A nostalgic bet: How an investor transformed a 1948 Joo Chiat landed property into a shophouse dream

A two-storey terraced house in Joo Chiat catches the eye with a façade inspired by the neighbourhood’s iconic heritage shophouses.

Clarissa Tan, who has lived in Singapore’s east all her life, bought the freehold property in 2024 as an investment.

At the time, it was still operating as an office, with an ageing exterior, and interiors that had seen little change for decades.

Read also: What's moving the market: Singapore's biggest property deals and hottest searches (July 24)

She redesigned the façade with cues from the conservation buildings she has admired since childhood. Inside, she gutted and reconfigured the space, carving out five bedrooms for rent.

The transformation — more extensive than expected — cost about $350,000 and took nearly nine months.

The purchase also capped a year-long search for a property that combined architectural character with investment potential.

"I’ve always wanted to buy a conservation shophouse," Clarissa tells EdgeProp Singapore.

"And I believe that many people would also love to live in one, or at least a landed home that looks like one."

Close to her heart

Much of Clarissa's life has been centred around the east. Her parents live near Bedok while she attended school and enrichment classes nearby. Many of the friends she grew up with still live in the area.

Along the way, the distinctive architecture of Katong and Joo Chiat’s shophouses also left a lasting impression, with some of her fondest memories tied to the streetscape.

Read also: How cross-border real estate financing is evolving between Hong Kong and Singapore

She still remembers waiting for the bus along East Coast Road after piano lessons. Back then, the bus stop was marked simply by a roadside signpost — which still stands there today, decades later. "It’s the unsheltered kind with just the pole," Clarissa says.

Just behind the bus stop, a fruit seller did brisk business from a shophouse. "Everyone bought fruits from the uncle because it was hot while we waited for the bus," she recalls. The two-storey building now houses a bakery.

"All these traditional shophouses evoke childhood memories for me. That’s the emotional part," she adds.

"The core, the soul — it’s still there, mainly because the buildings remain the same, even though the tenant mix has evolved."

Searching for the right buy

In 2023, Clarissa reckoned she was financially ready to purchase a shophouse. Thus began her search.

She first explored heritage buildings zoned for full commercial use. A freehold land tenure and a good location were also key.

But prices of such properties had surged dramatically during the pandemic.

"I realised I had missed the boat for 'real' commercial shophouses," she says. "The prices shot up a lot and were a bit out of my range, and I didn't want to stretch [my finances] some more."

Read also: Uptick in shophouses sold but fewer rented in 2Q2026: Huttons

Instead, she turned to terraced houses in Joo Chiat — looking out for similar features such as a narrow frontage, sheltered "five-foot way" pedestrian walkway, deep floor plate, pitched clay tile roof, as well as pilasters and columns with classical moulding.

Over the next year, she viewed just a handful of residential properties. But negotiations often stretched on as she had to "court" some owners over months, Clarissa says.

Such properties, including conservation shophouses, tend to be tightly held, passed down through generations, and with several family members involved in the decision-making.

In some cases, the owners reconsidered selling after talks were already underway. In others, the parties could not agree on a price.

Deals that slipped away

Clarissa recalls one instance in which a part-owner wanted to sell the house in its existing condition, but another preferred to redevelop it instead. As a result, "the goalposts kept moving", she notes.

She initially offered the guide price of $2.8 million. When she was told that one of the joint owners was seeking a higher price, she raised her offer to $2.9 million. The asking price was increased again, to $3.1 million.

"I felt very silly because it was like bidding against myself," she says with a laugh. "There were no other interested buyers bidding at the time."

Another property turned into a drawn-out pursuit. It had been inherited by a few siblings and was put up for sale, only to be withdrawn after Clarissa viewed it.

Three months later, it reappeared on the market and she submitted an offer. Before long, however, the listing was taken off again when one sibling was not ready to sell.

