Little India's heritage houses draw seven bids and a 48% gap

Seven bidders fought over a row of 18 pre-war terrace houses in Little India when URA’s tender for the Chitty Road and Veerasamy Road conservation site closed on 28 July. The top offer, $35.3 million from YK Land, came in 48% above the next bid.

URA launched the site for sale on 5 March 2026. It is a small parcel by Government Land Sales standards: 3,407 sqm, about 36,673 sq ft, on a fresh 99-year lease and zoned residential. YK Land Pte. Ltd. offered $35,288,000, which works out to roughly $962 psf on the land. The second bid of $23,828,558 came from a partnership of Conint Pte Ltd and SEEDoE Ventures, with RPC One barely behind at $23.7 million. The remaining four offers ranged from $10.6 million to $16.4 million, so the winning bid was more than triple the lowest one.

YK Land’s $35.3 million offer sits 48% above the next bid. The bottom four bidders valued the site at less than half its winning price. Source: URA tender results, 28 Jul 2026.

What exactly is being sold

This is not a bare plot awaiting a condo. The site holds 18 two-storey conserved terrace houses built in 1927 as municipal quarters for government employees, arranged in two parallel rows linked by a back lane. They sit inside the Little India Historic District, and URA requires the buyer to sensitively restore the buildings under its conservation guidelines, then adapt them for residential use or long-stay serviced apartments.

That restoration obligation is what makes the bidding so unusual. At $35.3 million for 18 houses, YK Land is paying close to $2 million per house in land cost alone, before any restoration or fit-out. A buyer who gets the works wrong faces cost overruns on a building it is not allowed to knock down.

Why the bids landed so far apart

A 48% gap between first and second is rare in state tenders. For comparison, the three consortiums that fought over the $2.13 billion Bayshore Drive site earlier this month bid within about 7% of each other. Mohan Sandrasegeran, head of research and data analytics at SRI, said the spread likely reflects how differently each bidder priced the site’s end product: each would have valued the land against its own development strategy, restoration budget and target market.

The two permitted uses point to very different businesses. Restored as homes, the site could yield a rare collection of heritage terrace houses in a historic district, the kind of product that almost never reaches the market and could attract affluent owner-occupiers, Sandrasegeran pointed out. Run as serviced apartments, which carry a minimum stay of three months, the same buildings become an income play aimed at professionals and expatriates wanting city-fringe accommodation. YK Land has not said which route it will take, and URA accepted either at launch.

The award itself is not confirmed yet. URA closed the tender and published the bids; the site will be awarded after it evaluates the offers, which for state tenders usually takes a few weeks.

What this means for you

• Seven bidders for a complex restoration project is a strong appetite signal. Developers stayed selective on big-ticket sites this year, but small, distinctive plots are pulling crowds.
• If heritage homes appeal to you, watch what YK Land does with the award. Eighteen restored 1927 terraces in Little India would be a genuinely scarce product, and scarce products rarely launch cheap.
• Do not read the $962 psf land rate as a benchmark for the area’s condos. Conservation sites carry restoration costs and development limits that ordinary sites do not, so the numbers are not comparable.
• Renters and landlords around Jalan Besar should note the serviced-apartment possibility. Three-month-minimum stays compete for the same tenants as ordinary leases in the area.