Dah Sing Bank Buys Southside Floors for $107M as Occupiers Grab Hong Kong Office Space 

Hong Kong has witnessed another jumbo office purchase by a corporate occupier, with Dah Sing Banking Group having purchased 10 floors in a tower on the island’s south side for HK$838.7 million ($107 million), according to an announcement on Saturday.

The mid-scale financial institution is purchasing the 6th through 18th floors of Viva Place, a 2024-vintage project developed by Viva Properties, along with a ground floor retail unit giving it 117,672 square feet (10,932 square metres) of space along with naming rights to the property in the Wong Chuk Hang area, per a statement from property consultancy Knight Frank, which brokered the sale.

After office deals in Hong Kong picked up in the fourth quarter, Knight Frank’s head of capital markets for Greater China, Antonio Wu in a January market forecast pointed to occupiers as significant players in commercial acquisitions in the city this year, noting, “Office transactions are set to rise, driven by end-user demand and growing investor interest.”

The purchase by Dah Sing Banks follows major office acquisitions over the past year by JD Property, Alibaba Group and the Hong Kong stock exchange, as corporate occupiers take advantage of property values which have fallen more than a third from pre-2019 levels. 

Back Office Hub

The deal is expected to provide back-office space for Dah Sing, which has its corporate headquarters in the Dah Sing Financial Centre in Wan Chai district, with leasing rates in Hong Kong South averaging less than half of Wan Chai levels, according to agency data. 

At the stated compensation, Dah Sing Bank is paying the equivalent of HK$7,136 per square foot for its new corporate home at 36 Heung Yip Road, which also comes with 20 parking spaces. In an announcement in November last year, CBRE indicated that space in the tower was priced from HK$7,000 per square foot. 

Located less than five minutes’ walk from the Wong Chuk Hang MTR Station, Viva Place is a 27-storey strata title property which has earned BEAM Plus certification under Hong Kong’s sustainable building regimen and certified as WELL Core Gold for its healthy workplace standards.

With the MTR’s South Island line connecting the traditional industrial hub to Admiralty district when it opened in 2016, Wong Chuk Hang became a target for Hong Kong commercial developers in the previous decade with Viva Properties (the real estate division of private manufacturer Viva Group, previously developing the Vignature office tower in the area. Viva Place is neighbours with Swire Properties’ One island South, Henderson Land Development’s Global Trade Square and Landmark South, a joint venture between Sino Group and Empire Group. 

Office vacancy in the Island South area, where Wong Chuk Hang is located, averaged 28.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025 –  the highest in the city – according to Cushman & Wakefield. 

Occupiers in the Market

Having suffered one of Asia’s steepest market slides in recent years, trades of income-earning properties in Hong Kong rose for the first time since 2019 last year, jumping 25 percent from the preceding 12 month period to reach $8.2 billion, according to a recent report by MSCI Real Assets.

Acquisitions by end-users of office space were among the primary drivers of the rebound, with Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group’s sale of a set of office floors in its One Causeway Bay project for HK$21.4 billion to Alibaba and its Ant Financial affiliate, ranking as the city’s largest commercial real estate transaction of 2025. 

In December, Lai Sun Development and its parent company Lai Sung Garment announced an agreement to sell their half-stake in the China Construction Bank Tower in Hong Kong’s central district for HK$3.5 billion, with JD Property, the real estate investment unit of JD.com, having acquired the property for use as the group’s Hong Kong headquarters. 

Those deals came after Hongkong Land agreed in April 2025 to sell nine floors at the developer’s Exchange Square complex in Central district to the Hong Kong stock exchange for HK$6.3 billion.