When the owners of Lakeside Towers saw their neighbours at Lakeside Apartments and Park View Mansions celebrate their successful collective sales in 2022, there was a sense that being the last ageing condo fronting Jurong Lake Gardens would help them secure a better deal when they launched their own collective sale tender.
At the time, there was good reason for the owners of Lakeside Towers to believe that the enbloc momentum was in their favour.
Then, as now, there are only three condominium sites along Yuan Ching Road, which stretches along the Western edge of the Jurong Lake Gardens, from Lakeside MRT station on the East-West Line to the southern edge of the Jurong Lake District.
In 2022, enbloc activity began when the former Lakeside Apartments were sold to Wing Tai Holdings for $273.88 million ($1,260 psf per plot ratio) in May of that year. It was quickly followed by the sale of the former Park View Mansions to a SingHaiyi-led consortium, who purchased the site in an en bloc deal worth $260 million ($1,023 psf ppr).
Wing Tai would launch its new project, the 306-unit LakeGarden Residences, in August 2023. According to developer sales data, the project is nearly fully sold (99%) and has set an average selling price of $2,160 psf.
Meanwhile, SingHaiyi and its partners launched the 440-unit Sora in July 2024. The condominium has sold just over half (51%) of its total units, and set an average selling price of $2,237 psf.
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Third time’s the charm for Lakeside Towers?
The owners of Lakeside Towers, together with JLL as the marketing agent, launched a collective sale tender for the 99-year leasehold condo in February 2023, listing the property at a reserve price of $350 million or about $1,244 psf ppr.
That wasn’t the first time Lakeside Towers had been offered for sale. Back in 2018, the development was listed for $305 million. But the collective sale tender closed without any successful bids.
The 2022 collective sale launch coincided with a renewed redevelopment focus in the Jurong East region, and days after CapitaLand Development announced that it was redeveloping the former JCube into a new residential project. That site has since been launched as the 368-unit J’Den, which entered the market in November 2023. According to caveats, the project is nearly fully sold (97%) with an average selling price of $2,475 psf.
The Jurong East region also garnered much attention as the government progressively revealed more details around the Jurong Lake District master plan. URA launched a massive 6.5-ha master developer site close to Jurong East MRT Interchange in June 2023.
Ultimately, the master developer site was not awarded, and the government subsequently carved out the site into separate parcels, launching a 3.72-ha mixed-use site at Town Hall Link in July this year. That tender closes on November 17.
The 2022 collective sale tender for Lakeside Towers closed without a successful bid. The collective sale committee would relaunch the tender a few months later, on June 30 2023 with the reserve price unchanged, but this would also fail to secure a successful bid.
Nicholas Ng, Head of Land and Collective Sales at JLL Singapore, says that back then underlying market forces had started to turn the tide against enbloc hopefuls. That year saw financing costs rise on the back of a higher interest rate environment. Moreover, developers faced an elevated development market amid persistently high, and rising, construction costs.
However, after four years, the owners of Lakeside Towers are making their third attempt at a collective sale. With JLL returning as the marketing agent, the 45 year old condo has launched a collective sale tender on Aug 5 with the same reserve price of $350 million.
The reserve price translates to a land rate of $1,277 psf ppr at the base gross plot ratio of 2.36 for the site, after accounting for an estimated lease top-up premium with no land betterment charge.
If the bonus GFA for balconies is included, it would bring the land rate to approximately $1,225 psf ppr, inclusive of both the lease top-up premium and a land betterment charge.
Expensive to maintain and lease decay bites away at their property value
Maureen Tan, chairwoman of the current collective sale committee (CSC) at Lakeside Towers, says that many of the owners are motivated to see the ageing condo sold and eventually redeveloped.
She says that nearly all of the owners are retirees who are keen to capitalise on the value of the existing property, and most of them prefer to subsequently downsize to a HDB flat and pocket any remaining sale proceeds to help fund their retirement.
In fact, the latest announcement of the removal of the 15-month wait out period for private home owners purchasing a five-room or larger flat was a popular topic of discussion among the senior owners at Lakeside Towers, says Tan.
Thus, it did not take long for the owners to set things in motion for this latest collective sale attempt. According to Tan, discussions came to a head in January 2025 which quickly saw the formation of the CSC, and they started collecting signatures for the approval of the collective sale agreement in May that year.
While the 45 year old condo is still structurally sound, Tan says that some of the owners are struggling to cover the amount of repairs needed within their units. She adds that while the condo’s management corporation strata title (MCST) and property manager have been able to spruce up the development as much as possible, the upkeep of the condo is projected to significantly increase in the coming years.
