Former Sensetime Exec Buys Hong Kong Home at 40% Below 2013 Price

The rise of AI and a drop in Hong Kong home prices may have triggered a HK$125 million ($16 million) luxury housing deal with a former executive from mainland unicorn Sensetime picking up the property in one of the city’s most exclusive areas at more than 40 percent below 2013 pricing.

Esther Wong Hong-man, who led capital markets as a managing director at SenseTime from 2018 to 2023 before founding AI-focused venture capital firm 3C AGI Partners, purchased a row house in Sun Hung Kai Properties’ Shouson Peak project for more than half off of the highest rate paid in the development.

The 46-year-old Shanghai native is acquiring the 2,955 square foot home for the equivalent of HK$42,300 per square foot, which is the lowest ever in the project, according to CHFT Advisory and Appraisal.

“House 17K is a terrace house. The highest price of terrace house [in the development] was recorded in April 2017 at a unit rate of HK$88,952 per square foot. Therefore, House 17K represented a drop of 52.5 percent from the peak,” Alex Leung, chief surveyor at CHFT Advisory and Appraisal, told Mingtiandi.

Prestigious Neighbourhood

Wong, an investment banker who helped SenseTime raise over $5 billion during her time at the company, will count among her neighbours some of the best known members of Hong Kong’s elite with singer Eason Chan having acquired House 19D in the project for approximately HK$71,426 per square foot.

Also residing on Shouson Hill Road is Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing with Alibaba co-founders Shi Yufeng and Jin Yuanying also in the neighbourhood.

There are 31 houses in Shouson Peak, which occupies 9-19 Shouson Hill Road, with 17 sales of new homes registered to date. Wong’s new house on the hill has four bedrooms, a private outdoor area with a 568-square-foot garden and a 640-square-foot rooftop.

In 2021 a buyer set the price record in the exclusive project, paying HK$101,487 per square foot for a home on a corner lot, according to CHFT.

Buying the Dip

Wong picked up here Shouson Hill space after Hong Kong home prices fell nearly 30 percent from their 2018 peak, with some analysts concluding that the market may have reached bottom.

With interest rates having fallen and wages on the rise Morgan Stanley recently reported that Hong Kong’s residential market may be stabilising.

CBRE also sees the city’s residential market having stabilised, with the real estate agency forecasting up to 5 percent growth in home prices for the full year of 2025.