House of Tan Yeok Nee back on the market

Singapore

THE House of Tan Yeok Nee , a gazetted national monument at the junction of Penang Road and Clemenceau Avenue, will soon be put on the market.

The price expectation is "above S$90 million" for the two-storey freehold property, the last remaining traditional Chinese courtyard house in Singapore.

It has a land area of 26,321 sq ft and a strata area of 58,480 sq ft; its net lettable area is 29,912 sq ft.

The Business Times understands that the owner, an equal-stake joint-venture between Perennial Real Estate Holdings and a Chinese party, has appointed Cushman & Wakefield and PropNex to run an expression-of-interest exercise to find a buyer.

The Perennial joint venture (JV) is understood to have paid around S$73 million for the property back in 2013.

The JV had partnered Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to set up Ming Yi Guan, which opened last year on the property as the Beijing Hospital of TCM's first treatment facility outside China.

The property was previously fully leased to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, but the lease expired in 2015.

Gazetted as a national monument in 1974, the House of Tan Yeok Nee was named after a wealthy Teochew businessman who built it in the 1880s.

The Salvation Army bought the property before World War II, during which it was occupied by the invading Japanese army.

When the war ended in 1945, the Salvation Army moved back into the property, which remained as its headquarters until the place was sold in 1991 to hotelier and property developer Teo Lay Swee.

In 1996, Mr Teo divested the property, along with the adjacent Cockpit Hotel and open-air carpark, to a Wing Tai-led consortium for S$380 million.

The consortium developed the Cockpit Hotel and carpark site into Vision Crest Commercial, an 11-storey office block, and Vision Crest Residential, which comprises apartments; it also restored the House of Tan Yeok Nee.

The conservation earned the property a special mention in the Specialised Category in Paris-based Fiabci's (International Real Estate Federation) Prix d'Excellence 2002.

In 2007, the Wing Tai-led consortium sold the property to German fund manager Union Investment Real Estate.

Five years later, Union Investment Real Estate divested the building to a special-purpose vehicle of ERC Holdings, which in turn sold it to to the Perennial joint venture in 2013.

Market watchers expect Ming Yi Guan to move to TripleOne Somerset, which is owned by Perennial and Shun Tak Holdings.