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Published August 24, 2010

Over 80% of Viva Vista's shoebox units snapped up


MORE than 80 per cent of the 144 residential units in Oxley Holdings' Viva Vista were snapped up during the project's preview yesterday - indicating that there is still strong demand for small, or shoebox, apartments.

The sizes of the units in the project along South Buona Vista Road range from 323 sq ft to 1,076 sq ft, with the bulk being just shy of 400 sq ft.

Oxley Holdings said that the average transacted price was $1,450 per square foot (psf) while the absolute price started from about $520,000.

The project also has more than 100 commercial units which are yet to be sold.

Market watchers said that affordable and shoebox units continue to be popular with buyers, which could have prompted Oxley to go ahead with the launch of Viva Vista even as most developers hold back their sales activity this month - the seventh month in the lunar calendar.

Last month, 400 out of 468 units were sold in Hong Leong Group's The Scala, accounting for a quarter of July's total sales volume.

Analysts cited the project's affordable pricing tagged to its mainly small units (around $985,000 for a 839-sq-ft two-bedroom unit) as one of the reasons behind the good showing.

The popularity of shoebox units first spiked in 2009. A study by property consultancy CB Richard Ellis in October 2009 showed that small apartments have become more common.

The firm looked at caveats lodged between January and September 2009 and found that 412 new non-landed residential units measuring 500 sq ft or less had been sold - 38 per cent more than the 299 sold in the whole of 2008.

In 2006 and 2007, 171 and 275 such apartments were sold respectively.