Lornie Road's $83 Million Bungalow Is Really a Land Sale. Here Is How the Land Rate Compares

According to EdgeProp, it was built in 1937, and Mr Chng reportedly bought it in the 1970s from the late Kwek Hong Png, founder of the Hong Leong Group.

It is a two-storey house with seven bedrooms, as The Business Times reported and Mothership relayed. Mr Chng lived there with his wife and seven children, and the house grew with the family. In the 1990s they added two bedrooms on the second floor and an office suite for the company on the ground floor.

Behind it is a large garden of mature fruit trees: durian, mango, avocado, longan, pomelo and starfruit.

Our own record agrees with the long ownership. PropKaki's transaction data starts in 1995, and it holds no caveated sale of 8 Lornie Road at all.

This is the house's second outing. EdgeProp reported that it was first offered by private treaty in May 2025 at $82 million, or $1,586 psf, and later withdrawn unsold. The new guide is $1 million, or 1.2%, higher.

The method has changed too. A tender sets a deadline, and this one closes at 3pm on 12 November. Knight Frank Singapore is the exclusive agent. Its senior manager for capital markets, Dayna Ang, called the land rate "an attractive entry point" for buyers with a long investment horizon.

Knight Frank also set out who it thinks might bid, according to EdgeProp and Stacked Homes:

• A developer, subdividing the land into six detached houses or 16 semi-detached houses, or building a cluster housing project, all subject to the authorities' approval.
• A private buyer, keeping it whole as a single estate for a multi-generational family.

The plot has about 58 metres of road frontage, the agent says. The family has divided land here before. EdgeProp reported that in 1987 Mr Chng bought an adjoining bungalow plot and redeveloped it into two pairs of semi-detached houses.

Headlines about big bungalows tend to reach for the phrase "Good Class Bungalow". This one is a big bungalow, but on our mapping it is not in a Good Class Bungalow Area.

PropKaki's landed directory matches each house to its land plot and to URA's landed housing plan. For 8 Lornie Road it shows:

The plot area matches the reported 51,700 sq ft almost exactly, which is reassuring.

The zoning matters for two reasons. First, a Good Class Bungalow Area keeps plots large: URA's rules set a minimum of 1,400 sq m for a bungalow there, against 400 sq m for a detached house elsewhere. Second, an area marked for semi-detached homes allows them. That is why Knight Frank can talk about 16 semi-detached houses at all. Inside a Good Class Bungalow Area, that option would not exist.

So the right comparison is not only other bungalows. It is land, and what land like this sells for per square foot.

When a detached house sells on land title, URA records the land area, so the price per square foot is a land rate. Here is the median rate for single-house detached sales each year since 2016:

Two things stand out. Land rates have climbed steadily: District 11's median was $1,528 psf in 2020 and is $2,415 psf this year. And the Lornie Road guide, at $1,605 psf, sits below every 2026 median in the table, including the Good Class Bungalow Areas.

On that reading the guide looks cheap. It isn't that simple, and the next table shows why.

A buyer who wants a house on 7,000 sq ft of land has hundreds of choices and pays for each foot. A buyer for 51,700 sq ft is paying for a single very large asset, and the pool of people who can write that cheque is small. Land rates fall as plots grow.

Here is every single-house detached sale on land title in Districts 10 and 11 from January 2023 to early October 2026, grouped by plot size:

That is 235 sales in all. The pattern is clear even though the top band holds only four: the smallest plots fetch the highest rates, and the very largest the lowest.

Against that band, the guide of $1,605 psf is not a bargain and not a stretch. It sits a little above the large-plot median. It is the right band to judge it in, because 8 Lornie Road is larger than every plot in it bar one.

Very few plots this size change hands. Of the 2,457 single-house detached sales on land title in our record since 2016, only four had 40,000 sq ft or more of land, and only two had more than 51,700 sq ft:

• 24 Peirce Road, December 2025: 80,448 sq ft for $148 million, or $1,840 psf.
• 81 Dalvey Road, September 2018: 52,059 sq ft for $93.9 million, or $1,804 psf.

Here is every single-house detached sale of 25,000 sq ft or more since January 2023, in any district:

9 Camden Park, also in District 11, sold last November at $1,604 psf, a dollar off the Lornie Road guide.

By price, the rarity is just as plain. Our record holds 24 single-house detached sales of $50 million or more since 2016, and 20 of them came from 2021 onwards. Only five were above $83 million: 24 Peirce Road ($148m), 9 Cuscaden Road ($145m, a 2016 sale of a site outside any landed housing area, priced as development land), 30 Nassim Road ($128.8m), 81 Dalvey Road ($93.9m) and 11 Queen Astrid Park ($86m). A sale at the guide would rank sixth.

Lornie Road has already run this experiment once.

Our record shows 14 Lornie Road, a plot of 45,670 sq ft, selling in March 2006 for $15.0 million, or $328 psf. Stacked Homes reports that the former bungalow plot there was redeveloped from 2006 into Lornie 18: 18 freehold strata detached houses.

