Two Springleaf Tower floors ask $54 million with no ABSD

Two full office floors at Springleaf Tower in Tanjong Pagar are up for sale at a combined guide price of $54.15 million, with no additional buyer’s stamp duty or seller’s stamp duty payable. For investors fenced out of residential property by stamp duties, the offer is a clean look at what CBD office space now costs, and why there is so little of it to buy.

Joint marketing agents CBRE and Sakal Real Estate announced the Expression of Interest exercise this week. The two floors span a combined strata area of 20,645 sq ft and can be bought together or separately, with the lower floor priced from $25.65 million. The combined guide works out to about $2,623 psf. The exercise closes on 1 October.

Because this is commercial property, the purchase attracts none of the stamp duties that shape residential investing: no ABSD (the extra buyer’s tax on second and foreign residential purchases) and no SSD on a later resale. That exemption is a large part of why strata offices keep drawing investors who have run out of tax-efficient room in the housing market.

What the money buys

Springleaf Tower is a 37-storey Grade A office building at 3 Anson Road, fronting Anson Road opposite International Plaza. It sits close to Tanjong Pagar station on the East-West Line and the new Prince Edward Road station on the Circle Line, with Amoy Street, Maxwell and Lau Pa Sat food centres in walking range.

Most tenants in the building occupy a full floor, which comes with exclusive use of the lift lobby, restrooms and pantry on that level. The floors on offer have column-free layouts, raised flooring and independent air-conditioning. CBRE’s head of capital markets in Singapore, Michael Tay, said office floors in the tower are tightly held by a small number of owners, and that the chance to buy an entire high floor rarely comes up.

The building’s transaction history backs the scarcity claim. The most recent office deals were both in November 2022: a 10,742 sq ft unit on the 31st floor at $27.4 million ($2,550 psf) and a 21,485 sq ft unit on the 29th floor at $53.9 million ($2,510 psf). The current guide asks about 3% more per square foot than the higher of those, nearly four years on.

The guide sits about 3% above the higher of the tower’s two November 2022 deals. Source: CBRE and Sakal Real Estate, September 2026; past deals from transaction records. Chart: HomeAsset.

Why full floors are getting harder to find

Two forces are squeezing this corner of the market at once. On the demand side, CBRE data shows Grade A office rents rose 1.6% in the first half of 2026, a sixth straight quarter of growth, which pushes some occupiers to consider owning rather than renting. On the supply side, URA restricts the strata subdivision of commercial buildings in the central area, so the stock of individually ownable office floors in the CBD is essentially capped. Sakal’s managing director Steven Ming pointed to those restrictions in expecting keen interest in the exercise.

The neighbourhood itself is mid-transformation. The Anson-Tanjong Pagar area has been earmarked as a future mixed-use district, and projects such as Newport Plaza, The Skywaters and Keppel South Central are rebuilding older towers nearby, several under the CBD Incentive scheme, which converts office stock into homes and hotels. Every conversion removes more office space from a district where new strata supply cannot be created.

For scale, the priciest comparison point in the wider market: a freehold office floor at 108 Robinson Road was asking $3,725 psf in March 2026. Springleaf Tower is on a 99-year leasehold that began in 1996, which leaves about 69 years on the clock and explains part of the gap.

What this means for you

• The no-ABSD, no-SSD appeal of strata offices is real, but so is the entry price: $25.65 million for a single floor here. Smaller strata office units elsewhere in the CBD offer the same tax treatment at lower quantum, and this sale will help set their pricing benchmark.
• Commercial property runs on different rules from residential: financing terms, GST and tenant risk all work differently. The stamp duty saving is the start of the comparison, never the whole of it.
• Watch where the EOI lands on 1 October. A close at or above the $2,623 psf guide would confirm CBD strata office prices are still climbing; a quiet close would say the 2022 benchmarks remain the ceiling.