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20 Collyer Quay Review

20 Collyer Quay Review
Office & Commercial Property Review — District 01

20 Collyer Quay

A 24-storey Grade A office tower on the Raffles Place waterfront, held on a rare 999-year lease and steadily being consolidated under a single owner.

SGCPI Research Desk Updated 24 August 2026 20 Collyer Quay, Singapore 049319 999-YR LEASEHOLD (FROM LATE 1980s)

Street-level view of 20 Collyer Quay, Singapore 049319. Imagery: Google Street View (user-contributed imagery), accessed August 2026.

Project Overview

Building Name20 Collyer Quay (formerly Tung Centre)
Address20 Collyer Quay, Singapore 049319
DistrictDistrict 01 — Boat Quay / Raffles Place / Marina
Tenure999-year leasehold (majority interest held by GuocoLand since the late 1980s); a small number of legacy units on 99-year or 50-year sub-leases
Zoning / UseCommercial — office (Downtown Core)
Built FormSingle 24-storey office tower, strata-titled (MCST Plan No. 1500)
Land Area / GFA≈2,273 sqm land / ≈23,248 sqm GFA (≈250,000 sq ft)
Completion Year≈1984 (refurbished 2008)
Nearest MRTRaffles Place NS26/EW14 — ≈3 to 5-minute sheltered walk
Key Road AccessDirect frontage on Collyer Quay, linking to Raffles Quay, Shenton Way and the ECP via Marina Boulevard
Transacted PSF Range≈S$3,148 psf (Mar 2025 strata transaction); District 1 commercial median ≈S$3,178 psf
Asking Rent Range≈S$10.80 – S$13.30 psf per month (conventional office); serviced suites from ≈S$700 – S$1,100 per workstation per month
Total Lettable Area≈220,000 sq ft; typical floor plate ≈9,700 – 10,300 sq ft
Occupier Base≈96% occupied — banks, financial services, trading and professional-services SMEs, plus a co-working operator

Location & Connectivity

20 Collyer Quay sits directly on the Raffles Place waterfront, wedged between the historic Fullerton Hotel and Collyer Quay Centre, with Change Alley and the old Clifford Pier precinct a short walk away. It is one of the few CBD office addresses that still trades on genuine harbourfront prestige rather than a Marina Bay reclamation postcode — the building looks straight out over the water rather than at a neighbouring tower.

Rail access is a clear strength. Raffles Place MRT station, served by both the North-South and East-West lines, lies within a few hundred metres, and several listings describe a sheltered walking route that takes roughly three to five minutes depending on the exact unit and exit used. Road access runs along Collyer Quay itself into Raffles Quay and Shenton Way, with Marina Boulevard and the East Coast Parkway reachable within minutes for airport-bound trips.

The immediate amenity base is dense even by CBD standards: Change Alley, The Arcade, Boat Quay’s restaurant strip, Lau Pa Sat, and the retail floors of Ocean Financial Centre and Marina Bay Link Mall all sit within a ten-minute walk, giving occupiers lunch, banking and retail options without needing to leave the precinct.

Location of 20 Collyer Quay, Singapore 049319. Map data: Google Maps, accessed August 2026.

Building & Facilities

Completed in the early-to-mid 1980s as Tung Centre and comprehensively refurbished in 2008, 20 Collyer Quay is a 24-storey tower with regular, largely column-free floor plates averaging close to 10,000 square feet — generous enough for open-plan trading or wealth-management floors without excessive core loss. The building holds a BCA Green Mark award for existing buildings, reflecting the 2008 upgrade works to its mechanical and electrical systems.

The tower is served by a bank of passenger lifts from a central core, with basement parking of roughly 106 lots (about one lot per 2,500 sq ft of building area) — a ratio typical of an older CBD office rather than a newer development built to current parking norms. Fit-out condition varies significantly by unit: several floors carry bank-grade cabling and raised flooring from long-standing financial-sector tenants, while others sit in bare or lightly fitted condition awaiting a new occupier’s build-out.