About a month later, the property resurfaced once more — this time through a different real estate agent engaged by another family member.

By then, the search had the makings of a wild goose chase.

"Many of these conservation shophouses are inherited by multiple owners, so it’s very hard to buy them if there’s no consensus to sell," Clarissa says.

She returned to the house for a final viewing. It was then that the agent suggested she also check out another listing in the vicinity.

That detour led her to the terraced house she would eventually buy.

The house, too, had been inherited by several individuals. But in this case, the owners were aligned and even willing to accept an offer slightly below market value.

"I lucked out, really," she says. "I realised it's about luck too. Sometimes, you may come across owners who are so friendly and on good terms that they can agree to sell."

Renovating an ageing house

Clarissa could immediately see the property’s potential on the first visit.

"It has very good bones," she notes. "I could already envision the layout."

She also viewed it with her contractor to assess whether five reasonably sized rooms with en suite bathrooms could be created across the two storeys, considering the structural walls.

But when the carpet and office furniture were removed, the renovation team uncovered issues that expanded the scope of works.

Parts of the existing timber flooring on the second storey required repair and steel reinforcement, which had to be supported by new structural columns with excavated footings on the ground floor. Tests were carried out to make sure the party walls could safely bear the additional load.

She thus engaged a professional engineer, qualified person (QP) and builder for the additions and alterations (A&A).

In particular, there were no historical structural plans available, as the house was originally constructed in 1948 and most recently renovated in the 1980s. That was shortly before Singapore tightened construction regulations and required an authority or independent checker to validate the structural design and safety of a building.

"We didn’t have the structural plan, so the professional engineer redid all the calculations from scratch," Clarissa says.

The unforeseen A&A works — including the excavation, reinforcement, as well as additional regulatory requirements — added roughly $80,000 to the project and extended the duration to around eight to nine months, from an initial estimate of three to four months.

"My advice to people who want to buy old properties is to set aside a buffer budget for these types of unexpected works," Clarissa suggests.

Designing for everyday living

With the structural challenges accounted for, she set about bringing her vision for the house to life, alongside an interior designer.

She reimagined the interior as five bedrooms, each with its own bathroom and an individual pantry. This included dividing a large private office and common area on the upper floor into three bedrooms, while two were created on the ground floor.

The transformation also entailed significant plumbing works. As the original property had just one bathroom, the five en suite bathrooms required new water supply and sanitary pipework, waterproofing, tiling and fittings, along with the necessary permits and approvals.

Additionally, she relocated the inspection chamber, part of the sewage and wastewater drainage system, from indoors in the kitchen to the open space at the rear court.

"The plumbing and A&A works cost the most in the renovation," Clarissa says.

In converting the office into rental accommodation, she wanted the finished space to feel like a cosy, relaxing home that tenants would enjoy returning to.

The beige carpet, timber floorboards and pale sage-green tiles made way for light oak-look vinyl strip flooring. The brown-carpeted staircase was replaced with an open-riser design in black.

Concealed cove lighting, recessed LED downlights and bedside lamps took the place of the office’s cool-white fluorescent batten light fittings — for a warmer, more inviting ambience.

Replacing the bulky desks, swivel chairs and floor-to-ceiling mahogany filing cabinets are woven rugs, plush bedding, bouclé upholstery, textured cushions, rattan furniture, timber accents and leafy potted plants.

Gentle curves were introduced, including at the arched entryways, to soften the interior lines.

Recreating shophouse charm

The building's exterior had also changed over the decades. During the last renovation about 40 years ago, details such as the windows, grilles and front door had been updated to reflect the design trends of the time.

Clarissa wanted to bring back the aesthetic that had first made her fall in love with traditional shophouses.

On the second-floor façade, she did away with the half-height casement windows and vent blocks, enlarging the openings to install full-height, double-leaf French windows with louvre slats and balustrades — all in black-painted timber.

Brown grid window grilles on the first floor were changed to black vertical rounded bars.

