En bloc then, En blocked now

In the Sunday Times last weekend, it ran a story of Horizon Tower 2.5-year-saga coming to another temporary end with the Court of Appeal ruling in favour of stopping the $500mio en -bloc sale to a group of buyers led by HPL's Mr Ong Beng Seng.

Who are the parties involved and what have they won and lost?

The 4 sets of homeowners who objected to the sale
- get to keep their home
- but collectively may have to pay $1 million in legal fees

The 173 sets of homeowners who were for the sale
- total legal costs at about $2-3 millions but "luckily" to be shared by 173 homeowners
- more painful for those who have jumped the gun by going into the property market then and bought a replacement property in anticipation of the sale going through - now these people got to service the loan of an expensively purchased property.

The buyers - HPL and its partners led by Mr Ong Beng Seng
- may have to work out the cost sharing of legal fees of trying to conclude the sale

The lawyers for the buyers, majority sellers and minority homeowners
- We are still awaiting the Court to determine costs but the costs estimated to date could be in the range of $5-6 millions.

The Small Title Board, the various Courts ie. the System - they have been asked to participate in history making.

But one important party not specifically mentioned in the newspaper review is the Government and its officers who have designed and approved the en bloc scheme for use by the market at that point in time. We have to ask the question as to whether en bloc scheme introduced at that point in time, has any contributory effect to the saga.

There should be review of the process and procedures to test on the robustness of any scheme to be implemented. We are dealing with people's home (some with a lot of emotional attachment), to others, one's biggest and most significance asset and to the rest, assets worth millions of dollars.

I got a feeling that the saga is not at its complete end for the moment.

P/S - I have benefited from the en bloc scheme applied to Bedok Reservoir's HUDC but with much fanfare too. I will spare you my views on that exercise for now.