Knight Frank hires Chia Mein Mein to helm en bloc, land sales

CHIA Mein Mein has joined Knight Frank Singapore as its head of capital markets (land and collective sale), the property consultancy announced on Tuesday (Jan 4).

Meanwhile, Ian Loh has left the firm, where he was most recently the head of capital markets (land and building, collective and strata sales).

Chia will be primarily responsible for driving the land sale and collective sale business. In Singapore, land for development can be acquired through the government land sales programme, private land sale or collective sale for redevelopment.

Chia previously spent more than 4 years at the firm's capital markets department from 2012 to 2016.

She has over 25 years of real estate experience across both the public and private sectors, having worked at Delasa, Colliers International, Credo Real Estate and the Housing and Development Board.

Her expertise spans investment sales, valuation, design and development planning, investment advisory and market research.

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Knight Frank said she has advised and concluded real estate investment transactions in excess of S$2.6 billion across various asset classes, including Good Class Bungalows, shophouses and strata properties.

The most notable of these deals involved mega en bloc sites Tulip Garden, which fetched S$906.9 million, and the iconic Pearl Bank Apartments, which went for S$728 million, both in 2018.

In her new role, Chia will report to Knight Frank Singapore's group managing director Wendy Tang.

Tang said Chia's experience and track record will strengthen the capital markets team in land and collective sales, "especially during an exciting and challenging period for the real estate industry".

The latest appointment came less than a month after the government on Dec 16 imposed new cooling measures, including higher additional buyer's stamp duty (ABSD) rates, to temper the exuberance in the residential property market.

The collective sale segment is expected to lose some momentum as the increased ABSD may make property developers more cautious in bidding for land. Already, Shun Tak Holdings has pulled out of its S$556.7 million en bloc purchase of High Point condominium in the Orchard area, The Business Times (BT) reported on Dec 24.

In response to BT’s queries, Chia said on Tuesday that notwithstanding the recent cooling measures announcement, Knight Frank remains confident that developers will continue to seek reasonably priced sites with favourable attributes, to replenish their depleting landbank. “There are many en bloc projects that will be available for launch in the coming months,” she added.

A number of collective sales will likely conclude this year, given that those land parcels offer developers a variety of size and development quantums, Chia noted.

Knight Frank said its capital markets team was a pioneer in the Singapore collective sale scene, starting with the en bloc transaction of Cosy Mansion in 1994.

The firm added that it has transacted more than S$3 billion worth of collective sale deals since 2017. These include Normanton Park at S$830.1 million, Goodluck Garden at S$610 million, Rio Casa at S$575 million, Dunearn Gardens at S$468 million and Mayfair Gardens at S$311 million.

READ MORE:

• Pansy Ho's Shun Tak walks away from S$556m High Point deal amid cooling measures
• En bloc hopefuls push on with tenders despite cooling measures
• Increased supply from MND's confirmed-list private housing may not sate developers' appetite
• Investors, foreigners, en bloc hopefuls to bear brunt of new property cooling measures
• Looking back on 25 years of collective sales in Singapore