At Bukit Timah Plaza, Keppel will sell a strata-titled parking garage
Since the Reserve Residences sales gallery at Jalan Anak Bukit opened to the public for a preview on May 13th and the adjacent Bukit Timah Plaza mall has seen an increase in foot traffic as property agent and customers visiting the mall prior to or after visiting the sales gallery.
Based on the new curiosity in Bukit Timah and the Jalan Anak Bukit and Bukit Timah neighborhood in anticipation of the announcement of The Reserve Residences, Sammi Lim who is the chief executive officer and founder of Brilliance Capital, has kicked off the auction of the carpark that is strata-titled at Bukit Timah Plaza through an the expression of interest (EOI).
Bukit Timah Plaza is a mixed-use residential and commercial development constructed in the year 1980. It also includes a 269-unit apartment block, Sherwood Towers. The mixed-use development comes with a 99-year lease that dates back to 1976, which translates to an remaining lease of 52 years.
The parking area at Bukit Timah Plaza covers a number of levels, including The basement level 2 and 3 as well as the whole floorplate of 3rd floor. It has 427 parking spaces and 14 motorcycle parking spaces and is easily accessible from both the shopping centre as well as Sherwood Towers.
The strata area that is combined of the carpark is 152,772 square feet, or equivalent to around 22% in the entire strata area of the development. This means that the owner of the carpark has a major influence should there be an eventual sale of the collective. Regarding share value the carpark is the 178th percentile (4%) of the 444 shares that are part of the development.
At the final quarter of 2013 at the end of last year, the homeowners at the end of last year, owners Bukit Timah Plaza as well as Sherwood Towers embarked on a collective selling process. The committee for collective sales has not yet secured the required 80% agreement to move forward.
The current owner of the parking lot the carpark is Keppel Land, which developed the residential and commercial developments in an alliance. Keppel Land is the urban development part from Keppel Corp.
According Brilliance Capital’s Lim who is the sole agency for marketing the park, there’s “a small number of strata-titled carparks available for purchase”. She says that potential buyers could include the existing carpark operators that want to expand their portfolio of carparks. Some investors also consider carparks as a different source of income that is stable. The buyer can operate the carpark as a lease to an operator.
Lim believes there’s a possibility of unlocking value through using a portion of the carpark space to other options, such as self-storage facilities and community spaces, as well as sporting facilities, and even capsule hotels subject to approval by authorities.
The main tenant of Bukit Timah is NTUC FairPrice Finest, which covers more than 40,000 sq feet and is open 24 hours. The mall also houses the most popular F&B stores, retail stores as well as medical and educational centers as well as two banks (DBS as well as Maybank). The potential for increased earnings due to the fact that there is a 24 hour supermarket in the mall, according to Lim. The store could rent spaces for shopping carts. The new owner could make money by advertising that are placed on the walls of the car park.
Bukit Timah Plaza and Sherwood Towers are located at the end of an isle site with a prominent frontage on Jalan Anak Bukit, Upper Bukit Timah Road and Dunearn Road. Accessible via Pan Island Expressway and Bukit Timah Expressway. It is just a short walk from Beauty World MRT Station and King Albert Park MRT Station on the Downtown Line.
The mixed-use development is expected be a beneficiary of the revitalization in the area. There is a new development called the Reserve Residences next door is an exciting, mixed-use project that is integrated with a transport infrastructure hub, which includes the Beauty World MRT Station underground, as well as a brand new air-conditioned bus interchange located on the second floor of a brand new shopping mall. The project will also include seventy-two residential units and 160 serviced apartments.
Nearby are two more new developments: which include the 120-unit The Linq @ Beauty World and Bukit Sembawang’s 160-unit condo building at Bukit Timah Link.
The other property on the market is the six-storey strata-titled parking lot located at Textile Centre located at Jalan Sultan, off North Bridge Road. The cost is $36 million. JLL is the seller. The property also includes a piece of commercial land that could eventually become an access road for the parking lot. The 200,456 square feet carpark extends from the third to seventh levels of the Textile Centre and comprises 685 parking spaces as well as forty motorcycle pits. The asking price is $52,555 for each parking space.
The carpark is responsible for 30% percent of total area of strata in the development, and 1.02% of its share worth. Textile Centre is a mixed-use, 25-storey development. It is a seven-storey commercial podium, with 150 retail units and 6 floors of office space that have an average of 63 units and 12 residential floors that have 130 apartments. The parking lot is offered for sale via EOI.
A number of strata-titled carparks have been sold between 2020 and 2021. In the Holland Road Shopping Centre, 47 parking spaces under lease for 999 years were purchased at $17.33 millions ($368,723 for each space) and at Bukit Timah Centre for Shopping, there were 381 parking spaces were sold on a 99-year lease were sold for $16.2 million ($42,520 per space) in the Parklane Shopping Centre, 219 spaces on a 99 year lease cost $17.1 million ($70,000 per space) as well as at the People’s Park Complex, 648 parking spaces with 99-year leases for $39.33 millions ($54,000 in space).
Lim has arranged sales of the previously listed carparks, excluding the one in the Bukit Timah’s Shopping Center. “In Singapore, carparks are considered to be a great investment due to the limited parking space particularly in areas of large traffic,” she says.
In the last couple of years Lim was able to see the market for buyers expand to include both local and international corporations, private funds, family offices, and ultra-high net-worth individuals.
The EOI for the Bukit Timah Plaza carpark is set to expire at 7 July.