Wealthy mainlanders acquired as many as 60 units of a new housing project during the weekend, taking advantage of the yuan crest.
Kerry Properties sold 195 units over the weekend at Lions Rise, its Wong Tai Sin residential project. Of these, 60 flats (over 30 percent) were sold to mainland buyers, their highest share in the history of new local projects.
“Mainland buyers generally only consider flats above the 23rd floor. They do not impose a limit on the price tag. Neither do they target flats with specific investment returns (in mind),” said Brenda Chong, a Ricacorp Properties agent.
“Many of them like to buy adjoining flats. So far, at least 10 flats have been sold this way.”
On Saturday, a group of mainland home buyers acquired 12 units — mostly two-bedroom units above 700 sq ft in size — for a total of over HK$100 million, said Ms. Chong, adding that the group is planning to buy even more.
The developer had released 350 of the project’s 968 flats on the market in the previous week. The flats, which are sized from 680 sq ft to 1,470 sq ft, were priced between HK$9,998 and HK$14,942 psf.
In addition, Cheung Kong Holdings sold 15 units at its Uptown project in Yuen Long over the weekend, with 15 percent of the home buyers coming from mainland China.
So far, 600 of the 734 flats at Uptown have already been taken up.
“They don’t care about investment returns, but rather the discount on property prices due to the appreciation of the yuan,” said Bernie Chan, a Midland Realty agent.
“A lot of them consider themselves to be paying just 83 percent of the price of a home.”
Meanwhile, transactions in the secondary market remained slower.
According to Midland Realty, market activities last weekend at 10 benchmark residential projects dropped to 32 from 42 in the previous week. The sales at Kowloon projects also dropped to nine from 13, while transactions in the New Territories fell from 21 to 15.
To contact the journalist, you may send your message to editor@propertyguru.com.sg