Beauty World Plaza Is Asking the Same $165 Million for a Third Time. The Market Around It Has Moved

The announcement came on Tuesday, 13 October. ETC, the sole marketing agent, said it was selling Beauty World Plaza by public tender at a guide price of $165 million, which CNA converted to about US$129 million. The tender closes at 3pm on 19 November.

The number is the story. In November 2018, Knight Frank put the same building up at $165 million. In June 2019 it tried again, as EdgeProp reported at the time, at an unchanged $165 million, which it then described as about $2,189 per square foot per plot ratio. That tender closed on 17 July 2019. It did not produce a sale.

Seven years later the owners are asking for exactly the same sum. The per-square-foot figure has shifted from $2,189 to $2,231 only because the two agents divided by slightly different floor areas; the price has not changed by a dollar. The question is whether the neighbourhood has grown into a price it could not support in 2019.

Beauty World Plaza is not large. According to the reporting, it is an eight-storey building on a site of about 24,817 square feet, with shops on the first three floors, flats above them and an open terrace on the fourth floor. The Straits Times put it at 61 retail units and 30 residential units, built in the early 1980s.

Our records agree: the management corporation, MCST 0681, was formed in 1983 and covers 91 strata lots.

What makes it unusual is the lease. The building sits on land held for 999 years from 1884, which leaves about 857 years to run. ETC called it a "near-freehold asset", and for practical purposes it is. Most of the land sold around it in recent years came with a 99-year lease.

The site is zoned commercial and residential with a gross plot ratio of 3.0 under the URA Master Plan 2025. ETC said URA has granted in-principle approval for serviced apartments in the residential part, allowing for about 108 keys at a minimum of 35 square metres each. In 2019, EdgeProp reported that no development charge was payable for redevelopment up to the maximum permissible floor area.

It sits on a corner of Upper Bukit Timah Road and Bukit Timah Link, beside Beauty World station on the Downtown Line, near the Singapore Institute of Management, SUSS and NUS, and within a kilometre of Pei Hwa Presbyterian Primary School.

The reporting does not explain why the 2018 and 2019 tenders failed, so what follows is our reading of the timing, not a reported cause.

The first attempt landed in a cold market. On 6 July 2018, four months before Beauty World Plaza's first tender, the government raised the additional buyer's stamp duty on developers buying residential land. EdgeProp reported that week that the corporate rate went from 15% to 25%, with an extra 5% that developers pay upfront and cannot get back. Even before the measures, it noted, 21 collective sale tenders worth $5.6 billion had closed in May and June that year without a sale. The en bloc boom of 2017 and early 2018 was ending.

The second attempt, in mid-2019, came while that chill persisted. It drew no takers.

The other part is the price. In 2019, $2,189 psf ppr was high for land in this part of Bukit Timah, as the next sections show, and a developer building homes to sell has to recover land, stamp duty, construction and a margin from what buyers pay. Nearby launches then sold for much less than they do now.

Today the duty is higher still. IRAS lists the rate for housing developers at 35%, which can be remitted if conditions are met, plus 5% that cannot. That is part of why the agent's pitch now leans on uses other than a conventional condo.

Not often. Our URA caveat records hold 45 shop and office sales in the building since 1995, and only 8 since 2020. Here is every one of them:

URA commercial caveats, per square foot of strata area. URA files some units as retail in one year and office in another; we keep them as filed.

Two things stand out. The units are tiny, between 151 and 344 square feet, and small units carry high prices per square foot, so the $3,380 median partly reflects size. And prices per unit have sat in a narrow band: every sale bar one went for between $869,000 and $1.15 million, the median is $980,000, and the latest, in August 2025, was exactly that.

Over the longer run, shops and offices here went from a median $846 psf in the late 1990s to $3,380 since 2020. The flats sell at lower prices per square foot: the most recent, in April 2025, was a 926 sq ft unit at $1.52 million, or $1,642 psf.

Next door, the older Beauty World Centre, on a 99-year lease from 1979, has had 15 retail sales since 2020 at a median $3,129 psf, against $3,448 for Beauty World Plaza's six. Small samples, but at the strata level the far longer lease is not obviously worth a fortune.

On paper, a sale at the guide price would be a good outcome for most owners.

Divide $165 million by the building's 91 strata lots and you get about $1.81 million per lot. The median price across the 12 sales of any kind (shops, offices and flats) in the building since 2020 is $980,000. The guide price per lot is roughly 1.9 times that.

That is a simple division. Real proceeds are apportioned by each owner's share value and strata area, so the owner of a 926 sq ft flat and the owner of a 151 sq ft shop will receive very different amounts, before their own costs and taxes.

Still, the direction is clear. A sale at $165 million would pay owners well above what their units fetch one at a time. That gap is why they have stuck with the price through three attempts.

This is where the price looks steep. Here is every government land sale within 1.5 km of Beauty World Plaza since 2015, from URA and HDB land-sale records:

Award price per square foot of permitted gross floor area. All are bare 99-year sites.

The closest comparison is almost across the road. The Bukit Timah Link site, 80 metres away, sold in November 2022 for $1,343 psf ppr. It is now the 8@BT condominium. The Jalan Anak Bukit site, 234 metres away and now The Reserve Residences, went for $989 in 2021.

Beauty World Plaza's guide price, at $2,231 per square foot of floor area, is well above both.

The units line up, since all are per square foot of floor area; the goods do not. A government site is bare 99-year land. Beauty World Plaza is 999-year land with an income-earning building, a serviced-apartment approval and no lease to top up, and such land usually commands a premium. Whether it is worth what the guide price implies is what the tender will test.

