Category: property
1br unit at Tung Chung’s Visionary sells for record $5.6m
One-bedroom units are in heavy demand at Tung Chung’s Visionary complex, with the price this month reaching a new high of $12,584 per sq foot.
A one-bedroom apartment in tower 10, with a usable area of 445 sq feet and lacking a sea view, sold last week for HK$5.6 million. The previous owner paid HK$3.67 million in December 2013.
The new buyer is an investor who is likely to lease the property for approximately HK$11,000 per month, Economic Times reported.
Nine Visionary flats changed hands in May, including six one-bedroom apartments, commanding prices of HK$5.0-5.6 million.
Tin Gwok-fai, Midland real estate manager at the Coastal Skyline branch, said Visionary’s stock is limited, in particular for one-bedroom units. Most of those sold will be leased, he said.
Sea Ranch units sell for more than $3.5m in lively auction
In another sign of Hong Kong’s extreme real estate market, buyers paid more than HK$3.5 million each for two Sea Ranch units in a fiercely-contested auction yesterday.
More than 60 people attended the auction, held under a court order after the former owner had accumulated HK$1.07 million in unpaid management fees over 11 years at the remote South Lantau location.
One buyer paid HK$3.55 million, or HK$2963 per square foot, for unit 5A, while another paid HK$3.7 million, or HK$2984 per square foot, for 5B, Economic Times reported.
Bidding for both units was intense, with more than two dozen bids received for each apartment. Bidding for both of the 1240 square-foot units began at HK$2.25 million and stepped up to increments as high as HK$200,000.
One of the buyers was seeking more floor or living space, while the other was seeking a family holiday property, Economic Times said.
The sales are part of a spurt of Sea Ranch transactions this year. Four properties have changed hands in the last ten weeks, compared to a single unit sold in the previous 15 months. One apartment sold for a record $3252 per square foot last week, yielding a sale price of HK$2.0 million, according to property website GoHome.com.hk.
Mui Wo apartment block tipped to fetch HK$350m
In another sign of rising interest in Mui Wo real estate, private housing estate Silver Waves Court is on the sale block and predicted to fetch an estimated HK$350 million.
The existing 20-year-old seafront estate is to be rebuilt into 18 two-storey detached houses, each with a separate garden.
Colliers International Real Estate, which is handling the sale, says the owner has approval from the Buildings Dept to redevelop the 31,721 square feet site.
Currently it has 16 separate homes with private gardens and an outdoor pool. It is fully-leased.
Colliers describes it as a “rare, high-end low-density luxury seaview villa development project,” Oriental Daily reports. Deadline for offers is June 16.
Lantau’s haunted houses and why they matter
If you’ve wondered where people have died suddenly on Lantau, wonder no more.
Real estate website Squarefoot hosts a ‘Haunted House Database’ that lists the homes where Hong Kong people have died by unnatural causes.
For Lantau, it records 23 deaths in Tung Chung since 2007 and eight in South Lantau* and Discovery Bay since 1999. It separately lists nine events in Mui Wo since 1999, though offers detail on only one of them.
Its brisk descriptions of past residents’ varied and untimely ends make for sombre reading,
But the database serves a practical purpose. As the website says, “one of the worst things that could happen” to a Hong Kong homebuyer is to buy a haunted apartment.
Chinese have strong sensitivities over death and sudden death in particular. Squarefoot blogger Juston Li points out that “hardly any local will move into a place where misfortunate [sic] has previously occurred — or to put it another way, a haunted house.”
Sudden deaths in Lantau Source: Squarefoot.com.hk
Hong Kong has no legal definition of ‘haunted house,’ he writes.
“But most will see it as a residential unit where any events such as murders, suicides and accidental deaths have previously occurred. In some cases, adjoining units are seen as haunted too.
”Even up to now, Chinese tradition and culture is deeply rooted in our society. For example, “Worshipping the Corners” is still a common ritual before moving in. When it comes to haunted property, many see it bringing bad luck to occupiers. As a result, most haunted flats offer lower prices compared to nearby units.”
Those places identified as ‘haunted’ traditionally command a lower valuation, a smaller mortgage loan and lower resale price.
Li cites the case of a flat in Kornhill, Quarry Bay, which sold at 15% below market value in 2013 because of a gruesome murder: a man had been killed and cooked by his wife in a neighbouring apartment – in 1988.
