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Sandy Li
Sandy Li is the property editor. She covers property market which focus in listed property firms and government policy. During her career she has won several journalism prizes, including the Citi Journalistic Excellence Award in 2011. She was first runner-up for the same award in 2010.
Hong Kong developer V Group is shrugging aside the slowdown in the city’s property market with the launch of an apartment project in Causeway Bay and an ultra-luxury project on The Peak.
The Hong Kong government has applied to relax plot ratios and building height restrictions at 37 parcels of land by up to 30 per cent in northern Fanling and Kwu Tung, as part of its Northern Metropolis development plan to boost the city’s housing supply.
Sun Hung Kai Properties sold all 180 units on offer in the second phase of its Novo Land project within the first four hours on Wednesday afternoon, according to agents.
Hong Kong’s property developers are extending favourable finance terms to luxury home deals, after big-ticket sales declined by almost half in July.
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More than 24,000 potential buyers had registered to buy a total of 321 flats at Henderson Land’s One Innovale-Archway in Fanling and Sun Hung Kai Properties’ Novo Land in Tuen Mun.
Launch prices at the runway site have been pressured after the government dropped its plan to build a monorail link there in 2020.
Property developers in Hong Kong will continue to price new projects competitively after the total value of housing transactions declined by a quarter in July amid an uptrend in the city’s interest-rate cycle.
The comments by Chan showed how Hong Kong has been caught since 2019 by a series of turbulent events, including months of anti-government protests, US sanctions and a Covid-19 pandemic in its third year.
The owners of the iconic Hong Kong restaurant, previously a huge draw for tourists with its prime location, are now paying less than half the monthly HK$230,000 (US$29,300) they were forking out on a lease signed pre-pandemic.
The option of paying in instalments appears attractive, but the buyer ends up paying more in interest costs, analysts said.
By the time some of these buyers arrange mortgages, ‘they may not pass the stress test’, say analysts.
A total of 21 buyers at a Cheung Sha Wan project failed to complete transactions they agreed to in 2020, amid falling prices and rising mortgage rates.
Many ageing flats, built for civil servants, are vacant or being used for storage as land premiums make the sites unattractive for redevelopment, but Urban Renewal Authority projects offer a ray of hope.
New World Group said its Summer Fridays pilot programme, which will benefit some 4,000 staff across the group, will run until the end of September.
Twenty-five years after the handover, home ownership in Hong Kong is further out of reach than ever for first-time buyers, some of whom are finding value in Dongguan and other cities in the Pearl River Delta.
With Japan reopening its borders to tourists, specialist Hong Kong property agencies are organising tours for investors looking to take advantage of the yen’s decline.
Hongkongers are living longer than ever before, exerting an increasing burden on the government as the expenditure on elderly services surged 82 per cent in the 12 months ending on March 31, 2023.
The buyer was identified as Nani Wang, and her name is the same as that of a former board director of JD Health International, the healthcare arm of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com.
Topping off the higher rates is a bulging pipeline of new flats – estimated at 12,646 in 2022 by JLL – waiting to find buyers.
The action underscores how the finances of Nan Hai have fallen victim to the Covid-19 pandemic and China’s property crackdown, as its revenue from cinemas and real estate plunged in mainland China.
Hong Kong’s retail landlords and hotel owners, unable to bear the losses from an enduring tourism slump, apply to the Town Planning Board to convert their properties for alternative purposes such as cafes and housing.
Chinese developers are expected to accelerate projects launches in the third quarter and keep prices competitive after most met less than 30 per cent of their annual sales as of May end, industry experts said.
While long queues at shopping centres reflect a welcome return to business as usual in Shanghai, there is still a feeling trepidation because some Covid-19 control measures continue to be observed.
A cut in mortgage rates announced on Friday last week, coupled with lower down payment requirements for first-time buyers, could revive Chinese home sales, analysts said.
Wing Tai Holdings plans to redevelop the 57-year-old Lakeside Apartments into an ‘iconic’ residential development with unobstructed views of Jurong Lake.
Nearly 20 companies from the finance, wealth management, beauty and medical services sectors will open offices at the three office towers, targeting GBA residents.
The crash came after a company owned by chairman Shum Tin Ching pledged shares in Jiayuan International and Jiayuan Services to SHK Finance a day after Moody’s downgraded their rating.
Developers with large holdings in the northern New Territories are likely to negotiate for a lower land premium, as the area becomes the new focus of development, analysts say.
A proposal has been submitted to the Town Planning Board to build about 300 flats, with sizes ranging from 300 sq ft to 400 square feet in Yuen Long, New World Build for Good, NWD’s social enterprise unit, said.
Two hotels changed hands in deals worth more than HK$2.3 billion (US$295 million) in Hong Kong on Wednesday, as cash-rich investors swooped in to pick up assets from the city’s slumping hospitality industry, betting on the sector improving once the city’s borders have been reopened.
