Sentosa condos sold to Aussie buyer for $57m

Business Times: Thu, Jul 26

[SINGAPORE] SC Global Developments is said to be selling another two units at its luxurious Seven Palms Sentosa Cove condominium project for a total of about $57.2 million. And the buyer is understood to be a company linked to Australian mining tycoon Gina Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting. Mrs Rinehart, 58, is the world's richest woman with a fortune estimated at about A$30 billion (S$39 billion). Seven Palms Sentosa Cove - a four-storey project with only 41 residential units - is next to Tanjong Beach and is at an advanced stage of completion. The project is being designed by Kerry Hill Architects, which has designed many of the Aman resorts. The Hancock Prospecting-linked unit is said to be paying around $23.3 million for a Seven Palms unit on the third floor and close to $33.9 million for a fourth floor unit. Sources could not ascertain the sizes of the two units; information like size of units and floor plans is tightly held and SC Global markets the high-end project in a very exclusive manner. However, an industry player made an educated guess that the two units are likely to have crossed $4,000 per square foot, setting a new benchmark for Sentosa Cove. On absolute pricing, the $33.9 million would topple the current record of $33.4 million set in late 2009 by Far East Organization for a duplex penthouse (on the 30th and 31st levels) in its freehold Boulevard Vue development at Cuscaden Walk. That worked out to $4,150 psf based on the unit's size of 8,051 sq ft, according to CBRE's analysis of URA Realis caveats data. SC Global is developing Seven Palms Sentosa Cove on a 103-year leasehold plot of 113,797 sq ft which it clinched at a tender conducted by Sentosa Cove Pte Ltd and which closed in July 2007. Its winning bid of $268.3 million reflects a unit land price of almost $1,800 psf per plot ratio. Before the latest transaction, SC Global had sold 10 units in the project as at end-June 2012 since it began selling the project in September 2009, according to monthly developer sales data released by Urban Redevelopment Authority. Caveats have been lodged for nine of these units and they reflect prices ranging from $3,091 psf (for a unit sold in October 2009) to $3,605 psf for a deal done in July last year), based on CBRE's analysis. Mrs Rinehart is the only child of the late Lang Hancock, one of Australia's legendary frontier miners who is credited with discovering the enormous iron-ore deposits in Western Australia's arid and harsh northwest Pilbara area. Since her father's death in 1992, Mrs Rinehart, as executive chairman of the Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd, has transformed her father's discovery into a company of global scale, as Reuters commented recently. Her Hope Downs tie-up with Rio Tinto generates huge cash flows and the US$10 billion Roy Hill iron ore project, whose investors include Korean and Japanese companies, promises to be another big money-spinner. Mrs Rinehart's interests also cover the media sector. She now owns close to 19 per cent of Fairfax Media. Source: Business Times