Hong Kong Hotel Offered at 40% Discount and More Asia Real Estate Headlines

Hong Kong’s slumping property market leads today’s headline roundup, as a Sai Ying Pun hotel seeks a buyer at a deep discount. Also in the news, PropertyGuru reports revenue growth but a quarterly loss and AirTrunk completes an addition to a Sydney data centre campus.

Hotel in Hong Kong’s Sai Ying Pun on the Market at 40% Off

The worsening slump in Hong Kong’s property market is pushing owners to deepen the discounts of assets already on the market.

The Connaught, a 29-storey hotel in Sai Ying Pun near Central, is being offered at HK$600 million ($77 million) — a 40 percent discount to its initial asking price. Read more>>

Singapore’s PropertyGuru Reports 10% Increase in Revenue

Singapore-based PropertyGuru on Tuesday announced financial results for the quarter to the end of June, with revenue rising 10 percent to S$41 million ($31.4 million).

Net loss was S$16 million in the second quarter and adjusted EBITDA was positive S$7 million, compared with a net loss of S$6 million and adjusted EBITDA of positive S$5 million in the year-earlier quarter, the NYSE-listed group said. Read more>>

AirTrunk Completes Third Phase of Sydney Data Centre Campus

Australia’s AirTrunk has completed the third phase of its SYD2 data centre campus in the north of Sydney. The operator said it successfully added 30 megawatts of capacity to the 120MW-plus campus. The expansion broke ground in June 2023 and was topped out last November.

The SYD2 campus features 24 data halls spanning 28,000 square metres (312,000 square feet) and a power usage effectiveness ratio of 1.15. The campus first launched in March 2021, just 16 months after plans were announced in November 2019. Read more>>

Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District Turns to Land Sales

In 1998, a year after the return of Hong Kong’s sovereignty to China, the city’s government conceived an ambitious goal for the financial hub: to build an arts district to rival some of the world’s top cultural destinations.

Today, the West Kowloon Cultural District — a reclaimed area on Victoria Harbour about one-tenth of Manhattan’s Central Park in size — remains unfinished. Construction sites sit alongside museums like M+, which houses modern art, and the Palace Museum, an offshoot of the Beijing institution, as well as performance spaces like Xiqu Centre, a concert hall dedicated to Chinese opera. Read more>>

Hong Kong Developers Slash Prices Ahead of Rate Cuts

Hong Kong’s developers kicked off a new round of price cuts to offload new-home inventories after the US Federal Reserve gave its strongest hint yet about an imminent rate cut.

KT Marina, a residential project jointly developed by K Wah International, Wheelock Properties and China Overseas in Kai Tak, inaugurated the price war on Monday by slashing prices on 50 flats at its Phase I by up to 38.5 percent. Earlier discounts stood at 22 percent. Read more>>

Din Tai Fung Closing Mainland Shops as Consumption Wanes

Taiwan-based dumpling chain Din Tai Fung recently announced that it would close all its shops in northern China, marking the end of a 20-year engagement between the wildly popular restaurant and a consumer base once flush with discretionary income and hungry for new places to spend it.

The region’s 14 stores will be closed by 31 October, the company said last week in a written statement that attributed the decision to the expiration of a business licence and disagreements over renewal. Read more>>

Foreigners Buying More Singapore Luxury Homes as Stamp Duty Shock Wanes

Foreign buying of Singapore luxury homes is slowly on the rise again, after steep hikes in stamp duties all but smothered the market last year.

But it’s still too early to say if a fresh wave of wealth is descending on the island, given current economic uncertainties and still-tight home-purchase restrictions for foreigners, said analysts. Read more>>

Hong Kong Property Deals Slide to Six-Month Low

Hong Kong’s property market lost some of its zip in August, with overall property transactions slumping to the lowest since February when cooling measures were still in place.

Real estate deals, comprising new and lived-in homes, office units, car parking slots, shops and industrial spaces, fell 10 percent from July to 4,729 units and slid 33 percent from six months ago, according to the Land Registry data released Tuesday. Read more>>

Indian Regulator Approves General Atlantic Acquisition of Actis

The Competition Commission of India on Tuesday cleared US-based private equity firm General Atlantic’s proposal to acquire a 100 percent stake in Actis Holdings.

In January, General Atlantic and Actis announced that the firms had entered into a definitive agreement under which General Atlantic would acquire Actis, creating an investment platform with $96 billion in combined assets under management. Read more>>

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