Schroders Marketing Commercial Floor at Kowloon Complex After Cancelled Auction

Fund manager Schroders is having another crack at selling a Hong Kong commercial floor after a planned auction last year failed to take place.

The third floor of the Harbourfront Landmark, a residential and commercial complex in Kowloon’s Hung Hom area, is up for sale by private treaty, sole agent JLL said Thursday in a release. The space at 11 Wan Hoi Street has a gross floor area of 18,520 square feet (1,721 square metres) and forms part of a commercial podium at the 2001-vintage development.

JLL estimates the third floor’s market value at HK$150 million ($19.3 million), marking a reduction from the asset’s HK$163 million opening bid price at an auction scheduled for last March but later called off. The consultancy is pitching the property near Whampoa MTR station as an “ideal choice” for businesses in need of a premium headquarters, pointing to the waterfront setting, flexible layout and comparative rarity of full-floor commercial spaces in the market.

“We anticipate that it will attract high-quality tenants, presenting a compelling opportunity for long-term investment through leasing,” said JLL Hong Kong chairman Joseph Tsang. “Given the rarity of commercial podiums in luxury residential projects being available for sale, we expect significant interest from both end-users and investors.”

Pamfleet’s Legacy

Schroders acquired the third, fifth, and sixth floors at the Harbourfront Landmark from private investor Lam Chi-fung, also known as Hugo Lam, for HK$1.16 billion ($148 million) in 2018, back when the UK firm’s Hong Kong operation did business as Pamfleet. With a combined floor area of 77,021 square feet, the properties traded six years ago at HK$15,034 per square foot.

Last March, JLL packaged the fifth and sixth floors as a single asset for auction at an opening bid price of HK$487 million, separate from the building’s third floor. The agency cancelled the auction the day before the event, saying the landlord had opted for a private treaty sale because of ongoing negotiations with potential buyers.

JLL’s latest estimate values the third floor at HK$8,099 ($1,041) per square foot of GFA. The fifth and sixth floors are excluded from the new sales exercise.

All three levels are vacant, according to the consultancy. Collectively they previously housed a branch of defunct co-working operator Campfire, whose co-founder Tse Yiu-sing was sentenced to 30 months in prison in late 2023 for duping a business partner into paying a bogus commission fee on the acquisition of a Tsuen Wan community mall.

The attempted sale of the third floor comes after Schroders in October launched a fresh marketing campaign for a Kowloon residential block, with the firm offering the building at 176 Nathan Road in Tsim Sha Tsui at a third off of its HK$600 million purchase price eight years earlier. Savills and Knight Frank have been engaged to find a buyer for the Nate, a combined residential and retail complex in the bustling commercial district, for HK$400 million.

Strata Strategies

The move to dispose of the Harbourfront Landmark’s podium a piece at a time is in line with a strategy adopted by some of Hong Kong’s commercial property sellers.

Mingtiandi reported in November that local investor Gale Well Group was marketing the 39th floor in Tower 2 of the Lippo Centre office complex in Admiralty at an asking price of HK$277 million. In September, the firm had put up for sale the 35th floor of the West Tower of the Shun Tak Centre commercial building in Sheung Wan, seeking HK$663 million.

An entity linked to local investor David “King of Cassettes” Chan in December 2023 sold a single unit at Shun Tak Centre for HK$44.6 million, or just under HK$31,000 per square foot, representing an 18 percent depreciation from the price paid to acquire the unit in 2019.