City Plaza finally has its 80%. Now someone must pay $970 million

Eight years after its first try, City Plaza is finally on the market. The 46-year-old freehold complex beside Paya Lebar MRT opened its collective sale tender on 11 August at a $970 million guide price, the first of three attempts to secure the 80% owner mandate. The tender closes on 13 October.

City Plaza sits on a 141,503 sq ft freehold site at 810 Geylang Road, fronting both Geylang Road and Tanjong Katong Road. Built by City Developments Limited (CDL) in 1980, the 18-storey complex holds 450 strata units: 384 shops and 66 apartments. Huttons Asia is the sole marketing agent.

Eight years to a mandate

The owners first tried in 2018 at a $1.05 billion reserve price and secured only 53% support. A second attempt in 2021 dropped the ask to $970 million and came agonisingly close at 79.3%. This third round kept the same number and finally cleared the 80% bar.

Owners cut the ask 8% after 2018 and have held it there since. What changed in 2026 is the mandate, not the price. Source: Huttons Asia. Chart: HomeAsset.

The final stretch was tight. In February, The Straits Times reported the committee was still 12 to 20 signatures short with a 14 February deadline, and that owners had written openly to CDL, which still holds about 6.5% of share values, asking it to sign. CDL declined to comment at the time, and whether its signature made the difference has not been disclosed.

What pushed owners over the line reads less like greed than fatigue. The committee described water leakage, breakdown-prone escalators and major repairs deferred during the sale process. Francis Poh, who chairs the committee and has run a fashion shop there for 45 years, said footfall and rents keep sliding, and expects things to get harder once the refurbished Tanjong Katong Complex reopens nearby in 2027 and tenants move over. Many owners are in their 70s and 80s. If the sale succeeds, Huttons has indicated apartment owners stand to receive between $2.18 million and $3.44 million each, and shop owners between $722,000 and $32 million.

What a buyer would be underwriting

The site is zoned commercial with a plot ratio of 3.0 under URA’s Master Plan 2025. That zoning matters: because the land is not residential, a developer pays no additional buyer’s stamp duty (ABSD) on the purchase, the levy residential-site buyers can only claim back by finishing and selling every unit within a set deadline. On a $970 million quantum, removing that pressure changes the risk calculation.

The owners also did their planning homework before launching. URA has issued Written Outline Advice supporting, in principle, a residential-led mixed-use redevelopment with shops on the first storey, subject to the usual approvals. Terence Lian, Huttons Asia’s head of investment sales, estimates the site could yield about 450 new homes in a block of up to 19 storeys, roughly the same unit count as the building it would replace.

The location does a lot of the selling. City Plaza is about 300 metres from Paya Lebar MRT interchange on the East-West and Circle lines, across the road from Paya Lebar Quarter, SingPost Centre and Kinex. The last freehold launch in the area, Katong Regency in 2012, averaged $1,608 psf; its resales have crossed $2,000 psf. At the 99-year leasehold Park Place Residences, a two-bedder changed hands at $2,359 psf in July. Against those numbers, Lian estimates a new freehold project here could sell at around $3,000 psf or higher, depending on the market at launch.

What buyers have paid around Paya Lebar, from launch averages to recent resale caveats, against the agent’s estimate for a new freehold project on the City Plaza site. Sources: caveats lodged; Huttons Asia estimates. Chart: HomeAsset.

The obstacle is the same one that has hung over every mega en bloc deal since 2018: someone must write a cheque for close to a billion dollars. Singapore has seen few deals that size clear since the last en bloc boom. The mandate was the owners’ half of the bargain. The tender will show whether a developer, or a consortium, agrees the sums work.

What this means for you

• Owners of ageing strata malls and mixed-use complexes should watch this tender as a test case. Commercial zoning with no ABSD is the cleanest structure a big en bloc site can offer, and City Plaza also shows the work involved: pre-tender planning advice from URA and an ask held flat for five years.
• If you are hoping to buy near Paya Lebar, a successful sale would eventually add about 450 freehold homes 300 metres from the interchange, but at an estimated $3,000 psf or more, and years away. Current resales at Katong Regency and Park Place Residences sit well below that.
• Recent rule changes, from the lower consent thresholds now before Parliament to the longer sales timelines for mega sites, are all designed to get deals like this moving. City Plaza needed neither: it crossed the existing 80% bar on a commercial site. Its result, alongside Lakeside Towers’ October close, will say how much appetite developers really have this cycle.