Complete Property Market Updates of Singapore

Chinese real estate developer Yanlord Land has acquired a site in Suzhou for about 2.16 billion yuan (S$435.9 million), it said yesterday.

The ‘prime site’ is located in Shuanghu Plate Area, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, and is located between the Dushu and Jinji lakes. It has a total gross floor area of nearly 337,000 square metres, and was acquired at about 6,400 yuan per square metre of GFA, Yanlord said.

The group intends to develop the property into ‘a deluxe residential zone comprising townhouses, fully fitted apartments, ancilliary commercial facilities and serviced apartments’. The acquisition demonstrates ‘our continued confidence in the potential of the rapidly expanding Suzhou property sector and its ability to play a key role in Yanlord’s geographical expansion strategy’, said Zhong Sheng Jian, chairman and CEO of Yanlord.

Suzhou has seen per capita disposable income nearly double from 10,515 yuan in 2001 to 18,532 yuan in 2006, one of the highest among the Yangtze River Delta cities, he added.

The foreign investment - such as from over 80 of the Fortune 500 companies - have also attracted expatriates from overseas and other parts of China.

Source: The Business Times, 22 June 2007

China’s Longhu Real Estate hopes to raise US$1 billion in a Hong Kong initial public offering, probably next year, a bank source said, at a time when loans are drying up for land-hungry developers as the government tries to cool the building sector.

The source told Reuters that the Chongqing-based firm would probably sell around a 25 per cent stake, and was now looking to hire investment banks to handle the initial public offering.

‘It’s still early days,’ the source said, adding that the IPO would probably be launched in 2008. A report in the South China Morning Post newspaper yesterday said that UBS, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch were vying for the deal.

With the Chinese government trying to cool the booming construction sector, and banks no longer giving loans for land purchases, property firms have been keen to sell shares and issue convertible bonds in recent months.

And deals are getting bigger.

Guangzhou-based Country Garden Holdings Co raised US$1.66 billion last month in the biggest ever IPO in Hong Kong by a Chinese property firm. The stock jumped 35 per cent on its debut and is now 26 per cent above its IPO price. That IPO has sparked speculation that a raft of Chinese property developers will follow suit as they gather funds to buy land in a rush to break out of regional strong-holds and become national players.

Chinese industrial conglomerate VcanLand Group, for example, told Reuters this month it was planning a Hong Kong IPO of at least US$1.3 billion.

Longhu was founded in 1995, according to the firm’s website, and has built a villa, apartment and shopping centre projects in the western Chinese city of Chongqing.It also plans to build a 1 million sq m residential project with high-rise apartments and villas.

Source: The Business Times, 29 May 2007

Shui On Land Ltd, a Shanghai-based real estate developer, and its partners in a venture will spend more than 3 billion yuan (S$599 million) on a software park in the north-eastern Chinese city of Dalian.

The venture will pay Yida Group, a local developer, 936 million yuan for a 78 per cent stake in the project, Shui On Land said in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange yesterday. The venture, which includes Yida and Shui On Construction & Materials Ltd, will also pay Yida 2.14 billion yuan for the land and other related costs in the project.

Shui On Land, which first sold shares to the public in a Hong Kong share sale in October, has been expanding. The company and Shui On Construction, both controlled by billionaire Vincent Lo, in November bought developer Sheng Jin Real Estate Co, which owns an office and commercial building site in Shanghai.

After the transaction, Shui On Land will own 61.5 per cent of the venture, Dalian Software Park Phase 2. Yida will own 10.3 per cent while Shui On Construction will own the rest. The project has an area of about 4 million square metres.

The software park’s first phase opened in 1998, has a gross floor area of 1.6 million sq m and has attracted more than 340 software companies, Shui On said in March.

Source: The Business Times, 29 May 2007