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(SINGAPORE) Earlier this week, Gillman Heights made the headlines as the biggest collective sale site to hit the market. But an en bloc sale now in the works for another privatised HUDC estate - Farrer Court - could top that.

Farrer Court: Around $650m is expected to be payable to the owners, and about $320m to the state to raise the plot ratio and to top up the site's lease

The Farrer Court site is expected to cost its potential developer nearly $1 billion in total. This comprises around $650 million payable to the owners, and a further $320 million or so payable to the state to tap a higher plot ratio and for topping up the site's lease to 99 years.

Based on these figures, the unit land price for developers works out to slightly over $400 per square foot of potential gross floor area. The site, in District 10, is a stone's throw from an upcoming MRT station under the Circle Line. The site can be redeveloped into a new condo with about 1,900 units averaging 1,200 sq ft.

The big question is whether developers will have appetite for such large sites given the huge outlay involved.

Gillman Heights, in the Depot and Alexandra roads area, was launched for tender this week and has a reserve price of $529 million. In addition, developers will have to pay the state a further sum of about $89.5 million to raise the plot ratio and top up the site's lease to 99 years, bringing the total unit land price to $352 psf per plot ratio.

Farrer Court's land area of 838,488 sq ft also pips Gillman's, at 836,425 sq ft. Also, Farrer Court has a total of 618 units currently, again higher than Gillman's 608.

But another collective sale in the works - at Pine Grove in the Ulu Pandan and Mt Sinai area - has an even bigger number of existing units at 660. The all-in price (including payments to the state) to deve lopers keen on the 893,178 sq ft leasehold site is said to be around $700 million, or about $380 psf per plot ratio.

Besides these privatised HUDC sites, there are biggish private condominiums, some of whose owners are looking at collective sales. These include Ridgewood (land area of about 672,000 sq ft) and Pandan Valley condo (417,000 sq ft), both near Pine Grove.

Other potential biggish en bloc sites could include Mandarin Gardens in the east coast (with a land area of slightly over a million sq ft) and The Waterside in Tanjong Rhu (706,000 sq ft).

'Many of these private condos, as well as privatised HUDC estates, were developed in the 1980s, when it was fashionable to build big developments on huge sites,' says DTZ Debenham Tie Leung's director Tang Wei Leng. 'Very often, the developers even introduced phases within the projects.'

She notes that some of the huge projects involved foreign funds from the Middle East and Japan, who did a few projects here before withdrawing from the local market. These days, foreign funds that have been investing in the Singapore residential sector include the likes of AIG and Lehman Brothers, of the US. The latter has teamed up with Chip Eng Seng to redevelop the Venus Mansion site in Cairnhill.

'There are many other funds waiting to partner local developers. So there just may be takers for even the huge sites. It depends on whether the prices being sought by the owners make investment sense for the developers and funds, considering the risks they would be taking of parking huge sums in one site, in a single location,' reckons Ms Tang, whose firm was appointed earlier this year to handle the collective sale of Pine Grove.

Property agents, too, have some serious reckoning to do in terms of deciding which jobs to pitch for when they are invited by sales committees of huge estates thinking of doing a collective sale.

Credo Real Estate, which clinched the job to market Farrer Court's en bloc sale a few months ago, studied the matter from several angles. 'We looked at the various privatised HUDC sites and picked Farrer Court. It's in a prime district and one side faces Leedon Heights. And based on the prices we're working on, the collective sale premiums for owners look attractive, at almost 100 per cent.

'Most importantly, we spoke to potential bidders who said that in principle, they would be prepared to make the huge investment involved, possibly as part of a consortium, to reduce the risk,' says Credo's managing director Karamjit Singh. He declined to comment on Farrer Court's reserve price. Farrer Court is zoned for residential use with a 2.8 plot ratio and a 36-storey height limit.