Hong Kong buyers spurn 12% discount at Kai Tak’s Miami Quay, spelling woe for home market
- Agents sold a single flat at the first phase of the Miami Quay project in Kai Tak, out of the 50 units left over from its September 2022 launch
Hong Kong’s property buyers spurned a 12 per cent discount on offer at a waterfront housing project in one of the city’s choicest locations, signalling more woes ahead for the real estate slump.
“It was a bit disappointing,” said Sammy Po Siu-ming, the residential division chief executive of Midland Realty, which runs one of Hong Kong’s largest networks of property sales agents. “The flats are leftover units and expectations were not high given the current weak market sentiment.”
The woeful result underscores how Hong Kong’s developers have to make deep cuts to their catalogue prices to clear their growing inventory of unsold homes, as investors and owner-dwellers alike have retreated to the sidelines amid stubbornly high interest rates and a supply glut.
Hong Kong’s had more than 20,000 unsold homes in February when the government scrapped a range of taxes and curbs to stimulate demand. Since then, the US Federal Reserve had pushed back its schedule for cutting interest rates, resulting in Hong Kong’s high funding costs because of the city’s currency peg, analysts said.
