Property Market Sentiments

[opmi]

Hi safetyfirst,

I can offer an explanation to why some developers trade above their book value; and that is because they hold valuable land bank bought in the years before the 90s property boom and recorded at such cost on their B/S. For CDL, it bought a large piece of land at pasir ris for a few tens of Mil around the early 90s. It was recently subdivided into 5 CDL projects and CDL is selling them off with the first two TOP. The revenue from these 5 condo projects are in the billion figures and probably half has been recognized. Bukit Sembawang is another example. It holds freehold land in the vicinity of AMK/YCK and I believe Bukit sembawang values them at the cost of the early years of Singapore when the family was still doing rubber plantation business. There are a lot of untapped valuable land banks in such companies unlike the sovereign linked developers who have to develop their land bank quickly due to reasons you and I can infer/aware of, but can't post here

I think that Pasir Ris farmland was bought before the 90s. When Pasir Ris New Town first started. IIRC.