The single most distinctive fact about this building’s ownership structure is worth stating plainly: GuocoLand, which bought the master 999-year leasehold interest in the late 1980s, does not yet hold every unit outright. A handful of office floors were sold to third parties before GuocoLand’s acquisition and remain on separate 99-year or 50-year sub-leases. GuocoLand has been actively buying these back — most recently acquiring the top three floors in March 2025 for S$91.8 million — so the building’s ownership is becoming steadily more concentrated over time.

Office Suite Types & Sizes

Stock at 20 Collyer Quay ranges from small serviced suites to whole conventional floors, with most strata and leasing listings falling between roughly 1,000 and 2,300 square feet, and larger contiguous blocks available by combining adjacent units.

Serviced / flex suite

≈300 sq ft and up

Furnished private offices and workstations aimed at small teams and satellite offices, typically priced per workstation rather than per square foot. Fastest to move into, but carries the highest effective per-square-foot cost of any format in the building.

Compact conventional suite

≈1,000 – 1,300 sq ft

The most commonly listed band, suited to small professional-services or trading teams wanting a self-managed lease. Asking rents here cluster around S$11 psf per month, and bay-view units command a modest premium over inward-facing ones.

Mid-size lobby-frontage suite

≈1,700 – 2,000 sq ft

Enough space for a fitted boardroom and manager rooms alongside open desking. Several listed units in this band already carry a partial fit-out from a previous tenant, which can shorten build-out time for a compatible incoming occupier.

Large contiguous floor

≈2,300 sq ft and combinable

Adjacent units on some floors can be amalgamated into larger contiguous space, subject to final survey. This is the format that drew the March 2025 institutional transaction and suits regional-headquarters or full-floor financial occupiers.

Typical floor plate: ≈9,700 – 10,300 sq ft, largely column-free
Total lettable area: ≈220,000 sq ft across 24 storeys
Parking: ≈106 basement lots (≈1 lot per 2,500 sq ft)
Occupancy: ≈96% as of the most recently reported owner results
MCST: Strata Title Plan No. 1500, formed 3 January 1990

Investment Case

The investment story here is unusual for Singapore strata commercial stock: the underlying land tenure is 999 years, which functions in practice as near-freehold and sidesteps the lease-decay financing squeeze that governs most CBD strata offices. The complication is that a small minority of units sit outside that master lease on shorter 99-year or 50-year sub-leases, so tenure due diligence has to be done unit by unit, not assumed from the building’s headline tenure.

What Works

  • 999-year master tenure removes the lease-decay ceiling that caps financing and resale on most Singapore strata commercial buildings.
  • Genuine Raffles Place waterfront position, adjacent to Fullerton Hotel, with a dense CBD amenity base on the doorstep.
  • Regular, largely column-free floor plates of close to 10,000 sq ft suit both financial-sector and professional-services occupiers.
  • Occupancy running around 96% with an established institutional and SME tenant base, including several banks.
  • A single dominant owner (GuocoLand) actively consolidating remaining minority interests, which supports building-wide maintenance and long-term asset management.

What to Weigh Carefully

  • A handful of units sit on separate 99-year or 50-year sub-leases rather than the building’s 999-year master lease — confirm which tenure applies to any specific unit before transacting.
  • Entry pricing at Grade A CBD levels (S$3,100+ psf on the most recent recorded transaction) limits the buyer pool to well-capitalised investors or occupiers.
  • The building is now over four decades old; despite the 2008 refurbishment, it competes for tenants against newer Marina Bay and Raffles Place towers with more current specifications.
  • With GuocoLand holding an effective majority interest, any future en-bloc or redevelopment decision rests largely with one owner rather than a fragmented strata vote — a different dynamic from most strata schemes, worth understanding before buying a remaining minority unit.
  • Basement parking provision (≈1:2,500 sq ft) is modest by current standards and may not suit occupiers with heavy client or staff parking needs.

