Seized Sentosa Cove bungalows: what a foreign buyer must clear first

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Three landed properties in Sentosa Cove, forfeited to the state in Singapore's S$3 billion money-laundering case, are being sold by expression of interest, The Straits Times reported on Monday 5 October 2026. Their guide prices run from S$15.68 million to S$23.65 million, and the first of the three closing dates falls on Thursday 15 October at 3pm.

Sentosa Cove is the one place in Singapore where the question of who may buy a house on its own land has a separate answer. Landed homes there sit on the Singapore Land Authority's restricted list like landed homes everywhere else on the island, but the authority runs a distinct application for them, with its own ceiling on land size and its own condition on use. Any buyer who is not a Singapore citizen has to pass through it, and a foreigner then pays Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty of 60 per cent. This article sets out what is on offer, and what that buyer would have to clear.

The three lots and their guide prices

All three are being marketed by List Sotheby's International Realty, according to The Straits Times. One is bare land, one is a pair of houses on a single site, and one is a finished house on a small private island inside the estate.

The largest lot by price is the one with nothing built on it. The Cove Drive plot is an amalgamated site, meaning two adjoining plots joined into one, held on a 99-year lease. Two bungalows used to stand there, The Straits Times reports, and the land is now vacant.

The Ocean Drive lot is two bungalows sold together on one site. The Pearl Island lot is the only one described room by room: a two-storey detached house with five ensuite bedrooms, a basement, an attic, an entertainment room, a wine cellar, a swimming pool and a home lift. Pearl Island itself holds 19 leasehold bungalows developed by Ximeng Land, a unit of a Chinese real estate group, and is laid out as an island within the island, with a man-made waterway and private yacht berths.

The newspaper also mentions a fourth seized bungalow on Cove Drive. It gives no price, no size and no sale date for it.

Why an expression of interest, not an auction

The apartments from the same case have gone to the auction room. These three have not. In an expression-of-interest sale, as The Straits Times describes it, buyers submit non-binding offers by a set closing date, and the seller then decides what to do with them.

Nicholas Ng, executive director and head of land and collective sales at JLL Singapore, told the newspaper that the method is frequently used for properties with a high total price. In his account it makes the decision simpler for a seller, because every interested buyer has to show a number by the same cut-off, and it is both transparent and confidential while letting the seller measure real interest and reach a wider pool of investors. He also said the results can be mixed: the process draws serious buyers, but some interested parties may stay on the sidelines and negotiate afterwards.

The September auctions give the background to that choice. Of 26 properties from the case offered on 17 and 23 September, four sold, The Straits Times reports: apartments at Wallich Residence and Martin Modern, for S$16.28 million in total. The costliest lot withdrawn on 23 September was a South Beach Residences penthouse with a guide price of S$25.3 million, the newspaper reported that day. Two of the three Sentosa Cove lots are guided within S$2.5 million of that figure.

Who needs approval to buy a house in Sentosa Cove

The starting point is a definition. Under the Singapore Land Authority's description of the Residential Property Act, a foreign person is anyone who is not a Singapore citizen, a Singapore company, a Singapore limited liability partnership or a Singapore society. A permanent resident is therefore a foreign person for this purpose, which is why Samuel Eyo, managing director of Lighthouse Property Consultants, told The Straits Times that permanent residents and foreigners alike need the authority's approval to buy a landed home in Sentosa Cove.

The authority's page on foreign ownership, last updated on 20 August 2025, lists what a foreign person may buy without asking: a condominium unit, a flat unit, or a strata landed house inside an approved condominium development. It then lists what needs approval. Vacant residential land is on that list. So are terrace, semi-detached and detached houses, and landed residential property at Sentosa Cove is named separately. All three lots in this sale are restricted property, the vacant plot included.

Applications go to the Land Dealings Approval Unit, the part of the authority that handles them, and are made online. Each one is assessed case by case. For restricted property in general, the authority names two factors it looks at: being a permanent resident for at least five years, and making an exceptional economic contribution to Singapore, for which it gives employment income assessable to tax in Singapore as an example. Its questions and answers on Sentosa Cove do not repeat those two factors, and the pages do not say which criteria apply there.

What they do state is a size limit and a use.

Set against that ceiling, the two lots whose land area is published both fit. Converted from the square feet The Straits Times gives, the Cove Drive plot is about 1,741 square metres and the Ocean Drive site about 1,468 square metres. Those conversions are this magazine's arithmetic, not figures from the newspaper or the authority. For Pearl Island the report gives 879.6 square metres for the house and does not say whether that is land or floor area.

