Given the current Covid-19 crisis, you’d think developers would want to play it safe. After all, who would dare to make aggressive bids for Government Land Sales (GLS) sites, when we don’t know how the market will look a year from now? The answer, apparently, is quite a few developers. Two land parcels – at Tanah Merah Kechil Link and Yishun Avenue 9 – drew unexpectedly strong responses. The Tanah Merah GLS site drew 15 bids, with the winner (MCC Land) putting down around $249 million (approx. $930 psf ppr for the 8,880 sqm site. This is the highest number of bids for a residential site since May 2018. Meanwhile, the Yishun GLS site drew seven bids, and was won by Sing Holdings for around $373.5 million (about $576 psf ppr for the 21,514 sqm site). But what makes developers so confident of these sites, when the Covid-19 downturn has hardly shown an end in sight as of yet?...