BY THEAN LEE CHENG

WITHOUT doubt, this will be a busy year for the See Hoy Chan Holdings Group with several projects in different sub-sectors of the property sector pending launch. One thing though has not changed – its founder and chief steward Datuk Teo Chiang Kok continues to remain hands on as far as the group’s operations are concerned.

Every once or twice a week, on a working day, he takes a 5km walk around the old and new wing of the 1 Utama mall by himself. (See Hoy Chan’s flagship development is Bandar Utama in Petaling Jaya)

“I want to know what’s the feeling on the ground,” Teo, 60, says.

Interest in the group’s properties may go up a notch or two soon as the group will be rolling out its last and final phase of landed properties. Thereafter, the focus will shift to condominiums.

The 1 Utama area with new construction in the background.

“There will be 222 units and as soon as the certificate of fitness are issued by the local authorities, we will open them up for sale after the Chinese New Year season,” says Teo.

He says intermediate two-and-a-half storeys in that location is currently going for RM750,000 a unit in the secondary market. This will be a sort of guide and indication when pricing their latest and last lot of landed housing, bringing the number of landed units to 6,000, says Teo.

The group has been developing 1,000-acre township since the 1990s. When completed, it will have an equal number of condominium units.

“Looking back, we have been extremely fortunate to have launched Bandar Utama at a time when there was a rush for housing. The country’s economy at that time was developing rapidly and post WWII babies, then in their 40s and 50s, were ready to move on to a new township.

“They have their expectations; from house design to overall feel of the neighbourhood design, traffic management, and environment. We have managed to juggle all these, which encouraged them to move to Bandar Utama.

‘Bandar Utama will continue to enjoy demand’ -TEO CHIANG KOK

He believes Bandar Utama will continue to enjoy demand because there is no more freehold land and even less freehold landed properties. This factor, coupled with the conveniences in that area, adds to its appeal.

It will have 14 neighbourhood parks in the middle of each enclave of between 300 and 500 units and two central parks, one of which is opposite 1 Utama mall and another near the condo belt called Westlake Sanctuary of 13 acres. There will be a total of 14 schools and five neighbourhood malls. Centrepoint is first and plans are being drawn up for a second mall.

“Developers want to create an address but essentially, it is the residents themselves who create the address,” says Teo.

On its focus on condominium development from now on, Teo says phase one, 1 Bukit Utama, sits on 15 acres. It has 586 units and was completed more than a year ago and purchasers have moved in. Phase one is currently in the RM500,000 region. Developer’s price was about RM400,000 four years ago.

There will be about 10 phases of condominium developments. Piling work is currently being done for phase two, which will have 1,000 units in three tower blocks of 30-storey over 25 acres, overlooking Metro Kajang Holdings Bhd’s Pelangi 2. Phase two will be launched in the second half of this year.

On its overall concept for condominium developments, the need is for larger units, of between 2,200 sq ft to 2,400 sq ft with five bedrooms (4 plus 1). Phase one is 3 plus 1. They will be built to a more advanced stage before they are launched in order to shorten the delivery period.

Research also shows that facilities are generally not well-utilised with the general underlining feeling – Why pay so much for maintenance when I don’t use them? So there will only be a pool and tennis courts at the individual condominium projects.

“Our second central park Westlake will be for residents only. There will be a full Olympic-sized pool, multipurpose hall and squash courts, with options to join. That way, if you do not choose to join, you will still have your own pool and tennis courts below.

“The next thing is a nine-hole golf course, which adds to the green and acts as a buffer. Maintenance cost will be minimised because we will use cow grass, instead of Bermuda grass, which does not need fertiliser or only a tenth of it. Indigenous trees will not need pesticides and hormones.

With his fingers in every pie, Teo will also be commencing construction of a new 25-storey new office block between 1 Utama shopping mall and the five-star One World hotel.

One World is expected to start operations by May and will be managed by the group. The group will manage most of the commercial and retail properties they own.

“Through that, we hope to create the expertise to manage more hotels which we would acquire or construct on our own. That is our plan. We are already in the game, with a team which runs the retail property from 1 Utama to entrepoint.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 24th, 2007 at 6:58 pm and is filed under Newsclipping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.