[HONG KONG] Hong Kong’s biggest property developer Sun Hung Kai Properties sold another 376 flats on Sunday (May 18) after receiving more than 34,000 bids, becoming one of the most sought after projects in months thanks to low interest rates.
The new round of sales at Sun Hung Kai’s Sierra Sea in the Ma On Shan area comes days after a quick sellout of its first batch earlier last week. The flats sold at about HK$9,645 (S$1,601) to HK$13,500 per square feet.
A drop in interest rates is helping the city’s residential market. The one-month Hong Kong Interbank Offered Rate, or Hibor, which often serves as a reference rate for mortgages, dipped below 1.3 per cent, the lowest since August 2022.
“The one-month Hibor’s plunge could push mortgage rates further below residential rental yields and reignite investment interest in Hong Kong’s housing market,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Patrick Wong and John Wong wrote in a note on Friday.
They also expect monthly new-home sales in the Asia financial hub to jump by 36 per cent from 1,100 units in April.
The company sold all 160 units in the 1B phase of the same residential development within hours on Wednesday.
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Home value for secondary transactions slightly edged up as borrowing costs lowered. Centaline Property Centa-City Leading Index, a gauge for second-hand home prices, climbed by about 0.26 per cent in the week to May 11.
Any further advancement in the secondary market will depend on whether the US Federal Reserve cuts rates in June, said Willy Liu, chief executive officer of Ricacorp Properties.
Lower interest rates are helping increase the chances of Hong Kong’s residential property market bottoming out, according to Jefferies Financial Group.
Justin Chiu, executive director of CK Asset Holdings, said Hong Kong’s property market is at a “turning point”, and he expects property prices in the city to rise, according to an interview with local media on Monday.
The city’s home prices are 29 per cent below their peak in 2021, data from the government show. The number of households with negative equity – when the value of a property is less than the outstanding mortgage loan – rose to the highest since 2003 as at the end of March. BLOOMBERG
