Mandarin Gardens kills second en bloc attempt amidst failure to meet 80% consensus

Only proprietors comprising 68.34% of the 1,017 units signed the deal.

The validity of Mandarin Gardens’ collective sales agreement has come to an end as the 80% consensus required for selling the site was not achieved, the property’s collectives sales committee (CSC) said in a statement. The CSC will also be dissolved tomorrow onwards.

Vincent Teo, chairman of the CSC, said that 1083 Subsidiary Proprietors (SP) comprising 695 units (partially signed) out of 1017 units (68.34%) signed the CSA.

“This being our first attempt at collective sales, we have learned valuable lessons which will certainly be very helpful in our next journey,” Teo said.

Mandarin Gardens also made an attempt at an en bloc sale in 2008. “At that point in time, the worldwide financial crisis was triggered by the collapse of the Lehman Brothers,” Teo said.

The chairman noted that the current market sentiment now is not favourable to the en bloc sales as evidenced by the nonbidders in the tender process of several large estates.

“However should the market turn around faster then we expect, we can launch another en bloc sales process without having to wait for a two-year lapse period,” he said. “The Land Strata Title Act (LTSA) allows a requisition for a general meeting to form a new CSC if 50% of SPs by share value sign such a requisition.”

Mandarin Gardens had a reserve price of $2.9b. The transaction would have been one of the largest transactions at the time of a revived en bloc fever in 2017 to 2018.