No one does the frenzied crowd thing better than Hong Kong
October may be time for the mid-autumn festival, but the heat is still on in property markets across the region as Singapore reports a rebound for commercial and residential demand and Hong Kong sees 13,000 buyers show up for a chance at just 400 homes. Further north, China is looking for ways to stop its frenzied investors from using car loans to buy homes in second and third tier cities, and there’s much more news if you just keep reading.
13,000 Hopefuls Show Up to Buy 400 Hong Kong Homes
More than 13,000 prospective buyers swamped a Hong Kong property development in Tseung Kwan O on Saturday looking to snap up 400 newly released flats, despite a warning from the city’s Monetary Authority about “irrational” purchases.
Long queues were seen at the International Commerce Centre in West Kowloon, where the sales office for developer Sun Hung Kai Properties’ Wings at Sea project is located. The company kicked off sales for the first phase of the Lohas Park development, east of Kowloon, at 9am. Read more>>
Henderson Sells Mid-Levels Home for Record HK$105,000 Per Square Foot
A luxury home in Hong Kong set a price record for apartment sales in Asia, even as the government seeks to tame property prices in the world’s least affordable market.
The penthouse duplex unit in Henderson Land Development Co.’s 39 Conduit Road project was sold for about HK$522 million ($67 million), or HK$105,000 per square foot, the city’s Sing Tao Daily reported Saturday, citing an unidentified person. Company representatives didn’t immediately reply to an email seeking comment sent outside of business hours. Read more>>
HNA’s “Charitable” Owner Rethinking Pursuit of Tax-Exempt Status in NY
Chinese conglomerate HNA Group Co. is rethinking whether to seek tax-exempt status for a New York foundation that the company said would become its biggest shareholder, raising questions about its plans for the charity.
The Hainan Cihang Charity Foundation, which HNA this summer said would own nearly 30% of its shares, “has not yet determined whether or not it will file an application for tax-exempt status under any potentially applicable provision of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code,” according to a registration filing with the New York Attorney General’s Charities Bureau, which oversees charities in the state. Read more>>
China Cracks Down on Buying Homes with Consumer Loans
Chinese banking regulators have told lenders to crack down on the use of consumer loans to finance home purchases, the latest effort to cool down the overheated property market and rein in financial risk.
In principle, Chinese banks enforce a stringent minimum downpayment of 20 per cent on first mortgages. For second homes, the requirement is about 60 per cent in big cities. But this can, in effect, drop to zero if homebuyers use other sources of credit to finance the downpayment. Read more>>
Singapore Office Market Said on the Rebound
The bumper $1.622 billion bid for a Beach Road site last week has sparked renewed interest in a commercial property market already bubbling away after the $2.09 billion Asia Square Tower 2 sale.
The word “bullish” has been on the lips of industry watchers predicting an office rental recovery as the supply of new completions dwindles. Read more>>
SG Home Prices Head Back Up After 15 Quarters of Decline
It has been a long time between drinks, but property owners might just have reason to cheer after private home prices ticked up in the third quarter. The rise – while modest – ended a long 15-quarter decline and fuelled hopes that a rebound is under way.
Values rose by 0.5 per cent in the three months to Sept 30 compared with the second quarter, according to flash estimates from the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) yesterday. Read more>>
Moody’s Follows S&P in Cutting Wanda Credit Rating
Ratings agency Moody’s Investor Services has taken the knife to the massive China developer Dalian Wanda’s credit rating, cutting it to Ba1 amid concerns of the company’s weakened liquidity position.
The agency said this was “due to inadequate offshore cash to meet the potential repayment of its offshore bank loans of around $1.7 billion – arising from potential non-compliance of certain maintenance requirements related to the company’s existing borrowing obligations”. Read more>>
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