What happened on Emerald of Katong booking day
Emerald of Katong (EOK) turns out to be the best launch of 2024 with 99% SOLD! This comes right after Chuan Park launch 1 week ago, and the business tactics of the 2 developers are clearly different. EOK by Sim Lian clearly has more conscientious, unlike Kingsford.. Sim Lian price guide is real, and they didn’t increase price during the booking days. The event was held in the showflat in a very orderly matter.
This post is to share how the booking days of EOK went, spread across 2 days:
- Early Access (Fri) for 3 groups: VVIP (Sim Lian staff) -> Multiple Purchase -> Agent Purchase
- Public Access (Sat)
Balloting Queues
The eBalloting happens on Thur, and the ballot numbers are used accordingly in the group. To be clear, these are the number of cheques collected for each group:
| Booking Order | Group | No. of cheques |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | VVIP | 38 |
| 2 | Multiple Purchase | 115 (230 units) |
| 3 | Agent Purchase | 289 |
| 4 | Public | 3,187 |
In total, 3,629 cheques were collected. For a project with 846 units, this is fantastic result with 4.4x oversubscription.
Early Access
The interests from the VVIP/Multiple/Agent is outstanding, because they add up to 557, which means potentially on early access booking day, 65% would already be sold! It turns out to be close – half was gone.
I was there to help book a unit. We gave up on Chuan Park last week as the price is disgusting. It was right not to FOMO. If you want honest advise for new launch, contact me. This is a video to show how it went.
The booking took longer than expected, and ended at midnight. As you can see, half was gone.
You might wonder why it was distributed as such. There was actually restrictions on agent purchase – they can only buy level 10 and above 😺 Leave some for the public folks!
This is probably the best % sold for early access. In most new launches, agent purchases is lower, because they don’t get full commission for buying during early access. But it seems many agents gave up full comm for the risk-free opportunity to pick a unit.
Public Access
The following day, booking repeats but for the rest. With only half left, only the first few hundreds queue number may still secure their choice units. The queue move fast, and by 7pm, everyone has booked, and the project is 99% sold.
What’s the price?
Transacted price will be updated soon. For now, here’s some data I have:
| Type | Cheapest | PSF | Highest Floor | PSF |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3B+S | $2.325m | $2,399 | $2.586m | $2,669 |
| 4B+S | $2.736m | $2,375 | $2.983m | $2,589 |
| 5B | $3.590m | $2,434 | $3.894m | $2,640 |
Note that some prices were extrapolated, so might not be correct, but should be close.
Exact pricing will be updated later.
Why such good result?
The GLS land plot was bought at a good price, so the developer was going to make a decent profit to start with. They can price even higher to earn even more profit, but they priced EOK well enough – better than D15 projects, yet they make good profits – striking a win-win balance.
Compared to Tembusu Grand and Grand Dunman, EOK is a better deal because:
- Lower quantum by as much as $300,000 for a 3-bedroom
- That means smaller unit, but they have efficient layouts
- Closer to Tanjong Katong MRT by a bit
It is a fantastic project, and has been validated by the 289 agents who will all become neighbours.
They will then drive the condo resale performance with very good price support, because agents will sell their own units well, come 2028 😉
