One might be led to believe that property wouldn’t sell at all in this COVID-19 period. And that’s probably true.
For most of the regular folks.
You see, there are people rich enough to print out a small fraction of the money they have and literally dive and swim in a pool of money.
And for these people, all they really need to do when buying a house — and to be clear, it’s probably not even for their own use — is to buy it like buying Cai Png. Drive by the house, say “yeah, that looks good from the outside”, and buy it.
Which is exactly what happened for this S$21.68 million bungalow.
Bought For Redevelopment
According to EdgeProp, these deals where there are no physical meetings or property viewings tend to be old, landed property where the buyer intends to tear down and rebuild the whole thing.
The Good Class Bungalow (GCB) at Windsor Park Estate, 21,098 sqft, freehold, sold for S$21.68 million (S$1,028 psf), which is a “reasonable” price according to the managing partner of the broker SRI.
It is an old, double-storey, detached house that was built more than 30 years ago and was left vacant by the previous owner.
The last similar transaction was another GCB across the road on Windsor Park Hill, which was 21,991 sqft, freehold, and sold for S$23.5 million (S$1,068 psf) in October 2018.
Before buying the property, the buyer drove around the neighbourhood several times to view the location. According to the managing partner, this is the best time to buy a property to redevelop it.
“You don’t need to view the actual property. You can just drive by to take a look at the site, and see the shape of the land.”
Yeah, thanks for telling me that. Now if only I have S$20 million lying around, and I just might consider doing so.
Courier is the Only Contact For This Deal
Basically, there are three parties in this transaction: the buyer, seller, and broker. How the “contactless” transaction worked is to have a courier running in between the three of them to deliver all the relevant papers and signed documents.
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Everything, including the delivery of keys and documents, is done by the courier. In fact, the broker, SRI, is using a courier services company during this COVID-19 period for all property-related transactions.
Other GCB Deals Are Ongoing
While many of us are counting down the days before McDonald’s open again and wondering if we can save two bucks using a good deal, this is the time to act for those with the money.
“Business owners who have done well and set aside some money are using the lull during this circuit breaker to look at potential redevelopment sites.”
The agent himself is marketing another GCB at Maryland Drive, 21,863 sqft, 999-year leasehold. Currently, the property has an asking price of S$27 million (S$1,235 psf) with an offer that’s S$1 million below that.
Negotiating a $1 million difference must be fun.
I guess while these people play monopoly in real life, I’ll just settle for the board game… which will still make me poorer than them in my imaginations since a box of Monopoly only has $20,580 fake money.
And by the way, there’s also a rich fellow who just paid $30,000 to rent a swimming pool in Sentosa during the Circuit Breaker period. Read the article here.