House 5 at 15 Shouson is the third home sold in the development
A luxury villa at the 15 Shouson development in Hong Kong Island’s Deep Water Bay has sold for HK$498.1 million ($63.7 million), breathing life into the ailing local housing market as the Year of the Dragon gets underway.
House 5 at the exclusive 15-home project on Shouson Hill, with a usable area of 6,695 square feet (622 square metres), traded for HK$74,400 per square foot at a tender held Sunday. The sale is only the third ever — and the cheapest on the basis of price per unit of area — at the joint development of Emperor Group, CC Land Holdings, Mingfa Group and CSI Properties Ltd since the project’s completion three years ago.
Homes in Shouson Hill, a traditional luxury location in the island’s Southern District, have always been in rare supply, Emperor vice chairman Alex Yeung said in release.
“In the future, we will continue to adopt a reluctance to sell,” Yeung said. “We will increase our sales volume in an orderly manner to respond to the market.”
Downward Price Trend
The developers didn’t disclose the identity of the buyer. House 5 is a five-bedroom villa with a fitness room, a 2,391 square foot garden and a 1,580 square foot rooftop. Other features include a heated swimming pool, a private lift and two parking spaces.
Emperor Group vice chairman Alex Yeung
The two homes previously sold at No.15 Shouson — one larger, one smaller — both changed hands in mid-2022 for a greater price per square foot than House 5. The first, House 7, measures 8,032 square feet and sold for HK$108,346 per square foot, while the second, House 11, spans 4,726 square feet and traded for HK$92,044 per square foot.
The sale of House 5 is the first of a super-luxury home in the new lunar year and the second announced in the calendar year, following the HK$838 million transaction of a Peak mansion.
The home at 25-26 A&B Lugard Road was acquired by Huashengjia Co Ltd, an entity under the directorship of Gu Fang, for HK$71,703 per square foot, representing a 30 percent discount to the height of the market, according to consultancy Savills, which brokered the deal. The buyer’s name matches that of the wife of Xu Hang, the billionaire co-founder of Shenzhen-listed medical device maker Mindray Medical.
The property was sold by the family of Tsim Wing Kong, chairman and founder of toymaker Weina Group, who put the property on the market in October 2023 for HK$1.3 billion ($166 million) or HK$111,235 per square foot. The family had purchased the property in 1999 for HK$145 million, per local media accounts.
High-End Anxiety
Hong Kong in 2023 saw 2,012 high-end residential transactions (those greater than HK$20 million), up 12.8 percent, according to CBRE.
Renewed buyer interest spurred developers to resume sale of luxury residential projects in a bid to seize pent-up demand, but most of the growth took place during the first six months before a second-half retreat kicked in, the consultancy said in its market review and outlook.
“Interest rates are expected to remain high in H1 2024, which will continue to impede demand during the period,” said Eddie Kwok, senior director of valuation and advisory services at CBRE Hong Kong. He added that there might be a time lag for mortgage rate cuts in Hong Kong after the US Federal Reserve signalled a 75-basis-point rate cut by the end of 2024.
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