This is the price a homebuilder would have to beat. Here are the private launches within 3 km of Beauty World Plaza that began selling from 2022, from URA caveat records:

Median transacted PSF over new-sale caveats, one per unit. All are 99-year leasehold. Recent launches are still lodging, so counts are a floor.

The two projects right beside the station sit at the top of the range: $2,717 at 8@BT, next door, and $2,480 at The Reserve Residences, 234 metres away. The three launches over the District 23 line, towards Dairy Farm, are lower, at $2,048 to $2,166.

Across District 21 over the past year, new sales went at a median $2,454 psf (337 sales) against $1,851 for resales (479). These are strata prices, not land prices, so they cannot be subtracted from anything above. They show what buyers around the station will pay today, and none of it is for a 999-year lease.

This is the strongest argument for a third attempt. The price is the same; almost everything around it is not.

All new-sale caveats in postal district 21, one per unit. Each year's median reflects whichever projects were launching; 2026 is a partial year.

When Beauty World Plaza first went to tender, District 21's new homes sold at a median $1,922 psf (2018), then $1,826 (2019). This year it is $2,473. Nearby land has moved too: $939 at Toh Tuck Road in 2017 and $1,002 at Jalan Jurong Kechil in 2018, then $1,343 at Bukit Timah Link in 2022. The building's own shops went from a median $2,820 psf in the 2010s to $3,380 since 2020.

So the same $165 million is a softer ask than it was in 2018. Our view is that it is still a stretch for a conventional homebuilder, because it remains well above anything paid for land around the station. But the distance has narrowed, and that is what the owners are betting on.

The agent's own words point away from a standard condo. ETC's Swee Shou Fern told The Straits Times that "beyond a conventional redevelopment play", a buyer could consider upgrading the existing building, and that its closeness to schools and universities suits serviced apartments, co-living and other accommodation aimed at academia.

That fits the numbers above. A developer building flats to sell must recover land, stamp duty and construction from strata prices that, next door at 8@BT, have a median of $2,717 psf. A buyer who holds and rents is doing different sums, paying for income, location and a lease that will outlast everything around it.

There is also room to add. The building's recorded floor area in BCA's building data is about 70% of what the Master Plan allows on the site. Those figures come from different datasets, so treat the ratio as a rough indicator, but it suggests a buyer could build more on the site than stands there today.

Our read is that the realistic buyer is a long-term investor or an operator of student or serviced housing, more than a homebuilder. That is a smaller pool, which is why a third tender can still fail. The close on 19 November will tell.

Several limits, and they matter here more than usual.

A guide price is an ask. Twice before, nobody met it.

Two kinds of per-square-foot. The guide price and land sales are per square foot of floor area; the shop, flat and condo prices are per square foot of strata area. We show them side by side for scale only.

The building's own sales are thin. Eight shop and office sales since 2020, and a handful of flat sales. The medians are indicative, not precise.

Per-lot arithmetic is a simplification. Proceeds are apportioned by share value and area. A $1.81 million average says little about any one owner.

Different goods. The nearby land was bare and 99-year, the nearby condos new and 99-year; Beauty World Plaza is an early-1980s building on 999-year land.

What we would not hedge on: the guide price has stood still since 2018 while the median new home in the district has gone from $1,922 to $2,473 psf. Whatever happens on 19 November, the gap between what the owners want and what the market will pay is smaller than it was.

Two kinds of numbers, kept apart.

From the reporting: the guide price and $2,231 psf of GFA, the tender dates, the site, the building's floors, uses and unit count, the zoning, the serviced-apartment approval, the agent's quotes and the history of the 2018 and 2019 attempts (including $2,189 psf ppr and the development-charge position) come from CNA, The Straits Times and EdgeProp. The July 2018 cooling measures come from EdgeProp; the developer stamp duty rate from IRAS.

PropKaki's own data, as of 20 October 2026:

• Strata sales in the building are URA caveats at 140 Upper Bukit Timah Road: 45 shop and office sales and 35 flat sales since 1995. Medians are over transacted PSF of strata area.
• Lot count, MCST number and year formed come from the MCST register; lease from the caveats; built floor area from BCA's building data.
• Nearby land is every government land sale awarded since 2015 within 1.5 km, at its award price per square foot per plot ratio.
• Nearby launches are private projects within 3 km first selling in 2022 or later, with at least 20 new-sale caveats, one per unit.
• District 21 figures cover new-sale caveats since 2017 by year, the trailing 365 days by type of sale, and commercial caveats since 2023.

Recent caveats under-lodge, so counts are a floor, and every price is transacted except the guide price itself.

The news:

• CNA: Beauty World Plaza up for collective sale for third time at S$165 million, October 2026.
• The Straits Times: Beauty World Plaza up for collective sale at $165m, October 2026.
• EdgeProp: Beauty World Plaza makes fresh collective sale bid at $165 mil, 13 October 2026.
• EdgeProp: Beauty World Plaza up for sale at $165 million again, 18 June 2019.
• EdgeProp: En bloc sales bear the brunt of cooling measures, 15 July 2018.
• IRAS: Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty (ABSD).

The data:

• PropKaki analysis of URA commercial and residential caveats at 140 Upper Bukit Timah Road, 1995 to 2026.
• PropKaki analysis of URA and HDB land-sale awards within 1.5 km, 2015 to 2026.
• PropKaki analysis of URA new-sale caveats for launches within 3 km, and for postal district 21 by year.

This is commentary by the PropKaki Editorial Desk on reporting by CNA, The Straits Times and EdgeProp. The sale details and the agent's statements belong to that reporting; the price analysis, the framing and the opinions are ours.

It is opinion and general information, not financial, legal or property advice. Nothing here is a forecast of whether the tender will succeed or at what price. Owners weighing a collective sale should take advice on their own apportionment, costs and tax position.

Published 20 October 2026.