I have been away relaxing myself in the Chinese New Year season. Sorry if you have been checking out my blog yet have not been seeing my “presence”!!

Here I am continuing my study on Cube 8 from my previous article:

Cube 8 is a freehold condominium development located at 376 Thomson Road, Singapore 298130, in District 11, minutes’ walk to Novena MRT Station. With an expected completion in 2017, it comprises of 177 units in a 36 storey tower. Cube 8 is close to MacRitchie Reservoir Park and Novena Square Shopping Mall.

This development has full condominium facilities. They include function room, gymnasium, wellness studio, games arena, gourmet’s domain, fitness area, party deck, outdoor dining deck, BBQ deck, garden deck, children’s playground, family pool, infinity swimming pool, jet pool, sauna, sun deck, tennis court and 24-hour security. Considering the market condominium provision, Cube 8 has been pretty generous in its provision of communal facilities.

In terms of view, Cube 8 commands relatively good view with no near future threat of development blocking its view. With the intended orientation, many units should enjoy unblocked views towards city and MacRitchie Reservoir Park.

Cube 8 is sitting on a sizable plot of land having easy access to city and other parts of Singapore via Thomson road, Balestier road and the adjacent PIE. It may face acoustic noise issue due to its proximity to the highway, especially the area of highway is the flyer over section of the PIE. The architect has tried his best to orientating the building block, however there are 3 stacks 05, 06 & 07 nearest to the highway might suffer from noise pollution. Looking at the glassy design of the building, the architect might have adopted some noise reduction measure such as use of laminated glazing or others to effectively minimize the problem.

Below shows the types of units making up the 177 units.

1 Bedroom (560sqft) — 39 Units

2 Bedroom (~900sqft) — 58 Units

3 Bedroom (~1,300sqft) — 67 Units

4 Bedroom (~1,900sqft) — 9 Units

Luxury Penthouse (~3,000sqft) — 4 Exclusive Units

I did a rough arithmetical calculation on the development figures

• Total saleable area= 190,240 sqft

• Average selling price= $1250

• Gross Development value = Total saleable area x avg selling price = $238.8million

• Acquisition Cost of the Albany & Thomson Mansion = $67 mil

• Development charge = $174,000 (too insignificant for input later)

• Estimated Construction cost for luxury condominium psf = $450psf $400 psf (pls advise if you think the cost is not correct) = $76 mil

• Estimated Development Construction cost = $86.6 mil

• Estimated Consultancy fee inclusive authority submission= 10% of construction cost = $8.66 mil

• Miscellaneous cost i.e. financing, marketing, etc = 10% of GDV= $23.88 mil

The estimated profit for CDL, GDV after less the construction cost and others, is $76 million. Quite a profitable project. (Disclaimer: I am no expert in real estate development, therefore the above is purely the play of figures intuitively. Feel free to point out if there is something amiss:)

Afterall, Cube 8 has outperformed in the booming market. In the past January, URA’s figures showed that another 350 homes sold were in the city-fringe areas, led by City Developments’ Cube8 in Thomson Road – January’s top-seller. Out of 177 Cube8 homes launched, 167 units sold at a median price of $1,286psf.

I attach herewith the Cube 8 brochure for your perusal. If you are interested in Cube 8, and like my unbiased views towards all projects, you may want to reward me by engaging your agent so I could render my full fledged professional service to you (ha ha, I still have to advertise my realtor role now and then to make a living on it).

Cube_8_Brochure

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