Tang Family Reportedly Sells Kowloon Residential Building to K&K at $20M Loss

In their 18th asset sale over the last six months, the family of Hong Kong’s late “Shop King” Tang Shing Bor has sold a senior home in Kowloon City at a loss of HK$160 million ($20.3 million), according to local media accounts.

The family is said to have sold the Patina Wellness Centre, a 84,364 square foot (7,837 square metre) residential building at 18 Junction Road for HK$1.14 billion. The facility is managed by senior care provider Pine Care Group, and Tang’s Living Group, both of which are controlled by Stan Tang, the youngest son of the late tycoon.

The buyer, which media reports have identified as K&K Property Holdings, is said to be paying about HK$13,512 per square foot of existing floor area for the 2016-vintage residential tower, with analysts predicting that the local developer could gain immediate profit through strata title sales of units in the building.

Including the 27-storey Kowloon housing complex, the Tangs have offloaded some HK$5.1 billion worth of assets since January this year, according to Mingtiandi’s tally.

Offloading in Kowloon City

The Patina Wellness Centre, a residential block comprising apartments for senior residents, as well as nursing facilities and a retail podium, is within a 5-minute drive of the Sung Wong Toi MTR station. Its 79 apartments are located on floors 7 to 29, and are just above the 32 residential care homes that span floors 3 to 6.

The retail podium, which covers about 8,116 square feet of area across the ground and first floors, features a clinic and a restaurant, while the second floor of the project had been built as a clubhouse for recreational activities.

The late Tang family patriarch had purchased the residential tower from Phoenix Property Investors in April of 2017 for HK$1.3 billion before converting it into a nursing home over the year that followed, said sources familiar with the matter.

Units at new projects in the same area may sell for prices running from HK$22,000 to HK$25,000 per square foot of saleable area, said Raymond Fung, executive director of capital markets at JLL.

Asking prices for new homes at nearby residential developments – such as Country Garden’s Allegro – average HK$24,500 per square foot of saleable area, although flats in that project are smaller compared to Patina Wellness, said Alex Leung, senior director at CHFT Advisory and Appraisal.

The Kowloon City disposal was reported about three months after Pine Care Group recorded a loss of HK$24 million for the year that ended 31 March, compared to a profit of HK$3.2 million over the same period in 2021, according to the group’s most recent filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange.

The stock price of Pine Care Group has dropped 52 percent year-on-year to HK$0.54 per share as market closing on Monday.

Fire Sales

The Tangs’ latest disposal showed the family cashing out of Kowloon City as Hong Kong’s housing market began to pick up in the second quarter, with the city recording 1,492 new home purchases totalling HK$18.25 billion in May. These figures were up 4.8 and 4 times respectively from the previous month, according to a recent report from Centaline Property Agency.

Despite that increase, mass home prices dropped 0.2 percent month-on-month in May, according to JLL’s property market monitor, following another monthly decline of 0.2 percent in April.

Since May, the family’s major asset sales included a pair of transactions at Beacon Heights Shopping Centre and at Wai Ching Court in Kowloon, which totaled HK$129 million. Within that month, the Tangs reportedly sold two units at the Centro-Sound Industrial Building in Hong Kong Island’s Shau Kei Wan for HK$55 million and took a loss of HK$33 million.