HK's expensive luxury property turning cheaper

The most expensive homes in the city are changing hands at steep discounts to what they were worth just a few years ago.

- Elaine Yu

Chinese property tycoons, struggling to contain the fallout of their collapsing business empires, have become forced sellers. Bank lenders are seizing properties after luxury homeowners miss loan payments.

The average selling price of superluxury homes, defined as those THE WALL ST worth more than the equivalent of $38 million, has fallen by more than a quarter since the middle of 2022, said Cherrie Lai, senior director and head of residential sales in Hong Kong at Savills. It will fall further this year as sellers accept reduced prices to cash out quickly, she said.

The slide in prices shows the fallout of China's sputtering economy, which is suffering from deflation, slowing exports, and moribund consumer confidence. A continuing real-estate slowdown in China is proving particularly painful since the country's big-spending property magnates were behind some of Hong Kong's biggest luxury property deals in recent years.

Hong Kong's property market has also been squeezed by rising interest rates in the US.

The Hong Kong dollar is pegged to the US dollar, and the city's de facto central bank matches Federal Reserve interest-rate increases. But the US market has held up much better: Nine-figure home sales in places such as California and Florida have skyrocketed, and luxury-home prices in the top 5% of the US market have soared over REET JOURNAL. the past decade.