HK Homebuyers waiting for 20pc slide

December 23, 2013 Leave a comment

Homebuyers waiting for 20pc slide
Karen Chiu
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Nearly three out of five people would buy next year if secondary home prices fell around 20 percent, a survey by Midland Realty shows. Of 830 people polled last week, a quarter believed prices would decline further next year. And of the homeowners among them, almost half said they want to sell their units due to likely interest rate hikes and the imposition of more government curbs.Overall, 62 percent said they would buy flats next year if secondary market prices fell and developers offered more discounts.

Of these, 58 percent would buy if prices fell more than 20 percent, while the rest were willing to buy even if the dip was less. Midland deputy chairman Angela Wong Ching- yi, pictured above, expects home prices to drop by 20 to 30 percent in the next two or three years and forecast a 5 to 10 percent fall during the first half of next year.

With most homebuyers currently taking a “wait-and-see” approach, Midland expects transactions to shrink further to just 65,000 next year despite an increase in primary market sales thanks to a variety of stamp duty and other discounts offered by developers.

That compares with 70,000 homes already sold so far this year.

Meanwhile, HKR International (0480) will offer up to 23.5 percent off for 35 units at The Amalfi in Discovery Bay. The 26 three- to four-bedroom flats and nine special units range from 930 square feet to 2,391 sq ft. Average price is HK$16,222 per sellable sq ft.

Separately, Cheung Kong Holdings (0001) announced higher discounts and rebates at The Rise in Tsuen Wan East. Buyers can get as much as 18 percent off for purchases made from Friday until January 30.

This comes as Sun Hung Kai Properties (0016) got up to 4,948 registrations for the first batch of 120 units at phase two of Century Gateway in Tuen Mun, put up for sale today.

Flats are priced at an average of HK$10,738 per sellable sq ft.

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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