Concrete Analysis | The shifting face of luxury property in Hong Kong
In 2018 luxury constitutes more than just price point, and size, it is also about location, authenticity, lifestyle and design
As an old saying goes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and if ever that adage could be applied to Hong Kong real estate, it’s now.
Maybe not the trash part per se, but certainly the core idea that there are as many notions of the perfect home as there are people to live in them.
That is even more pronounced now, at a time when the luxury property sector has stepped up its game like never before, and the demand for luxury living across all sectors gains traction. Just look at Wa Hah Estate. The converted 1959 Chai Wan factory looks like public rental housing on the surface, but underneath it’s a prime example of progressive, sustainable adaptive reuse, with a green roof and 40 per cent soft landscaping, and wellness informing its neo-industrial design backbone. If that is not a demonstration of luxury concepts exerting themselves on the mass market nothing is.
Since Hong Kong’s prices started their unremitting march upwards in 2004, the fundamental concept of luxury property has been redefined. Back in 2004 the luxury benchmark set by most property agencies was HK$10 million (US$1.28 million), which usually bought about 1,000 square feet on MacDonnell Road. Now, that same HK$10 million gets 400 square feet in Sha Tin, or is a down payment. In its Luxury Defined whitepaper, Christie’s International Real Estate reset its super-luxury metric to a staggering US$100 million, and Hong Kong topped its list of luxury property locations for the second year running. Knight Frank, in its annual Wealth Report, noted that only in Monaco did US$1 million buy less prime floor space – 170 sq ft – than it did in Hong Kong (235 sq ft).
Even more staggering, Hong Kong recorded its most expensive sale ever in 2017 in excess of Christie’s standard: a US$360 million block of flats slated for demolition to make way for a single home. As of May, the highest price paid globally for a home this year was US$178 million for a 9,000 sq ft Mount Nicholson house. Ranking second on the list was a 7,000 sq ft home in Malibu at just US$110 million.
