A Guide to Buying Landed Properties
So, you have your eye on that luxurious property with an enormous cooling pool at the back and two stories of room for the kids to play out their adventure.
The location is good, being near an excellent school and maybe even a shopping mall too. If you are not planning to spend a lifetime in this paradise, perhaps you are thinking to invest in it for future paying customers, sharing the joy of living here… for a price.
Here’s a checklist of the different types of landed property options:
Bungalows
Bungalows are standalone houses without any connecting units. Here in Singapore, bungalows can be further divided into 2 categories: Good Class Bungalows (GCB) and Bungalows. Bungalows are usually a free standing detached house that does not share a common wall with another property. Bungalows have a minimum plot size of 400 square metres and can be built as a single storey or multiple storey property, as long as they obey the 40% minimum site coverage criteria.
For a good class bungalow, the plot size is at least 1,400 square metres, and the maximum site coverage is at 35% instead.
Semi-Detached Homes
Semi-Detached are usually conjoined buildings with a common wall in-between. These properties have different title deeds and usually different owners. These have a minimum plot size of 200 square metres, or approximately 2,160 square feet. These have a maximum site coverage of 45% for 2-storey semi-detached housing. They also have a minimum plot width of 8 metres, unless they are back-to-back semi-detached housing – 10 metres.
An exception to the above rule, are linked bungalows. Owners are issued a strata title deed – this shows the proportion of the land that they own. Usually, these houses are put under mixed landed property and they have a maximum site coverage of 45%.
Terrace Houses
Terrace houses are usually a row of houses – of at least 3 units – with 2 corners. Corner terraces are often of a higher value because of the slightly larger frontage of 8 metres as compared to those in the middle of 6 metres frontage. These houses are characterised by shared common walls between houses.
Terraced houses can be further divided into 3 categories: Terrace House 1 (intermediate units), Terrace House 2 (intermediate units) and Terrace House 2 (corner units). These differ in the plot width and plot sizes. For Terrace House 1, these have a minimum plot size of 150 square metre or 1,620 square foot. On the other hand, Terrace House 2 – both intermediate and corner units – have a minimum plot size of 80 square metres or 862 square feet.
Property Types
Eligibility
With all types of property purchases, always be sure to check your eligibility before you make the purchase. Foreigners (including Singapore PRs) are not entitled to buying landed properties in Singapore, unless approval has been granted by the Land Dealings Association Unit (LDAU). An important point to note is that GCBs can be sold to Singapore Citizens only.
The application to LDAU takes about 3 months to process, and once approved, the owner may only purchase the landed property for his/her own residence and not for any other form of investment.
The only exception to this rule applies to landed properties located in Sentosa Cove.
Land Titles
Before purchasing the property, you would have to exercise your option. While doing so, please do check if the owner has offered another person an option as well; there have been cases where multiple options were exercised, only for prospective buyers to realise that and others have also paid the option fee of 1%, and that the landowner pocketed the option fees.
In addition, you would also have to look out for the lease terms on the certificate of title. This would also show the remaining lease on the property. As such, you will be able to make a better decision if the lease term left on the property is relatively short.
On top of that, the certificate of title will also reflect the easements and covenants placed on the property.
Financing Options
When looking to purchase a property, we would often look at the asking price of the property. This allows us to be able to have a rough estimate of how much the property will be transacted at. At the same time, we can also roughly calculate the option fee required, the down payment and also how much we can borrow.
There are different types of landed properties, catering to various needs and desires of the buyer.
Look out for our other articles as we share the other important considerations of buying landed properties here in Singapore.