The conditions that follow an approval

Approval is not the end of the matter. The unit's questions and answers set out conditions that stay with the owner after completion, and three of them bear directly on these lots.

The first is occupation. An approved property may be used only as the dwelling of the owner and family, and letting it, or any part of it, is prohibited. Mr Eyo made the same point from the market side, telling The Straits Times that these homes are generally meant for owner occupation, which keeps speculative buying out.

The second is time. The property may not be disposed of within five years of legal completion. An approved owner may hold another restricted property once those five years have passed, but the existing one must generally be sold on or before completion of the new purchase.

The third applies to the Cove Drive plot alone, because it is bare land. Where approval is given for vacant land, construction of the dwelling house must be completed within three years of the decision letter, and the land may not be subdivided without prior written approval.

The penalties are set out in the same document. Breaching a condition of approval is an offence under the Residential Property Act, with a fine of up to S$200,000, imprisonment of up to three years, or both. Breaching the owner-occupation condition can also bring a financial penalty of up to three times the rental income earned or S$10,000, whichever is higher.

What 60 per cent stamp duty adds to the guide prices

Asked why so few homes in this part of Sentosa Cove change hands, Mr Eyo pointed The Straits Times to one thing above all: the Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty that foreigners pay on residential property.

The rate is set by the Ministry of Finance. In its announcement of 26 April 2023, the ministry doubled the rate for foreigners buying any residential property from 30 per cent to 60 per cent, with effect from 27 April 2023. The rate for entities and trusts became 65 per cent. Permanent residents pay 5 per cent on a first residential property, 30 per cent on a second and 35 per cent on a third or later one. Where buyers with different profiles purchase together, the highest rate among them applies.

The chart applies the foreigner's rate to each guide price. It is a worked example, not a forecast of what anyone will pay: it assumes a single foreign buyer, a sale at exactly the guide price, and it counts the additional duty only.

On those assumptions the additional duty alone on the Pearl Island house would be about S$9.41 million, taking the outlay to about S$25.09 million before any other cost. A permanent resident buying the same house as a first residential property, at the same price, would pay 5 per cent, or S$784,000. The gap between the two profiles on that one lot is about S$8.62 million.

That gap goes some way to explaining who Mr Eyo expects to find at the table, and why the market around these lots is so quiet. According to caveats lodged, The Straits Times reports, only one landed home in Pearl Island and Ocean Drive has changed hands so far in 2026: a house on Ocean Drive, sold for S$13.6 million in January.

How approval fits into an offer

The published rules also say something about sequence, which matters when offers have to be in by a fixed hour. None of the documents read for this article describes the paperwork of this particular sale, so what follows is the general framework, drawn from the Land Dealings Approval Unit and the Council for Estate Agencies.

The Council for Estate Agencies' checklist for buyers of completed private homes advises foreigners to obtain approval in principle for restricted property before signing anything, in case the application is rejected. Its standard option to purchase for private residential property contains a clause for that case: a purchaser who needs approval applies within an agreed number of weeks, and if approval does not arrive in time the sale is cancelled and the money refunded. Whether a given contract carries such a clause is a matter for that contract, and the unit's own questions and answers tell a foreign person to take independent legal advice on the risk of losing money already paid if approval is refused.

The timetable shows why the order matters. The Pearl Island closing date of 15 October fell ten days after the report of 5 October, against a stated processing time of about 30 working days. A buyer who needs approval and has not already applied would be unlikely, on that stated time, to have a decision in hand by the first closing date. A refusal can be appealed, but only within three months of the decision letter and only on new and substantial grounds.

Where the money goes and what comes next

The three lots are a small part of a long programme. About S$3 billion in cash and assets was seized in the Commercial Affairs Department's investigation, The Straits Times reports, and ten foreigners were convicted, jailed and deported. Deloitte, appointed to realise the assets that are not cash, is selling more than 80 properties in phases from September 2026 to mid-2027. Every sale ends in the same place: the proceeds are paid into the Consolidated Fund, which the newspaper likens to the government's bank account.

The dates already announced run to mid-November. The Pearl Island offer period closes on Thursday 15 October. A second auction of forfeited apartments, six units at Nouvel 18 and New Futura, is set for Wednesday 28 October, EdgeProp Singapore reported on 7 October. The Ocean Drive offers close the next day, Thursday 29 October, and the Cove Drive plot on Thursday 12 November. Because the offers are non-binding, a closing date is not a sale date, and no source has said when or how the results will be made public.

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.

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