The collective sale market here is powering ahead with the sale of privatised HUDC estate Eunosville for $765 million. The price of $765 million at a premium of more than 17 per cent over the $643 million to $653 million the owners had asked for when the site was launched for tender in April.

The 330-unit Eunosville, built in the 1980s, could make way for as many as 1,399 units in a new project. The site has been sold to a Jardine Matheson Group unit, MCL Land, at the second-highest price ever for former HUDC estates, after Farrer Court was sold for about $1.34 billion in 2007. It was the estate’s second try at a collective sale after an unsuccessful bid in 2013.

The purchase costs, which includes the sale price and an additional $194 million of government charges, works out to a land rate of $909 per sq ft per plot ratio. The charges are payable to the state to intensify land use to a gross plot ratio of 2.8 and to top up the lease to a fresh 99 years.

Built in the late 1980s, the project has about 71 years left on the lease. It has 255 maisonettes over six residential blocks and four walk-up apartment blocks with 75 units. Each owner stands to get about $2.25 million to $2.41 million upon completion of the deal, subject to sale conditions.

The site could be rebuilt into a 1,399-unit development with an average apartment size of 70 sq m. The new units could be sold for an average of about $1,700 to $1,750 psf.

The latest deal came after the recent sale of Rio Casa estate in Hougang and mixed-use development Goh & Goh Building in Upper Bukit Timah Road, and One Tree Hill Gardens in the prime District 10. It is the fourth successful collective sale this year amid recovering sentiment and developers’ optimism over residential property.

The four collective sales year to date total slightly over S$1.5 billion. For the whole of 2016, there were three collectives sales – Raintree Gardens in Potong Pasir, Shunfu Ville in Marymount area and Harbour View Gardens in the West Coast area. The total value added up to slightly over S$1 billion. In 2015, the solo collective sale transaction was the S$380 million sale of the commercial/residential Thong Sia Building in Bideford Road. The peak year for en bloc sales was 2007, with 88 deals amounting to S$11.5 billion.

The collective sale fever cooled when the property market tanked during the 2008 global financial crisis though things started to revive again in 2010, when there were 38 collective sales, followed by 51 transactions the following year before activity began to wane again amid a price gap between owners of en bloc properties and developers.

Between 2014 and 2016, only five sold during this period out of 25 collective sale sites launched; implying that the other 20 sites were priced above what the market could bear.