Who This Suits

20 Collyer Quay suits established financial-services, professional-services and trading firms that want a genuine Raffles Place address with direct MRT access and are comfortable paying Grade A CBD rents for it. Owner-occupiers buying a unit that sits within the 999-year master lease effectively secure a near-freehold CBD office at a fraction of freehold-land pricing elsewhere in the district. Investors should be most interested in the handful of remaining legacy sub-leased units, given GuocoLand’s demonstrated appetite to buy them back — though pricing on any such deal should be benchmarked against the March 2025 transaction rather than assumed. Buyers wanting the newest building specifications or maximum on-site parking should look to more recently completed Marina Bay towers instead.

Frequently Asked Questions

What business activities are permitted at 20 Collyer Quay?
The building is zoned commercial office use within the Downtown Core, without the industrial-style use restrictions that apply to B1 or B2 developments. Conventional office use, financial and professional services, and ancillary meeting or client-facing space are all permitted as of right. Retail, F&B or any change to a materially different use would need to be checked against the unit’s approved use and, where relevant, URA’s Master Plan zoning for the site before committing.
Can foreigners or foreign-owned companies buy a unit here?
Yes. Strata commercial property in Singapore, including office space, is not classified as residential property, so the Residential Property Act’s restrictions on foreign ownership do not apply. Foreign individuals and foreign-incorporated companies may acquire units at 20 Collyer Quay directly, with no government approval required for the purchase itself. Lenders typically apply tighter loan-to-value ratios to non-resident borrowers, and any purchase of a legacy 99-year or 50-year sub-leased unit should have its financing terms confirmed separately from a unit under the 999-year master lease.
Does Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty apply to this purchase?
No. Additional Buyer’s Stamp Duty applies only to residential property acquisitions in Singapore. Commercial office property, including units at 20 Collyer Quay, falls outside that regime entirely, so a buyer pays no ABSD regardless of how many other properties they already hold. Buyers should still budget for Buyer’s Stamp Duty, legal fees, and potentially Goods and Services Tax, covered separately below.
Does Seller’s Stamp Duty apply if I sell within a few years?
No — and this is a point worth flagging because it differs from industrial property. Singapore’s Seller’s Stamp Duty regime for non-residential assets currently applies to industrial property, not to commercial office property. A unit at 20 Collyer Quay can generally be sold at any time without an SSD charge, subject to confirming the current rules with IRAS at the time of sale, since schedules are periodically revised.
What Buyer’s Stamp Duty should I budget for?
Buyer’s Stamp Duty on non-residential property is tiered: 1 per cent on the first S$180,000, 2 per cent on the next S$180,000, 3 per cent on the next S$640,000, 4 per cent on the next S$500,000, and 5 per cent above S$1.5 million. On a S$2 million unit at 20 Collyer Quay this works out to roughly S$64,600. BSD is payable within fourteen days of the signed acceptance and cannot be financed through the mortgage, so it needs to sit in cash alongside the deposit.
Is GST payable on the purchase and on rent?
Goods and Services Tax applies to commercial property where the seller is GST-registered, which is common when the vendor is a company such as GuocoLand. At the prevailing 9 per cent rate this adds a substantial sum to the outlay, though a GST-registered buyer can generally claim it back as input tax. On the leasing side, rent is subject to GST where the landlord is registered, which applies to most listed units at 20 Collyer Quay given the scale of ownership involved.
How does the 999-year tenure actually affect financing?
For units held under the building’s 999-year master lease, Singapore lenders generally treat the tenure as functionally equivalent to freehold, so loan tenure is not constrained by lease decay in the way it would be on a 60- or 99-year leasehold building. Loan-to-value is typically up to 70 to 80 per cent for a company borrower with clean financials. The exception is the small number of legacy units still on separate 99-year or 50-year sub-leases — these should be financed and valued on their own remaining term, not on the building’s headline 999-year figure, so confirm the specific unit’s tenure with the seller’s solicitor before applying for a loan.
