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Living in a luxury home at Singapore’s most coveted address is no longer just a dream. According to Kemmy Tan, General Manager of Sentosa Cove, about 830 residents have already moved in, the first wave to live in one of Asia’s most prestigious addresses.

After all, where else in the world can you zip from the comfort of a waterfront home or your luxury yacht to the central business and shopping districts in less than 15 minutes? Where there’s an international golf course next door and an international airport half-an-hour away?

Although much of the 117-hectare site is still under construction, Tan expects more than 60% of the luxury-style residential projects to be completed by 2009. The majority of the residential plots as well as the Quayside Collection, which will include Sentosa Cove’s only commercial properties, are likely to be completed come 2010.

“The Quayside Collection will offer a new lifestyle concept in luxury leisure, with first-rate amenities and hotel accommodation,” Tan says. “It will provide residents with an integrated lifestyle that boasts a total leisure experience with fine dining and boutique shops for good retail therapy.”

The last sizeable plot put up for bid was the 231,677sqft Pinnacle Collection, which was awarded in mid-January to Ho Bee Group and IOI Properties. Located at the entrance of the marina to Sentosa Cove, it will offer a panoramic view of the city skyline, the Tanjong Golf Course and the South China Sea.

Except for three individual seafront plots, ranging from 9,725-12,048sqft, all other land parcels have been put up for sale and snapped up by a mixed bag of developers (see Awarded Plots table). These include established regional developers such as City Developments Ltd, Lippo Realty, SC Global and YTL (fronted by Genesis-Alliance) to newer players like Ximeng Land of China and Singapore’s own Elevation Developments.

Ximeng Land, a unit of Beijing Ximeng Real Estate, a developer of luxury building projects in Beijing, Yantai and Jinan, earlier won the bid for the 99-year leasehold Pearl Island site located close to Tanjong Beach and Tanjong Golf Resort. The 14,840sqm parcel, the developer’s maiden overseas project, can accommodate up to 19 bungalows, although Ximeng is exploring the possibility of building half the number of units. Wu expects Pearl Island to fetch record prices for Sentosa Cove properties when the residences are finally developed.

“We intend to develop Pearl Island into a world-class enclave for the privileged few, and believe our success in Singapore will be our springboard to more projects in the region and beyond,” says Wu Xu Zhao, General Manager for Ximeng Land. “We believe the Asian elite will be attracted by the ultra-luxurious, world-class marina lifestyle that Pearl Island offers. We’re already receiving enquiries from interested parties.”

Ximeng’s winning bid for Pearl Island was 53.5% higher than that of Elevation Developments, founded in 2004 by India-born Satinder Garcha, Singapore’s polo captain. Last August, Elevation put in a then-record of $1,099psf per plot ratio for The Green Collection, a strata title site that can be used to develop terraced, semi-detached or detached houses.

A boutique developer, Elevation specialises in good class bungalows (GCBs) and its portfolio includes two dozen properties in prime areas such as Swettenham Road, Nassim Road and Gallop Road. Notably, two Nassim villas are designed by Zaha Hadid, the Iraq-born Pritzker prize winner known for projects such as the Vitra Fire Station in Germany and who also worked on the masterplan for Singapore’s science hub at One-North.

Garcha intends to build up to 20 houses (CONFIRM) on the site, each with a rooftop pool, as well as glass frontages that will give residents a panoramic view of the nearby Sentosa Tanjong Golf Course. The ‘Elevation Golf Villas’ are expected to fetch about S$9 million-$10 million and set to be completed by 2010.

Designer influence
Meanwhile, Genesis-Alliance, a joint venture between Malaysia’s YTL Corporation and LP Worlds, has engaged the services of Claudio Silvestrin, the architect of choice for the likes of Giorgio Armani, Anish Kapoor and Calvin Klein, to work on its two Sentosa Cove projects. Silverstrin was also behind the design for the Turin museum as well as the home of hip-hop star Kanye West.

Sentosa Cove marks Silvestrin’s first signature development in Singapore, while Jamie Durie from Australia, Oprah Winfrey’s favourite horticulturist, will be the landscape designer for the two sites.

Genesis-Alliance is set to launch the 18-villa Sandy Island development in the coming months, followed later in the year by the Lakefront Collection, which can accommodate up to 15 bungalows. Both are expected to be completed by 2010.

Sandy Island four to five-bedroom villas will have built-up areas ranging from 6,300-11,000sqft and will feature a floor-to-ceiling, two-storey glass façade facing the waterfront. They’ll also have other private lifts and hidden staircases connecting all the floors, aquatic ponds, reflecting pools and landscaped roof-top terraces.

The development will also be one of the first on Sentosa Cove to feature underground parking, in addition to the frontyard car porch. “We’re catering to an exclusive group of buyers who like to have privacy and would like to keep their expensive Ferraris or Lamborghinis out of public view,” explains Richard Leen, Marketing Director for Genesis-Alliance. “The design elements will take into account the need for privacy and exclusivity for our villa owners.”

The visionaries
The efforts by each developer to raise the bar of excellence in terms of design and exclusivity, as well as the rising bids for Sentosa plots, is a vindication of the risks that local developer Ho Bee took when it made its foray into property developments on the island.

Back in late 2003, when Ho Bee landed its current The Berth by the Cove site where most of the current Cove residents are found, there were only two other bidders. Ho Bee then won with a bid of $350psf per plot ratio, a steal compared to the $1,361psf ppr it paid for the Seascape site in March 2007. In total, the group made seven successful bids on Sentosa, accounting for more than 740 condo and bungalow units or about a third of the homes on Sentosa Cove.

Looking back at when The Berth was first launched in 2004, Nicholas Chua, Ho Bee’s Senior Manager for Business Development and Marketing, recalls: “The project was met with a very positive response during the preview and launch, with more than 25 nationalities represented. During that time, it was highly unusual to have such a diverse group of people buying into Sentosa Cove.”

Although subsale activities are generally quite low on Sentosa, Chua noted that a few local owners who purchased condo units for self-occupancy may have since given in to temptation as the prices climbed from the launch prices of S$800-$900psf to S$1,600psf and recently $2,000psf for a four-bedroom unit.

In December, Ho Bee launched the 91-unit Turquoise project, which includes three 7,000-8,000sqft sky villas, while the 151-unit Seascape condo is set to launch in the coming months. Prices for Turquoise are in the S$2,500-$2,800psf range, more than treble that of Ho Bee’s first project.

Meanwhile, 99-year-leasehold seafront bungalow plots have sold for S$1,696psf, exceeding even the average price of good-class bungalows (GCBs) on the mainland, which sell at about S$1,300psf for freehold sites.
 
“The leasehold capital values at the Cove have far exceeded the freehold values in prime districts, a rare phenomenon in Singapore,” observes Tan of Sentosa Cove. “They’re expected to continue rising with the sell-out of land parcels to developers and as more and more properties get completed.”

Ku Swee Yong, Director for Business Development and Marketing at Savills Singapore, also noted that for foreign buyers there’s an additional carrot besides the cachet of owning a piece of landed property: that of obtaining Permanent Resident (PR) status within 48 hours under the government’s fast-track PR scheme.

“There’s always the potential for further appreciation in values given that there will be only 2,500 homes,” Ku says. “And when both the Sentosa and Marina Bay integrated resorts are completed, the demand will even be greater when the high-rollers come sailing in on their luxury yachts.”