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There are only about 6500 historic shophouses in Singapore given conservation status. Built during the colonial era from the 1840s to the 1960s, the early ones served merchants and their families with stores at street level and living quarters on the upper floors. As waves of immigrants moved to Singapore, shophouses became cramped, shared dwellings.
But in an arc familiar to rehabbers of brownstones in Brooklyn, New York, and London Victorian terraces, the rows have gone from being thought of as urban relics to high-priced symbols of sophisticated city life. With their colourful facades, ornate plasterwork and covered walkways, they’re sought after for hipster restaurants, bars and boutique hotels, which are doing brisk post-pandemic business as tourism returns to the city-state.
Demand is also being stoked by Singapore’s efforts to regulate housing costs. The city-state in April slapped additional levies on locals buying second homes and on foreign buyers purchasing any residential dwellings at all in a bid to cool a red-hot market.
Prices for shophouses have surged to a record $S5,500 ($6,300) per square foot – double Manhattan’s Upper Fifth Avenue, the world’s most expensive shopping street in 2022.
Sales of shophouses jumped 44 per cent, to $S415 million, in the second quarter from the preceding one, according to Knight Frank LLP. Mary Sai, executive director of capital markets at Knight Frank Singapore, projects sales to reach as much as $S1.5 billion in 2023.
Restoring a shophouse is often a costly and time-consuming affair because of the age of the building and a web of strict conservation rules. After Singapore gained independence in 1965, many traditional villages and low-rise buildings gave way to modernisation.
But in the 1980s and ’90s, the city-state became more interested in holding on to its historic roots, and buildings in historic districts such as Chinatown and Little India were designated for conservation.
