Hong Kong’s developers, who typically sell their residential property on Saturdays and Sundays, reported their first mixed weekend in five years, as a combination of rising mortgage rates and additional supply gave eager homebuyers cause for pause.
Sun Hung Kai Properties (SHKP), the city’s largest developer, sold every one of the 117 flats at its Cullinan West II development in Sham Shui Po for a total of HK$1.9 billion (US$242 million). It was the developer’s second sold-out weekend, after raking in HK$5 billion from 354 apartment units a week earlier.
It was a different story in Sai Wan Ho, where a venture between Lai Sun Group and the city’s Urban Renewal Authority (URA) managed to sell only five of the 80 units of Monti on offer, making it the developer’s worst weekend since 2013.
Sentiment among homebuyers in the world’s most expensive residential property market turned since July, when Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor proposed a vacancy tax to stop developers from hoarding completed projects. Even though the tax would take months to be gazetted into law, its very proposal underscored the government’s determination to move on housing prices, prompting one developer after another to release more property for sale.