In addition, many of the owners also realise that the deteriorating leasehold tenure of the property means that their units have little to no chance of seeing further price growth if they were to sell on the resale market, says Ng of JLL.
Lakeside Towers has a 99-year leasehold land tenure that started in 1975. The lease situation that the owners face is made worse because the condo was only completed in 1981. With less than 48 years left on its lease, the negative impact of lease decay will start to severely erode the capital value of the units there.
Tan, who has lived at Lakeside Towers for the past six years, says that it was the development’s proximity to the Jurong Lake Gardens as well as the number of convenient amenities in the vicinity that captivated her and her husband.
As a fitness enthusiast, her husband loves the extensive network of park connectors and bicycle paths that radiate around the Jurong Lake Gardens. Lakeside Towers is next to the Entrance Pavillion and North Carpark of Lakeside Garden.
This 60-ha section of Western section of the Jurong Lake Gardens houses several of the amenities and recreational activities like the Broadwalk and Floating Wetlands, the children’s water playground at Clusia Cove, PAssion Wave @ Jurong Lake Gardens, as well as several of the gardens and open fields.
The views of Jurong Lake Gardens and Jurong Lake will likely be one of the development’s strongest selling point to a potential developer. With Sora and LakeGarden Residences already in the market, redeveloping Lakeside Towers is the last remaining chance for a developer to introduce a new project that capitalises on this rare lakefront view in Singapore.
At the same time, Tan says that the number of nearby wet markets, supermarkets, and food centres in the Taman Jurong area was what helped to seal the deal for her to live at Lakeside Towers.
Lakeside Towers represents a rare convergence of lakefront scarcity and strategic location, says Ng of JLL. He adds that the development has approximately 190 metres of unobstructed lakefront views, which is a feature that gives future residents a backyard that is difficult to replicate in land-scarce Singapore.
He continues: “This site offers developers a compelling value proposition at a time when there is currently no other residential site that is located next to the Jurong Lake Gardens for redevelopment.”
New projects and transformation plans shaping Jurong Lake District
The collective sale of Lakeside Towers also comes as some of the buying attention in the new launch market this year starts to pivot towards this part of Jurong East and the Jurong Lake District.
This quarter, we expect to see City Developments Ltd (CDL) launch its 570-unit Lucerne Grand condo along Lakeside Drive. A government land sale (GLS) site, CDL was awarded this plot after it put in the top bid of $608 million ($1,132 psf ppr) in June 2025.
Located next to Lakeside MRT station, Lucerne Grand will comprise five 17-storey residential towers and a commercial podium. It will be the newest condo in the area since the launch of Sora and LakeGarden Residences. Some market analysts predicted, when the GLS tender closed last year, that the new development could see an average selling price of $2,400psf.
This comes amid the gradual development of the Jurong Lake District (JLD) into Singapore’s largest regional business and commercial hub outside of the Central Business District. This regional transformation is being anchored by existing developments like JEM and Westgate, as well as new mixed-use developments.
The JLD Master Plan envisions the area as a mixed-use hub combining business, residential, retail, and recreational uses, with connectivity enhanced by the existing Jurong East and Lakeside MRT interchange stations.
“The site’s proximity to Jurong Lake District as Singapore’s second CBD, together with established employment nodes including International Business Park, the surrounding Jurong industrial estates, and the mega Tuas Port development, points to strengthening rental demand for private housing in this corridor,” says Ng.
As the district continues to develop, the convergence of infrastructure investment, employment growth, and transport connectivity creates a compelling case for long-term value appreciation, he says.
The CSC of Lakeside Towers and JLL are also banking on the four new stations that were announced as part of the Cross Island (CRL) Line Phase 3, which was unveiled on July 31. The Land Transport Authority (LTA) says that four new underground stations will extend the CRL westwards from Jurong Lake District MRT station towards Gul Circle on the East-West Line.
Jurong Lake District is a new MRT interchange that will eventually connect the CRL and the future Jurong Region Line. The planned interchange is close to the former Jurong Town Hall and new Singapore Science Centre.
According to Ng, it is the right time for Lakeside Towers to re-enter the enbloc market. He points to the ongoing sales at Sora and LakeGarden Residences, as well as the expected launch of Lucerne Grand, as indicators that developers and homebuyers are still keen on new homes in this part of Jurong Lake District.
He suggests that with most of the already-launched supply of new condos snapped up, a redevelopment of Lakeside Towers – after the launch of Lucerne Grand – would continue to benefit from the strong buying demand for new condos in this area.
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