Singapore’s good class bungalows demand surge among new types of young super-rich buyers

SINGAPORE (Feb 14): Catering to the affluent class, Singapore’s good class bungalows (GCBs) are seeing a surge in demand among new types of buyers - the super wealthy younger generation, according to Bloomberg.

Generally, the type of buyers for properties such as this are those coming from conventional business backgrounds such as traders, top lawyers, and doctors.

These new types of buyers are mostly coming from non-conventional backgrounds such as start-ups and cryptocurrency among others with ages ranging between late 30s to 40s.

According to data from Knight Frank, the number of sold units for GCBs has tripled since 2019, to 60. The price for this property segment is expected to increase further as demand increases with Singapore's new rich population on the rise.

In a wealth report published by Knight Frank in 2021, there will be an increase of 31% to 4,888 between 2020 and 2025 of people who have at least USD$30 million (RM129.81 million) in assets.

In fact, Bloomberg reported that the rising price of this segment reflects Singapore’s residential market as the surge in value is the highest last year in more than a decade. 

Some notable deals concluded on the GCBs include:

• S$49 million (RM121.34 million) bungalow in upscale Bukit Timah by Su Zhu, chief executive officer and co-founder of cryptocurrency-focused hedge fund Three Arrows Capital
• S$63.7 million for a house near Singapore Botanic Gardens by Tommy Ong, founder of e-commerce marketing platform Stamped.io.
• Ian Ang of local start-up Secretlab spent S$39 million

GCBs are usually mansions that have a spacious land area of about 15,000 sq ft with the house not exceeding 35% of the area and located in the prime district. These mansions are also usually dated back to the colonial period.

Singapore’s government first used the term GCBs back in 1980 when they came up a master plan in an effort to protect the existence of landed properties from encroaching development. Besides that, it was also to attract the wealthy in a way to contribute to the economy.

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