Yet thanks to soaring home prices, attitudes are changing slightly. Some buyers are on the lookout for ‘haunted homes’ because of the lower prices. Certain buyers such as expats are less concerned about past events. But Li warns that even so, buyers need to be aware of the likely lower mortgages available from banks.
Squarefoot urges all would-be home buyers to be learn whether their home is ‘haunted’. Besides using the database, buyers can do a Google search, check with the agent and the bank or even seek a written guarantee from the owner.
Hermia Chan, senior PR and marketing manager for Squarefoot, said: “Buyers expect a certain level of discount for a haunted house. One of the reasons is that it will lower the chances of you obtaining a mortgage.” She says Squarefoot created the database information from media reports.
Squarefoot’s owner, iProperty, also publishes real estate sites in Singapore, Malaysia and Australia, but Hong Kong is the only one to list haunted houses.
* Yes, sharp-eyed readers – one of the ‘South Lantau’ incidents was in Fu Tung, Tung Chung.
[UPDATE: Corrected on May 4 to clarify that the haunted house database has been created from news reports, not from information supplied by realtors.]
The fall and rise of The Sea Ranch
Shaggy beards and big sunglasses aren’t the only 70s icons making a revival. The Sea Ranch, for years Lantau’s monument to shattered dreams, is making a comeback.
Residents are slowly returning to the site on the tip of Chi Ma Wan and property values are rising.
Like Discovery Bay, The Sea Ranch was built as an upmarket coastal resort accessible only by ferry. It opened in 1979, several years before DB, but was never big enough to sustain itself and after a series of legal disputes among the owners it finally closed in 2002. Continue reading
Records go in Tung Chung’s heated property market
Tung Chung’s secondary real estate market is heating up. Transactions doubled last month, with one Seaview Crescent apartment becoming the first to fetch HK$10 million.
With such brisk demand – more than 80 sales took place in March – most owners raised their prices. The average price in the Caribbean Coast, to give an example, increased by 5% to HK$9650 per sq foot.
Mui Wo home prices set to soar, says CBRE
Mui Wo property prices are set to rise sharply, a senior Hong Kong real estate figure predicts.
Kam Hung-yu, a Hong Kong managing director at global estate giant CBRE and a former president of of the Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors, predicts a major hike in residential valuations.
Writing in the Economic Journal he says the Housing Authority will start selling its new Mui Wo apartments in August. Mui Wo prices currently are at around $7000-$8000 psf, but after subsidies this will fall to as low as HK$5000.
“Some Hong Kong people believe the location is not attractive because it is too far [from the city],” he wrote. But he says citizens who qualify for the HA ‘green form’ subsidy should genuinely consider it. “This most likely is a housing market with very strong potential to rise in value,” he wrote. Continue reading
High-end living lands in Lantau
At no 20: prime view and a pool
If you’re feeling limited by Lantau’s lifestyle choices you now have a new one – opulent living.
Not one but two high-end housing developments have come on the market in the last six months, exemplifying perhaps South Lantau’s transition from sleepy backwater to development hot spot.
Kelly Merrick from Home Solutions kindly took Lantau Confidential for a tour of White Sands early this month. From her perspective it’s the arrival of much-needed new inventory. “There’s been nothing like this previously on Lantau,” she said.
Here on Lantau, Hong Kong’s cheapest property
Running around Chi Ma Wan peninsula last year I noticed a bunch of apartments on the shore below. Not knowing the epic importance of the dwellings, I took this photograph from just the other side of the point.
That’s pretty much the same stunning view as residents get daily. Who wouldn’t want a part of it?
The answer is, no-one. Even in land-scarce Hong Kong.
The place is called Sea Ranch. Built some 20 years ago, it has entered Hong Kong legend as a semi-deserted ghost village. Not quite on the same scale as Skyfall‘s Hashima Island, but important enough to rate a mention in Time Out‘s ‘Secret Hong Kong’.
The awkward location and lack of transport links have doubtless contributed to the exit of owners and tenants. At $732 per square foot it is surely Hong Kong’s best-priced accommodation (thanks, Big Lychee). That’s six times less than the South Lantau average of $4,704 for November.
But what’s that smack in the middle of the foreground? Yes, Shek Kwu Chau, the government’s favourite location for super-incinerator and wharf, promising the arrival of 3,000 tonnes of garbage daily and likely toxic emissions. No wonder it’s been abandoned by the market.
Lantau Confidential 