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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →A government holiday chalet built in the 1980s on state land in Pasir Ris is now taking guests as Coliwoo Resort Changi, a 380-room co-living hotel, EdgeProp Singapore reported on 8 October 2026 after a stay at the property. The site on Jalan Loyang Besar covers 380,866 sq ft and holds 20 two-storey buildings and four single-storey structures, all kept and refitted instead of being torn down.
The operator, Coliwoo, does not own the land. It rents the property from the Singapore Land Authority (SLA), which awarded it the tenancy by tender in June 2025. EdgeProp reported at the time that Coliwoo's bid was S$225,000 a month, for a term of three years with options to extend for two further three-year terms.
The EdgeProp article of 8 October is a first-hand account of a complimentary media stay, hosted by the property. What it confirms for the rental market is plain enough: the conversion is finished, the rooms are on sale, and a large block of flexible accommodation has been added to the east of the island in existing buildings. The resort is not new this week: it began operations in July 2026, according to Mingtiandi, and the 8 October report is the first detailed account of how it runs. This article sets out how that happened, from the tender to the opening.
EdgeProp Singapore, 3 June 2025 and 8 October 2026; Coliwoo release filed with the Singapore Exchange, 2 June 2025.
From state chalet to hotel licence
The property began as a government chalet in the 1980s, which makes it roughly 40 years old, according to EdgeProp.
Coliwoo announced the award on 2 June 2025, in a release filed with the Singapore Exchange by LHN Limited, the listed group that described Coliwoo as its co-living brand. The release describes a state-owned property with a land area of 380,866 sq ft and a gross floor area of 106,949 sq ft, spread across the 20 two-storey buildings, the four single-storey structures and vehicle lots. The built floor area is therefore about 28 per cent of the land area: most of the site is open ground.
Related readUS rents reach $1,932 in September as concessions spread: ZillowThe plan in that release was a renovation of about 10 months, starting in the second half of the financial year ending 30 September 2025, to produce more than 350 keys, roughly double the number of units the chalet had. Operations were targeted for the third quarter of the financial year ending 30 September 2026. Kelvin Lim, executive chairman of LHN and founder of Coliwoo, said in the release that he believed the project would set a new benchmark for co-living in Singapore.
The finished property has 380 rooms, against the more than 350 announced. Mingtiandi, the Asian real estate trade publication, reported on 3 October 2026 that the resort began operations in July 2026. EdgeProp adds the detail that matters most for how the rooms can be let: the property operates under a hotel licence, so a stay can be booked for as little as one night.
- December 2024The SLA tender for the Jalan Loyang Besar property closes with five bids, as EdgeProp later reported.
- 2 June 2025Coliwoo announces the award and a plan for more than 350 keys.
- Mid-2025Renovation of about 10 months begins on the existing 24 buildings and structures.
- July 2026The resort begins operations with 380 rooms, according to Mingtiandi.
- 8 October 2026EdgeProp publishes its account of a stay; the shop and food stall are not yet open.
Five bids, and the highest did not win
EdgeProp's report of 3 June 2025 lists the monthly rents offered in the tender. Tee Up, a hostel and dormitory operator, bid the most at S$225,900. Coliwoo's S$225,000 was the second-highest of the five, S$900 a month below it. The other three were well behind: Cherryloft Resorts and Hotels at S$138,000, Tap Co-Livings at S$118,888 and The Bus Hotel at S$98,000.
The award went to the second-highest rent. The sources read for this article do not give the criteria or the scoring, and the SLA's own tender notice was not consulted, so the reason the top bid lost is not stated here.
Related readHow Section 8 vouchers work for private landlords in the United StatesEdgeProp Singapore, 3 June 2025. The tender closed in December 2024; the tenancy was awarded to Coliwoo.
The spread says something about how operators priced the site. The two leading bids were within S$900 of each other, and each was more than 1.6 times the third.
What S$225,000 a month buys
The rent can be set against the property with simple arithmetic. At S$225,000 a month, the tenancy costs S$2.7 million a year and S$8.1 million over the first three-year term. Against the 106,949 sq ft of gross floor area in Coliwoo's release, that is about S$2.10 per sq ft a month. Spread over the 380 rooms now built, it is about S$592 per room per month.
Those are this magazine's calculations from the published bid, and they cover the rent alone. Neither Coliwoo's release nor the press reports read here disclose what the 10 months of works cost, and the operator carries that cost on a property it does not own. Room rates and occupancy are not given in EdgeProp's article of 8 October either, so the other side of the ledger cannot be drawn.
