Shophouses along Upper Cross Street in Singapore’s Chinatown.
Photographer: Kathy Anne Lim for Bloomberg MarketsMarkets Magazine
Singapore’s $20 Million Shophouses Are Blazing-Hot Properties
In the island nation’s real estate market, the distinctive two- to three-story row buildings can fetch $4,000 a square foot.
Almost a decade ago, Sebestian Soh got the idea to buy a shophouse, one of the two- to three-story row buildings that are distinctive of old Singapore. He’d recently returned to Singapore after going to university in London, and to his eyes shophouses had a kind of magic.
“Everything is new in Singapore except for shophouses, so in a way these are works of art—every shophouse has a different way of expressing itself, a different facade,” Soh says. “These are spaces that we can never re-create.”