SINGAPORE’S Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) on Tuesday (Oct 17) released a residential site in Orchard Boulevard for sale.

Market watchers deem the site to be attractive, but believe that developers would likely be cautious in view of soft market sentiment, and show restraint when bidding.

Three out of five analysts said they expected the top bid to be above S$1,800 per square foot per plot ratio (psf ppr); the remaining two pegged the highest bid at between S$1,378 and S$1,500 psf ppr.

The views on the number of potential bidders for the site were also mixed; the majority put it at between two and five.

Lee Sze Teck, senior director of data analytics from Huttons Asia, suggested that there would be one to three bidders; Mogul.sg chief research officer Nicholas Mak put the number at between five and 10.

Some of these bids could be opportunistic, he noted.

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The 99-year site, which spans 7,031.5 square metres (sq m) and has a gross plot ratio of 3.5, is zoned for residential use, with a commercial element on the first storey. The maximum gross floor area will be 24,611 sq m – with 500 sq m given to commercial use.

The plot is the first released under the government land sales (GLS) programme in the Orchard area since May 2018, and falls under URA’s confirmed list in the GLS programme for the second half of this year.

The site is beside Orchard Boulevard MRT station on the recently-opened Thomson-East Coast Line. It is also near embassies and amenities such as Tanglin Mall, Gleneagles Hospital and its adjoining medical centre, as well as Camden Medical Centre.

URA expects the plot to house around 280 units, which form part of the 5,160 residential units to be made available under the confirmed list of the H2 2023 GLS programme.

“With the H2 2023 supply, the confirmed list supply of around 9,250 units for the whole of 2023 will be at its highest level in a decade,” URA said.

Property analysts believe developers would factor in the April cooling measures, including the doubling of the additional buyer’s stamp (ABSD) duty for foreigners to 60 per cent. Because of this, developers would be inclined to target local buyers for the project, they said. 

Eugene Lim, ERA’s key executive officer, said: “If the price and size are suitable for local buyers, the project could be well received.”

PropNex Realty’s head of research and content Wong Siew Ying noted, however, that local buyers may have different unit-mix requirements, and tend to be more price-conscious than foreign buyers and investors.

Justin Quek, OrangeTee & Tie’s deputy chief executive, said the tender could attract developers looking to buy land in prime locations without going through an en bloc sale.

The price quantum could be perceived as more manageable for developers due to the small plot size and number of units, Sun and Lim said.

“Unlike mass-market project launches, most luxury new homes projects tend to sell beyond the five-year ABSD remission deadline, as developers prefer to hold out for high-net-worth buyers,” Lim added.

The tender for this site closes at noon on Feb 1, 2024 – the same day as that for an executive condominium site in Plantation Close in Tengah, which is to be launched in November 2023.