Hong Kong’s 2024 property slump feels like it’s 1997 all over again – or is it?

The veteran investor and chairman of Asia Property Holdings, best known for his part in the HK$40.2 billion (US$5.2 billion) takeover of the world’s most expensive office tower, lost HK$4 million in 1998 when he sold sell two flats at half their purchase price because of collapsing asset prices during the Asian Financial Crisis.

Tsoi had paid about HK$11,000 per square foot for two apartments at Laguna Verde in Hung Hom, only for the developers CK Asset Holdings and CLP Holdings to slash prices by a third to HK$7,000 per sq ft within a year.

That was just the start. CK Asset, known as Cheung Kong Property Holdings until it was renamed, would later send a jolt through the market when it priced the Tierra Verde project in Tsing Yi at HK$4,147 per sq ft, below the market average. While that tactic helped the developer sell all 1,400 flats on the first day, it became the opening salvo of a price war that would crimp 70 per cent of Hong Kong’s median home price, a crash so severe that recovery took six years.