The five-foot way’s flooring was refreshed with geometric tiles in white and dark teal, replacing the previous yellow-and-orange gradient design. The brown-striped awning was also removed.

She preserved key heritage architectural features such as the cornices, pilasters and pitched clay tile roof.

"I’m so pleased that I made it look like a shophouse," Clarissa says, beaming. "My favourite parts are the windows and the doors."

Rental returns and lifestyle appeal

As an investment property, the terraced house was meant to be rented out by the room rather than as a single home.

Clarissa reckoned this approach could offer stronger rental returns while catering to rental demand from working professionals drawn to the neighbourhood.

"I figured that if I were to lease out a newly renovated landed property to, say, an expat family, the entire unit might fetch about $6,000 to $7,000 each month," she says. That works out to less than 3% in gross rental yield.

On the other hand, renting out the rooms individually can generate more than $10,000 a month, lifting gross yield to above 4%.

The location also lent itself to the type of tenants Clarissa had in mind.

Within walking distance are Marina Parade MRT Station, malls such as i12 Katong and Katong V, East Coast Park and popular primary schools.

An eclectic array of traditional eateries, restaurants, cafes, artisan butcher shops and specialty retailers occupies the myriad shophouses.

Clarissa describes it as a "melting pot" of cuisines and cultures.

Like its dining scene, the neighbourhood’s lifestyle and fitness amenities are diverse, spanning yoga, barre and pilates studios, as well as muay thai and boxing gyms.

"The mix is fantastic. The vibe in Katong and Joo Chiat is just so charming and vibrant," she says.

"Forget those cookie-cutter malls and mainstream brands. Here, everything is so special and unique. There’s always something new and surprising every few months."

She also noticed several co-living properties in the wider vicinity, which gave her further confidence that there would be healthy rental demand.

Her target tenants are young, single women working nearby who would appreciate the lifestyle offerings and convenience.

Today, the house is occupied by five women working in fields including aviation, hospitality and architecture.

"They all get along well and are very polite and civil," she says. "I feel very blessed to have these tenants."

Property, for the long haul

A seasoned property investor, Clarissa had focused on private condos before purchasing the Joo Chiat shophouse-inspired terraced house, with capital appreciation as her main objective.

She bought her first condo when she was 24, and has since owned units at both resale and new-launch projects, including Bayshore Park, The Sail @ Marina Bay, Caribbean at Keppel Bay, and Parc Riviera. She typically holds each property for four to five years before selling.

More broadly, Clarissa continues to favour real estate over other asset classes.

"I may have better intuition when it comes to property. I’ve never lost money on property before," she says, though she acknowledges that investing always carries risks.

She also likes the flexibility of being able to live in a home before eventually selling it, or borrowing against it through a home equity loan if needed.

Her family's District 15 landed home, for instance, is in the process of being sold after years as their primary residence, with expected investment returns surpassing $5 million.

"We’ve stayed there throughout the years while we got our children into the right school, played with our pets every day, and slept in the house. And now it can make money for us," she notes.

"Plus, it’s not like buying stocks where you have to deal with a lot of volatility and wake up at 3am just to watch the stock market."

Looking back on her latest Joo Chiat project, she describes the journey as a rollercoaster ride — from the disappointment of being turned down repeatedly during the search, to the exhilaration of finally securing the property, to the uncertainty of tackling an unexpectedly complex renovation.

Today, with the renovation complete and the house fully occupied, those ups and downs have given way to relief.

"I’m just very happy. Everything is stable now," Clarissa says.

She plans to hold the terraced house for the long term. "If I can hold it for posterity, I will," she says. "Just to hand it down to my kids."

Property Diaries is a new series that goes behind the scenes of real estate transactions, featuring homebuyers, investors and renters sharing their search journeys, decisions and lessons learnt.

Have a story to share? Write to us at propertyeditor@edgeprop.sg.