Dash Living Picking Up Former Hong Kong Hotel From Gale Well at 70% Off 2019 Price

Hong Kong’s plummeting property values have provided Dash Living with an economical opportunity to expand its portfolio in the city, as the Rava Partners-backed rental residential operator picks up a Wan Chai district property at 70 percent off the 2019 asking price.

Dash has reached an agreement to purchase the former Butterfly on Morrison Hotel from local investment house Gale Well for HK$360 million ($46 million), according to market sources who spoke with Mingtiandi, with the deal marking Gale Well’s latest cut rate asset sale.

Led by local tycoon Jacinto Tong, Gale Well had been marketing the 98-room property at 39 Morrison Hill Road in Wanchai since 2024, after an attempt to sell the 26-storey hotel in mid-2019 at HK$1.2 billion fell flat as protests rocked the city. The Hong Kong Economic Times had reported earlier last week that Gale Well was nearing a sale of the property. 

Gale Well has been rushing to liquidate assets in the past year, including selling a set of rental apartments in Hong Kong’s upscale Stanley neighborhood for HK$310 million in December in a deal brokered by Cushman & Wakefield. That transaction saw the investment firm selling at an approximately 44 percent markdown from the HK$550 million it paid to purchase the property at 8 Stanley Beach Road in 2019. 

Dash Grows Portfolio

Gale Well and Dash are said to have signed a letter of intent for the sale of the 55,238 square foot (5,132 square metre) property, with the transaction set to add a tenth Hong Kong location to Dash’s portfolio. Dash Living representatives declined to comment on the transaction while Gale Well had not responded to inquiries from Mingtiandi by the time of publication.

The Butterfly on Morrison hotel had closed in early 2020 as COVID-19 rocked Hong Kong with the property operating more recently as the BeLIVING Youth Hub, a 184-bed youth hostel. Residents of the property have been informed of the hostel’s closing at the end of this month with Dash acquiring the property on a vacant possession basis, according to multiple market sources. CBRE is said to have advised on the transaction.

At the reported compensation, Dash is paying the equivalent of HK$3.7 million per key for the property, or HK$6,517 per square foot. The acquisition will add a second former Butterfly Hotel to Dash’s portfolio, after the operator teamed with US developer and fund manager Hines and local investment firm Mindworks to acquire the Butterfly on Prat Hotel in the Tsim Sha Tsui area in 2021. 

The former Butterfly on Prat was opened in early 2023 as Dash Living on Prat with Dash having opened a location on Wan Chai’s Johnston Road earlier this year, with that property situated less than a kilometre west of 39 Morrison Hill Road. 

Rava Partners, the property unit of superinvestor Zhang Lei’s Hillhouse Capital, acquired a majority stake in Dash Living early last year, committing up to $150 million to expand the company’s portfolio. In November of last year Dash and Singapore’s TE Capital Partners announced that they had teamed with Tokyo-based Alyssa Partners to acquire a 130-unit unit apartment building in the Japanese capital’s Minato ward. 

Gale Well Sales Continue

Gale Well had acquired 39 Morrison Hill Road in 2014 for approximately HK$670 million, with the current building occupying a 3,112 square foot site, according to property particulars seen by Mingtiandi. The current sale represents a 46 percent markdown from the purchase price 12 years ago. 

The discounted hotel sale, and Gale Well’s December disposal in Stanley, come after the company in October last year sold the Austin Plaza commercial building at 83 Austin Road in Tsim Sha Tsui for around HK$620 million, or around 30 percent less than it had been asking for the property in April of last year. 

In July Gale Well sold a floor in The Center, an office tower on Queen’s Road in Central district, for HK$343 million after acquiring the property for HK$693 million in July 2021 in a deal which Tong had hailed as a bargain at the time.