SEA Ltd boss Forrest Li is expanding his family’s presence in the Good Class Bungalow (GCB) market in Gallop Road near the Singapore Botanic Gardens.

His wife, Ma Liqian, is acquiring a S$42.5 million old bungalow next to the one Li has nearly finished redeveloping. Both properties are on freehold land. The price that Ma is paying works out to S$2,544 per square foot (psf) on the land area of 16,703 square feet (sq ft). The site has a long driveway.

The couple are Singapore citizens.

Li paid S$26 million or S$1,722 psf in December 2018 for the old bungalow next door on a 15,100 sq ft site. This has been redeveloped into a two-storey detached house, with a basement, an attic and a swimming pool.

Ma is buying the property from the children of the late kidney doctor Gordon Ku, who founded Kidney Dialysis Foundation. Dr Ku died in February 2023.

Both bungalows are part of the Gallop Road/Woollerton Park GCB Area.

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Li, who is in his 40s, is the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of New York-listed Sea.

Sea started out with Garena, an online gaming business Li founded in 2009. E-commerce platform Shopee and digital financial services unit SeaMoney were added later. Sea was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2017.

In March this year, Sea announced its first profitable year on record, with earnings of US$162.7 million for 2023, reversing from a loss of US$1.7 billion in 2022. However, this missed analysts’ estimates of US$301.7 million.

Revenue for the period rose 4.9 per cent to US$13.1 billion from US$12.4 billion a year prior, exceeding analysts’ forecasts of US$12.9 billion.

Earnings were bolstered by e-commerce arm Shopee booking profits for the first two quarters of 2023. E-commerce revenue for 2023 rose 23.5 per cent to US$9 billion from US$7.3 billion in 2022. The business unit booked a loss of US$550.5 million for the year.

Li, who hails from Tianjin, holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Shanghai Jiaotong University. He moved to Singapore after completing an MBA at Stanford University. He was named Businessman of the Year for 2019/2020 at the 35th Singapore Business Awards in November 2020, organised by The Business Times and DHL Express Singapore.

In his acceptance speech, the self-made billionaire said: “Singapore took me in when I was a nobody. I came here with barely any savings, and a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt. My wife and I could only rent one bedroom in a three-room HDB flat in Braddell.”

Bungalows in the 39 gazetted GCB Areas are the most prestigious form of landed housing in Singapore, with strict planning conditions to preserve their exclusivity and low-rise character. Among other things, a minimum plot size of 1,400 square metres or 15,070 sq ft is stipulated as the planning norm for newly created bungalows in GCB Areas.

With only around 2,700 such properties on the island, there is thus “rarity value” to owning one of these homes.

One generally has to be a Singapore citizen to be allowed to buy a landed property in a GCB Area.

Another recent GCB deal sealed this year is an old house in Cornwall Gardens that is changing hands for slightly above S$36 million. The price works out to S$1,875 psf on the land area of 19,207 sq ft. Market watchers told BT that about 10 to 15 per cent of the land area is required as road reserve and will have to be surrendered to the state upon redevelopment of the site. The buyer is a Singaporean in her 30s and who is involved in the early childcare and education business. The deal was initiated around mid-2023 with the option to purchase being exercised this month.

In Ford Avenue, the youngest child of UOB chief executive Wee Ee Cheong is buying a bungalow for S$39.5 million, Bloomberg reported recently. The price works out to S$2,020 psf on the land area of 19,554 sq ft.

Other deals this year include a bungalow in Gallop Park Road that went for S$26.5 million or S$2,059 psf on land area of about 12,870 sq ft, and a property in Garlick Avenue that fetched S$19.5 million or S$1,885 psf on 10,345 sq ft of land.

These are among seven deals in GCB Areas amounting to nearly S$200 million transacted so far this year, based on List Sotheby’s International Realty’s (List SIR) analysis of URA Realis caveats data. The figure for the whole of last year was 18 transactions totalling S$432.5 million.

In addition, there are some deals for which buyers did not lodge caveats.

For 2023, that figure has been estimated to have been at least S$700 million. Examples include four bungalows in Nassim Road that were acquired for a total of nearly S$295 million by members of the Fangiono family behind Singapore-listed palm oil producer First Resources.