What rental yield can an investor realistically expect?
Taking a purchase around S$3,100 to S$3,200 psf against asking rents of roughly S$11 to S$13 psf per month for conventional space, gross yield lands broadly in the 4 to 5 per cent range. Net yield is materially lower once MCST charges, property tax, agency commission and periodic vacancy are deducted, with a realistic net figure closer to 3 to 4 per cent. Smaller serviced or flex formats can screen at a higher effective yield but carry more management intensity and turnover.
Is the building’s age a concern at this point?
Completed in the early-to-mid 1980s, 20 Collyer Quay is over four decades old, though the 2008 refurbishment and its BCA Green Mark award for existing buildings indicate the mechanical and electrical systems have had at least one major upgrade cycle. Buyers should ask the MCST about the sinking fund balance, lift modernisation history and any planned facade or common-area works, since specification gaps against newer Marina Bay towers are the building’s main competitive weakness for prestige-driven tenants.
What are the chances of an en-bloc sale or redevelopment?
Higher than at a typical fragmented strata scheme, and worth taking seriously as part of the purchase thesis rather than dismissing it. GuocoLand already holds the master 999-year leasehold and an effective majority interest in the building, and has been actively buying back the remaining legacy units — most recently three floors in March 2025. That concentration means a future collective decision on redevelopment would rest largely with GuocoLand rather than require consensus across a large, fragmented owner base. Buyers of any remaining minority-held unit should treat a future buyback approach from GuocoLand as a plausible scenario, not a remote one.
How is parking handled on site?
Basement parking is estimated at around 106 lots, roughly one lot per 2,500 square feet of building area — modest by the standards of newer CBD towers with basement car parks built to current ratios. Season parking terms, including whether a lot is bundled with a particular unit, vary between owners and should be confirmed with the MCST or the specific seller or landlord before committing.
What maintenance and MCST fees should I expect?
No single published MCST rate is available for every unit at 20 Collyer Quay, since fees can vary by floor and fit-out. Prospective buyers should request the latest MCST accounts, the sinking fund position, and minutes of recent general meetings directly from the managing agent, particularly given the building’s age and the upgrade works that typically follow a facade or lift-replacement cycle at a tower of this vintage.
How liquid is resale at 20 Collyer Quay?
Transaction activity is modest but meaningful, with the most notable recent deal being GuocoLand’s March 2025 acquisition of three floors at S$3,148 psf — a price roughly in line with the District 1 commercial median. Because a large share of the building’s value now sits with a single dominant owner, day-to-day resale liquidity for any remaining independently held unit depends heavily on whether GuocoLand itself is a willing buyer, which has historically been the case for legacy units. Sellers should benchmark asking price against this dynamic rather than against generic CBD strata comparables.
Which business types are the best fit for this building?
The tenant base already skews toward banking, wealth management and trading firms drawn to the address and the water views, alongside professional-services SMEs and at least one co-working operator serving smaller occupiers. Firms valuing a walkable, MRT-connected Raffles Place location over the newest building specifications, or regional-headquarters occupiers wanting a full contiguous floor, are the best fit. Businesses that need large single-floor plates well above 10,000 sq ft, cutting-edge green building credentials, or extensive on-site parking are better served by a newer Marina Bay tower.

Disclaimer: This review is prepared for general information only and does not constitute financial, legal, tax or investment advice. Figures marked with the ≈ symbol are reasoned estimates derived from comparable listings and published transaction data, not verified building records, and all pricing, rental, specification and lease information is subject to change. Transaction and listing data referenced here reflect publicly available records as at August 2026. Readers should verify all particulars independently with the relevant authorities, the managing corporation and their own professional advisers before entering into any transaction.

© 2026 SG Commercial Property Insights. All rights reserved.

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