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EVEN as some market watchers wonder if developers' appetite for land will be hit by the stockmarket rout, new sites continue to be rolled out.

The latest offerings include a 44,663 sq ft freehold site at Paterson Road/Lengkok Angsa being offered by collective sale, and a 99-year hotel site along Unity Street/Clemenceau Avenue on the government's reserve list offered by the Urban Redevelopment Authority.

The Lengkok Angsa site, currently occupied by 14 houses, has an asking price of $110.6 million or about $1,184 per square foot (psf) of potential gross floor area including an estimated $421,000 development charge.

This matches the unit land price that Hotel Properties paid for last month's collective sale of Beverly Mai at Tomlinson Road.

In the case of the latest Lengkok Angsa site, if the developer succeeds in applying to buy a part of the road separating the houses, this is expected to lower the developer's all-in unit land price to about $1,100 psf per plot ratio (psf ppr) inclusive of payment to the state.

"However, moments like these give everybody a time to take a breather and take stock. Lately, the prices that developers have been paying for land does not leave them with much of a profit margin. It's based on future price increases.' - a seasoned property consultant on the impact that the stock market rout could have on developers' landbanking decisions

Still, this is nearly 70 per cent higher than the $650 psf ppr all-in unit land price that Bukit Sembawang paid for the next door site of 32 houses in July last year.

This reflects the escalation in prime land values over the past 12 months as developers snapped up sites in response to strong demand for luxury homes led by foreign demand.

Whether new benchmarks in land prices will keep on being set remains to be seen.

The stockmarket slide is expected to be used by some developers as an excuse to offer lower land prices, some industry observers suggest.

'This is part of the posturing process. But it's still early days. So far, nobody has panicked,' said a seasoned property consultant.

'However, moments like these give everybody a time to take a breather and take stock. Lately, the prices that developers have been paying for land does not leave them with much of a profit margin. It's based on future price increases.'

Notwithstanding this, if developers bite at the latest Lengkok Angsa site and the owners of the 14 houses on the site receive their asking price of $110.6 million, they will reap a collective sale premium of more than 100 per cent.

The site is zoned for residential use with a 2.1 plot ratio (ratio of potential gross floor area to land area).

There is a 24-storey maximum height.

The second site on offer is a 42,503 sq ft hotel plot at Unity Street and Clemenceau Avenue, with a 2.8 plot ratio.

This translates to a maximum gross floor area of 119,006 sq ft.

By some calculations, a hotel development on the site can yield about 190 rooms.

The maximum height for the new development is four storeys fronting the Singapore River, with a higher limit of 10 storeys away from the river.

A hotel consultant said that the site could attract new players into the market given the shortage of hotel development sites.

However, she said that it would be difficult to forecast how much potential bidders would be prepared to pay, as this depends on how they deal with the restrictions like the four-storey height limit next to the river.

Another drawback is the site's configuration.

There is just a small frontage on the Singapore River, and most of the site faces either a busy stretch of Clemenceau Avenue or Unity Street, say market observers.

This is the second of three hotel sites on the government reserve list for the first half of 2006 that have been made available for application by developers.

The first, at Sinaran Drive in the Novena medical hub, was made available last month.

The final plot, in the traditional budget hotel/backpacker haunt of Bencoolen Street, will be offered next month.

Being reserve list sites, they will be released for tender only upon successful application by developers undertaking to bid minimum prices acceptable to the government.