“One concern that people have is that shophouses are speculative [assets],” says Loyalle Chin, co-founder of Steward Asia, an independent team in PropNex. “They think: ‘Oh, the big boys are no longer in the picture.’ There’s half-truth in that.”
The massive $3 billion money-laundering case uncovered in August 2023 — the biggest in Singapore’s history — took down more than just 10 convicted Chinese nationals from Fujian; it also put the brakes on the commercial shophouse market, where properties in prime districts change hands for more than $10 million each.
In 2024, DBS reportedly sold 13 mortgaged shophouses in Chinatown and Geylang that had been previously owned by two individuals connected to the case. The bank had put the companies that held the shophouses into receivership in September 2023.