Our record holds four of the new-sale caveats from 2007, at $5.14 million to $5.42 million a house. Since January 2023, seven Lornie 18 houses have resold, at a median $5.98 million and a range of $5.55 million to $6.8 million. The latest, 12Q Lornie Road, went for $5.55 million in August 2026, a sale Stacked Homes also noted.

Lornie 18's psf figures are floor-area rates, so they can't be set against the guide. The point is simpler: a plot almost the size of 8 Lornie Road, a few house numbers along, was once bought for $328 psf of land and turned into 18 homes. The guide on 8 Lornie Road is $1,605 psf.

This is where the guide gets interesting, and where we have to be careful. The arithmetic below is land cost only. It ignores the land a subdivision gives up for access, construction, approvals, stamp duties, financing and the years all of that takes. It is not a feasibility study, just a sense of scale.

Now set those against what finished houses sell for nearby:

• District 11 detached houses sold at a median $18.37 million since January 2025, on a median 7,647 sq ft of land (64 sales).
• District 11 semi-detached houses sold at a median $9.68 million, on 3,722 sq ft (57 sales).
• On Lornie Walk, in the same Mount Pleasant subzone, two semi-detached houses on almost exactly a sixteenth of the plot sold for $5.88 million (3,239 sq ft, January 2023) and $6.0 million (3,229 sq ft, June 2025).

The district medians leave room above the land cost. The street-level sales leave much less. A semi-detached house on Lornie Walk, building included, has sold for not much more than a sixteenth of this guide, and a real subdivision would produce smaller lots than our simple division, once land is set aside for access. Those Lornie Walk houses are older, so new ones could well fetch more. That gap, between the land cost and what new houses on this street would sell for, is the question every developer bidding will have to answer.

Our view, not advice.

The guide is not a stretch for a plot this size. It sits a little above the large-plot median, a dollar above 9 Camden Park, and below both bigger plots, Peirce Road and Dalvey Road. It looks low against the district median only because that median is mostly small plots.

The tender tests a narrow market. Twenty of the 24 sales of $50 million or more in our record came from 2021 onwards. One result here tells you about that thin market, not about the typical semi-detached or terrace house.

The subdivision sum is a reference point, not a cap. Knight Frank names two kinds of buyer. A developer can only pay what new houses will support, and the Lornie Walk sales suggest that margin is thin at the guide. A buyer who wants a single 51,700 sq ft freehold estate, a rare thing in our record, is working from a different sum.

For owners of big plots nearby, the useful comparison is the handful of large plots that have actually sold, not the district median.

• A guide is not a price. The house was withdrawn once already at $82 million. The tender may close above, below, or not at all.
• Our record holds caveated sales. A sale with no caveat lodged never reaches URA's data, so every count here, including the 24 sales of $50 million or more, is a floor. That matters most at the very top of the market.
• Medians move with the mix. A year with more big plots or more Good Class Bungalow Area sales pulls the median down. The 2026 figures cover January to early October only, and the 25,000 sq ft band rests on four sales.
• Strata prices are not land rates. Lornie 18's houses are recorded by floor area, so we used their prices, not their psf.
• The zoning is our mapping of each plot to URA's plan, and any redevelopment still needs approval, as the agent itself says.
• The per-lot arithmetic is land cost only. It leaves out everything that turns land into houses.

From the reporting: the tender details, the agent's comments and the history of the house come from Mothership, EdgeProp and Stacked Homes, linked below (the bedroom count is The Business Times' reporting, via Mothership). Plot-size minimums come from URA.

PropKaki's own data, from URA caveat records of landed sales:

• Land rates use detached-house sales on land title from January 2016 to 2 October 2026, the latest caveat in the data; price per square foot is price over land area. Only single-house sales count: en bloc and multi-house caveats are left out.
• Good Class Bungalow Area, landed housing area and plot area come from PropKaki's landed directory, which matches each house to its SLA cadastral plot and URA's landed housing plan. About 2% of detached sales do not match a house and are left out of the GCB Area columns only.
• The plot-size table covers Districts 10 and 11 from January 2023. The District 11 medians for detached and semi-detached houses cover January 2025 to October 2026.
• The per-lot figures are the guide price and the reported land area divided by six and by 16.

The news:

• Mothership: Late real estate tycoon's Lornie Road bungalow up for sale again at S$83 million guide price, October 2026.
• EdgeProp: Late tycoon Chng Gim Huat's Lornie Road bungalow back on market at $83 mil, October 2026.
• Stacked Homes: Lornie Road bungalow sale at $83 million, 14 October 2026.

Official:

• Urban Redevelopment Authority: Bungalows: plot size and width.

The data:

• PropKaki analysis of URA landed sale caveats, January 2016 to 2 October 2026, joined to PropKaki's landed directory (SLA cadastral plots, URA landed housing areas).

Related reading on PropKaki: URA's landed redevelopment guidelines and landed property types explained.

This is commentary by the PropKaki Editorial Desk on reporting by Mothership, EdgeProp and Stacked Homes. The details of the house, the family and the tender belong to that reporting; the land-rate analysis, the framing and the opinions are ours.

It is opinion and general information, not financial or property advice, and not a valuation of any property.

Published 20 October 2026.