Realty check

SINGAPORE (Dec 4): Michael Tan has been working hard over the last few weeks to get a collective sale of Leonie Gardens off the ground. He is part of the collective sale committee formed at end-September that is in the midst of preparing for the next extraordinary general meeting to announce the reserve price and facilitate the collection of signatures. “We already have quite a lot of supporters,” he says, referring to his fellow unit owners at Leonie Gardens.

Like owners of a string of other residential properties that have gone up for collective sale this year, Tan is hoping to get a price that is higher than what is achievable in the secondary market. Meanwhile, a developer that agrees to buy the site en bloc and redevelop it could make a nice profit if the property market continues its recovery.

Leonie Gardens has twin 23-storey red towers and an eight-storey block with 138 units in total. It sits on a 145,791 sq ft site with a 99-year lease that began in 1990. The site has a plot ratio of 2.8, which means it can be redeveloped into a 36-storey project. Assuming an average unit size of 700 sq ft, the new development could have about 580 units.

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