A semi-detached house on Jalan Jelita, off Holland Road, will be up for auction by Edmund Tie & Company (ET&- Co) on March 27. A mortgagee sale, it will be the third time that the house will be put under the hammer.
The owner had initially offered the house for sale by private treaty in November and December 2018. As no buyer emerged, it was repossessed by the bank and put up for auction by ET&Co in January and February. After the second auction on Feb 26 which also saw no buyer, the house attracted two offers, but they were below the bank’s reserve price.
The semi-detached house sits on a 3,993 sq ft, 999-year leasehold site. It spans 3½ storeys and has a built-up area of 4,500 sq ft. The house has seven bedrooms and two study rooms.
It is located within McMahon Park, a quiet housing estate in prime District 10, comprising predominantly semi-detached and detached houses. The houses were originally built in 1967, and over the years, many of them have been torn down and redeveloped.
As the site has a height restriction of 2½ storeys, the existing property will need to be rebuilt, says Joy Tan, ET&Co’s head of auction and sales. The cost of tearing down the existing structure is estimated to be about $500,000, and it will cost another $1.5 million to $2 million to build a new 2½-storey, semi-detached house.
The house will be sold with vacant possession as the previous owner had moved out of the property in December. The guide price of the property is $6.38 million ($1,595 psf) based on the land area.
According to Tan, there have been at least 10 viewings since the property was put on the market. The previous owner had purchased the property for $2.03 million ($507 psf) back in June 2005, according to URA Realis.
Based on caveats lodged for McMahon Park, the last transaction in the estate was for a semi-detached house on Jalan Tenang, which sits on a 999-year leasehold site of 3,444 sq ft. It changed hands for $5.8 million ($1,685 psf) in June 2018.
About one month before that, a detached house sitting on a land area of 6,297 sq ft at Jalan Jelita was sold for $12.6 million ($2,001 psf).
The semi-detached house offers a rare opportunity to acquire a house in this neighbourhood, notes ET&Co’s Tan. “We rarely see houses here available for mortgagee sale and properties here are sought-after due to their prime location.”