K Wah Boss Baffled By HK Market After Losing 16 Land Bids and More Asia Real Estate Headlines

In today’s real estate headlines even one of Hong Kong’s most established property tycoons is feeling the pressure as the city’s land prices soar at the same time that home prices slide. Meanwhile, the city’s biggest developer denies reports it is joining the rush into the US, UK and Australia and China’s biggest insurer is a step closer to having a new home in Beijing. Read on for all these stories and more.

K Wah Boss Baffled By HK Market After Losing 16 Land Bids

After more than 50 years as a Hong Kong developer, octogenarian billionaire Lui Che-Woo says he’s having trouble reading the city’s property market these days.

“I can’t see clearly what’s happening in Hong Kong’s property market,” 87-year-old Lui said in an interview, after failing to win any land bid this year. “Recently land prices have surged so much. I really don’t know what’s happening right now. I need time to think quietly for a while before figuring out the situation we are in.” Read more>>

SHK Swears Off Foreign Markets After Hitting Sales Record in 2016 1H

Sun Hung Kai Properties, Hong Kong’s largest developer by market value, said it has no immediate plans to embark on an overseas expansion after it achieved record contract sales of HK$40.7 billion for the year to June amid a property market correction.

“We will focus on Hong Kong and the mainland [property market],” said chairman and managing director Raymond Kwok Ping-luen. Read more>>

Sino-Ocean and China Life Top Off 44-Story Tower in Beijing

China Life Insurance and Chinese real estate developer Sino-Ocean Group have jointly announced the topping off of the Z13 office tower, China Life Financial Center, in Beijing’s central business district.

The Z13 Project, jointly developed by China Life and Sino-Ocean Group, is a 44-story office tower with a total of 1,746,983 square feet of space, including five underground floors. China Life Financial Center is positioned to be China’s first center for financial asset management firms, an industry which it is targeting exclusively for premium tenants. Read more>>

Singapore REIT Total Returns Spike 14%

Despite the pressures of its underwhelming hospitality and industrial sectors, Singapore Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) have registered a 14.2% total average returns for the year thus far, with an average dividend yield of 6.7%.

According to the latest market update by SGXMyGateway, this is higher compared to the dividend yield of 3.9% for the MSCI World REIT Index. The S-REIT sector is made up of 32 REITs and six Stapled Trusts. Read more>>

China’s Dahua Group Buys Sydney Site to Build 800 More Homes

Watch out Menangle Park because a further 3100 homes are coming your way.

Developer Dahua Group Australia has announced it has bought a second parcel of land, measuring 134ha, to built about 800 homes in the suburb.

The land was previously owned by Campbelltown Council and is adjacent to a 364ha site Dahua bought from UrbanGrowth NSW last year. Read more>>

Singapore’s CDL Invests RMB 100M into China Online Rental Platform

City Developments (CDL) is investing 100 million yuan (S$20.3 million) in a 20 per cent stake in Chinese online apartment rental platform mamahome.

The move by subsidiary CDL China comes about a year after CapitaLand’s serviced residence arm Ascott poured $67.69 million into Chinese apartment-sharing online site Tujia. “Clearly, both developers are trying to embrace technological changes in the real estate industry,” Mr Wong Yew Kiang, senior research analyst at CLSA said yesterday. Read more>>

Tune in again tomorrow for more news, and be sure to follow @Mingtiandi on Twitter for headlines as they happen.