Hong Kong Sees Luxury Home Sale Spike Over Holidays

The luxury home market in Hong Kong didn’t slow down over the holidays.

Hong Kong’s high-end residential market had one of its busiest periods in years over the past two weeks as buyers spent more than $750 million across nine properties, Bloomberg reported.

Swire Properties was the biggest winner with the priciest sale during the holiday period. The Hong Kong-based developer sold two mansions in Deep Water Bay for a total of HK$2.2 billion ($282.5 million) in one of the most expensive transactions in the city in recent years. HKR International sold two houses next to its golf club at Discovery Bay for nearly HK$1 billion ($128.4 million) total. In the ritzy Peak neighborhood, a home at 1 Plantation Road scored HK$558 million ($71.7 million).

The transactions also closed with notable speed. “Wealthy buyers are making decisions faster,” William Lau, senior director and head of residential agency at Knight Frank in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg. “The strong luxury sales are propelled by the hot-money effect from the stock market and lower interest rates.”

The holiday sales cap off a year of record trades in Hong Kong. In August, a new mansion at 1 Gough Hill Road in the Peak area sold for nearly HK$1.1 billion ($140 million). Last month, a duplex apartment at Henderson Land Development Company and New World Development Company’s The Legacy residential complex sold for HK$880 million ($113 million), setting a city record for the priciest apartment.

The strong showings fly in the face of previous Jones Lang LaSalle predictions that luxury home prices would fall as much as 10 percent and overall values by 5 percent in 2025. The city’s residential price index actually increased about 2.8 percent in the first 11 months of last year, according to Hong Kong’s Rating and Valuation Department. Mass residential prices are expected to increase between 5 and 8 percent this year with luxury values forecast to rise 3 to 5 percent, per Knight Frank data cited by Bloomberg.

— Chris Malone Méndez