The tenancy is short and the land stays with the state
EdgeProp reported a first term of three years, with options for two further three-year terms: nine years at most on the terms published. The cost of the works has to be recovered inside that window.
What was kept and what was added
The reuse is visible in the fabric. Coliwoo told EdgeProp that the works retained close to 40 per cent of the existing landscape, and solar panels were added.
The rooms themselves are built for stays longer than a weekend. EdgeProp describes private studios and maisonettes for families and groups. The duplex unit it stayed in has three single beds upstairs, with a kitchenette, a dining and work area and a bathroom. Units have an induction hob, a hood, a microwave, a fridge, a washer-dryer in the room and a tap for drinking water, and housekeeping with a change of linen comes every three days.
Related readUS tenant screening reports: a landlord's duties under the FCRAShared facilities include a swimming pool with a children's wading pool, a 24-hour gym, a reception that doubles as a co-working lounge, outdoor event plazas, karaoke rooms, food delivery lockers and bicycle parking. Side gates open onto Pasir Ris Park by key card, and Downtown East is about a nine-minute walk away, EdgeProp says.
Not everything was running at the time of its visit. The convenience shop and the food stall that Coliwoo had announced were not yet operating, and the writer found the WiFi in the room weak. Coliwoo told EdgeProp that this was among the teething issues at the new property and that a fix was in progress.
Who the rooms are for
Coliwoo names four groups, according to EdgeProp: corporate professionals, airline crew, students and leisure travellers.
EdgeProp suggests two more groups: expatriates, and residents of the east who need somewhere to live while their own home is being renovated, including during the Housing and Development Board's Home Improvement Programme. That last use is an everyday one. A household that has to move out for a few weeks needs a kitchen, a washing machine and no long lease, which is the gap between a hotel room and a tenancy that co-living operators set out to fill.
The hotel licence is what makes that range possible in one property. The same room can be sold for a single night to a traveller and for a longer period to a crew member, a student or a family between homes, without the operator having to choose one market.
Related readVictoria bans rental application fees from Tuesday 13 OctoberWhere the resort sits in Coliwoo's portfolio
Mingtiandi's report of 3 October 2026 describes Coliwoo as listed on the Singapore Exchange and as Singapore's largest co-living operator, with Kelvin Lim as chairman and chief executive. As of 30 June 2026 it had 3,568 rooms across 28 properties, including 1,021 under renovation. A year earlier, in June 2025, Mingtiandi counted 2,586 keys across 26 properties, so the total rose by 982 in about a year. The company's targets, according to the same publication, are 4,000 rooms in Singapore by the end of 2026 and 10,000 by 2030.
The Pasir Ris chalet is not the first state property in that portfolio. In April 2024 LHN won a tender for a former fire station near the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, to be turned into a community space and a Coliwoo co-living property, Mingtiandi reported in June 2025. In the award release, Lim spoke of the group's work in bringing state-owned properties back into use and adding to the life of the neighbourhoods around them.
Alongside these rented sites, Coliwoo has been selling buildings it owns. Mingtiandi reports that it has agreed to sell two River Valley Road properties with 50 rooms to Qing Feng Construction for S$45.8 million and to lease them back for three years, and that it completed the S$134 million sale of a Middle Road property to CapitaLand Ascott Trust a day earlier. In January it sold a Pasir Panjang hotel for S$43.9 million, also with a leaseback. Running rooms in buildings owned by someone else, the state included, is the common thread.
What comes next in the east
The resort is one of two Coliwoo projects around Changi. Mingtiandi reports that Coliwoo Hotel Changi Expo will grow from 251 to 368 rooms after the S$101 million purchase of the former Park Avenue Changi from ESR-REIT, with an opening targeted between October and December 2026. Further out, the pipeline includes a co-living conversion at King George's Avenue, due in the fourth quarter of the 2027 financial year, and the repositioning of a property on Armenian Street.
At Pasir Ris itself, the open points are the ones EdgeProp found on site: the shop, the food stall and the WiFi.
The first three-year term is the clock behind all of it. Neither Coliwoo nor the press reports give the date the tenancy began, so the date of the first renewal option cannot be stated. For other operators, the tender record is the useful part of the story: five companies bid for a 1980s state chalet, two of them at more than S$225,000 a month, and the award did not go to the highest rent.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
