot (psf) on the land area of 19,984 square feet (sq ft).

The buyer is the family of Tan Yeow Khoon, the former executive chairman of logistics group Cogent, which was bought out by Chinese shipping company Cosco Shipping International (Singapore) and delisted from the Singapore Exchange in 2018.

The purchase of the Second Avenue bungalow is being made by Tan's wife, Ng Poh Choo.

The bungalow - located within the First/Third Avenue Good Class Bungalow (GCB) Area - was sold through a tender exercise conducted by Knight Frank and which closed on Sep 30.

The freehold bungalow, held by Lim and his wife, Tan Sook Eng, is 1 of 9 properties in Singapore and Australia that are among assets frozen by the High Court to recoup US$3.5 billion in debt from the collapsed oil trader, according to a report by The Straits Times earlier.

When contacted by The Business Times on Tuesday (Oct 19), Mary Sai, executive director for capital markets in Singapore for Knight Frank, said the tender exercise for the Second Avenue bungalow drew "a good level of interest" without stating the number of bids received. "The highest tender bid of S$33.39 million - which comes close to the guide price of S$34 million - has been accepted by the owners and approved by the liquidators."

The house is said to have been built a few decades ago and refurbished thereafter. Its total gross floor area is about 10,000 sq ft.

Spanning three levels, the bungalow has five bedrooms, a swimming pool and a squash court. "Until the later part of last year, the property had been tenanted," said Ms Sai.

Veteran GCB agent KH Tan of Newsman Realty described the S$1,671 psf fetched for the Second Avenue bungalow as a "fair price". "It is within my expectation of S$1,600-1,700 psf."

A nearby bungalow, also on Second Avenue, was sold in July at S$30 million or S$2,045 psf on a land area of 14,667 sq ft.

In the same month, gaming company Razer's co-founder and chief executive Tan Min-Liang bought a bungalow along Third Avenue for S$52.8 million or S$1,706 psf on the land area of 30,954 sq ft.

Bungalows in the 39 gazetted GCB Areas are the most prestigious form of landed housing in Singapore, with strict planning conditions stipulated by the Urban Redevelopment Authority to preserve their exclusivity and low-rise character. One generally has to be a Singapore citizen to be allowed to acquire a landed property in a GCB Area.

List Sotheby's International Realty's analysis of URA Realis caveats data downloaded on Oct 19 shows 79 transactions in GCB Areas totalling S$2.3 billion year to date (with the latest deals dated Oct 8).

The whole of 2020 saw 46 deals amounting to S$1.1 billion.

The Tan family, which is buying the Second Avenue bungalow from the Lims of Hin Leong group, lives in a mansion along Ridout Road which is a redevelopment of an old bungalow that they picked up in 2015 for nearly S$91.69 million or S$1,251 psf based on the 73,277 sq ft land area.

That property was a trustee sale that came on the market in 2015 due to a court order arising from the resolution of a dispute in the family of the late property tycoon Chow Cho Poon. Among the properties he developed was the former Chow House along Robinson Road, which in 2010 was sold as part of a group of 9 properties for a total of more than S$175 million.

What is a GCB? See video bt.sg/gcb

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