AN 80-YEAR-OLD widow is fighting with her 62 neighbours to stop a collective deal their private estate has made with a developer from going through.
Madam Chow Ai Hwa, the sole party to hold out, has turned to the Strata Titles Board to block the sale of Eng Lok Mansion, a prime estate beside Gleneagles Hospital in Napier Road.
If she loses, she plans to take the matter up to the High Court and even the Court of Appeal - a process which could drag over many months.
Neighbours, some of whom have bought new homes, are worried that her move will jeopardise the estate's deal with Napier Properties, which hopes to seal the deal by the end of the year.
If the deal collapses, each owner will have to repay about $100,000 which they have received so far for the sale.
Napier Properties' offer of $138 million for the freehold property made in March would net each owner about $2.16 million - double what they would have received if they had sold their units individually.
It was then Singapore's most expensive collective sale site until it was outdone last month by Habitat One in Ardmore Park, which is being sold for $180 million.
But Madam Chow, who has lived there for 37 years and was the first occupant of her apartment, feels they should have received twice as much.
In her affidavit to the board, she claims that properties in the Tanglin area can fetch $3,000 per square foot, which would translate to a whopping $4.7 million for each owner.
She is also contesting the way the pool of money is being divided equally among all the owners, when there are some apartments which are smaller in size.
She does not want more compensation. She is asking for an apartment at the new development instead.
Napier Properties has plans to develop the current Eng Lok plot of land into a medical centre, but these were turned down by the Urban Redevelopment Authority, which wants the area to be a residential site instead.
The matter will be heard tomorrow by a five-member Strata Titles Board tribunal.
Madam Chow wants to stay on as she maintains that the spirit of her late husband, who died in 2002, lingers in the house. She now lives by herself.
The retired nurse, who has six children and 13 grandchildren, wrote: 'The spirit of my late husband...will become lost and homeless and he may not be able to find me again.'
She told The Straits Times: 'This is such a good locality...We're near a hospital and the Botanic Gardens... I don't see why anyone in his right mind would want to sell it.' In her court documents, she also talked about how memories were now her 'most precious possession'.
Her three-bedroom apartment is cluttered with old newspapers yellowed with age, thick files of court documents from numerous other cases she has contested in court, and videotapes of television shows her husband had recorded for her but which she has not had time to watch.
Although she is more fluent in Mandarin, Madam Chow is handling her own case and preparing her own affidavits in English, relying on her spectacles, a magnifying glass and a Chinese-English legal dictionary for help.
Eng Lok is represented by lawyer David De Souza.
Madam Chow stays home all the time as she worries that neighbours who oppose her will sneak in and 'steal my evidence'.
She is determined to carry on the fight for 'the sake of my neighbours', whom she claims do not realise they are entering a 'really bad deal'.
But her neighbours do not agree. A couple with two young children, who have bought a new apartment in Holland Road for $900,000, said they are keeping their fingers crossed that she will back down soon.
'We could end up in a lot of trouble financially if she continues the fight. We hope she will see the light soon.'
benjamin@sph.com.sg
| More owners try to stop sale |
THE number of applications to the Strata Titles Board from home owners hoping to block the collective sale of their estate has shot up this year. In 2004, there were 10 applications, and the number rose to 14 last year. So far this year, the figure has already more than doubled to 32. Most cases are settled at the mediation stage. If this fails, the matter will be decided by a tribunal, which is a five-person panel whose members are drawn from an approved list of lawyers, architects, property consultants and surveyors. Parties unhappy with the tribunal's decision can appeal to the High Court and Court of Appeal. A check with court records and lawyers who handle such disputes show that very few people go that far. In fact, since the law was changed in 1999 to allow collective sales to go through on a 80 per cent majority for estates more than 10 years old, only one person has taken her case to the High Court. In 2003, accountant Koh Gek Hwa lost her bid in the High Court to get about $200,000 more from her unit at the Dragon Court condominium in Holland Road. |
