Cheong Sim Lam buys Lorong Mambong shophouse for $17.2 mil

SINGAPORE (EDGEPROP) - There was a spate of shophouse transactions in late December. One of them was for the shophouse at 22 and 22A Lorong Mambong, which changed hands for $17.2 million ($5,128 psf), according to a caveat lodged on Dec 28.

The corner shophouse at Holland Village is fully tenanted: with Harry’s Bar on the first level, and F45 gym on the second level. Both tenants have just renewed their leases at the end of the year, says Yap Hui Yee, Savills Singapore director of investment sales and capital markets, who brokered the sale.

The buyer of the shophouse is private investor Cheong Sim Lam, who paid $353.3 million for Ascott Resident Trust’s Ascott Raffles Place in January 2019. Cheong comes from a storied family of property investors and developers, whose companies include Singapore-listed Hong Fok Corporation and developments include International Plaza, The Concourse and Concourse Skyline and The Grand Hyatt. Cheong is an executive director and chief investment officer of Hong Kong-listed Associated International Hotels and director of Hong Kong-listed Tian Teck Land. In Hong Kong, his half-brothers were regarded as “kings of industrial property”.

The seller is BreadTalk Group’s subsidiary, Imagine Properties, which purchased the shophouse for $16.2 million ($4,830 psf) in October 2017.

According to Yap, the makeover of Holland Village was a main draw for high-net-worth investors like Cheong.

At the other end of the street, property investment and development group 8M Real Estate purchased the shophouse at 48 Lorong Mambong for $8.3 million in January 2019. The shophouse sits on a freehold site of 1,259 sq ft.

Incidentally, 8M Real Estate emerged as the buyer of three conservation shophouses at 8, 9 and 10 Craig Road for $29.28 million last month. The three shophouses have F&B outlets on the ground floor, such as hipster café Bearded Bella, Swiss restaurant and bar Coucou and Sofi Café Pizza. The two upper floors are occupied by offices.

The previous owner of the three shop- houses at 8, 9 and 10 Craig Road, located just off Tanjong Pagar Road, was Hong Kong-based, family-owned hospitality business Harilela Group. Founded in 1959 by the eponymous Hong Kong-Indian businessman, hotelier and philanthropist Hari Naroomal Harilela, the company owns 14 properties across Hong Kong, China, Southeast Asia, the US and Europe. According to the Integrated Land Information Service (INLIS) records, Harilela Group purchased the three shophouses in 1992, which means it had been holding the assets for 28 years.

The three shophouses occupy a footprint of 5,948 sq ft, with a 99-year lease starting from October 1988, and have a combined floor area of 12,260 sq ft. Hence, the transacted price works out to $2,388 psf.

“The buyers of shophouses in recent deals were all local high-net-worth investors and property investment group like 8M Real Estate,” notes Yap.