Single buyer from North-Asia buys up all 20 condo units for $300m while ex-MP concerns SGs priced out of property market

Former People’s Action Party (PAP) MP Inderjit Singh posted a property news article on his Facebook page about a mainland Chinese family buying up 20 condo units in Singapore in 1 single swoop.

The article, ‘Swire Properties sells all units at Eden for $293 mil‘, was published on Edgeprop.sg, a Singapore property portal, on Thu (25 Mar).

All the 20 luxury condo units developed by Swire Properties, named the Eden, was sold to a single buyer said to be a Chinese family from “North Asia” for $293 million or $4,827 psf.

Completed in 2019, Eden was designed by a UK-based multi-award-winning architect. Each of the 20 apartments occupy an entire floor with four en suite bedrooms. The residents enjoy a vertical landscape of hanging gardens, designed as their own “lush, private garden-in-the-sky.

In fact, the design of the apartments is so exclusive and private that “residents can walk freely around their apartment without worrying about their privacy”, according to a source. Eden is a redevelopment of the former Hampton Court, which Swire Properties had purchased en bloc for $155 million in 2012.

Eden is located next to the Tanglin Club at Draycott Park. Nearby is also Le Nouvel Ardmore with its biggest penthouse purchased by Alibaba co-founder Sun Tongyu, who paid $51 million ($3,757 psf) for it few years earlier. The Draycott Park, Draycott Drive and Ardmore Park enclave is also known as the “billionaires’ belt”.

CEO of property company Edmund Tie, Mr Ong Choon Fah, noted that for the ultra-high networth individual, $300 million purchase price “is not too much of an investment outlay”.

“Over the longer-term, prime areas for example the Ardmore-Draycott area has proven to be a great location to park one’s wealth,” said Ong. “We’re seeing more family funds coming in including those from Hong Kong who take a strategic view of their investments.”

This is especially so since China started to clamp down hard on independence movement in Hong Kong, resulting in many rich Hong Kongers as well as mainland Chinese living there to transfer their funds else where.

Meanwhile, Mr Singh is not impressed with the multitudes of rich foreigners buying up properties in Singapore.

“Singaporeans will be priced out of the private property market as we continue to see a flood of foreign funds flow into Singapore. This will have a spiral effect on cost of living in Singapore,” he said.