Snaking queues of thousands of prospective apartment buyers in Hong Kong signaled authorities have made no progress in cooling a red-hot property market, where prices are at record highs.
People on Friday and over the weekend were lining up at Victoria Skye, a luxury project at the former Kai Tak Airport site, and at the Ocean Pride development by Cheung Kong Property Holdings Ltd (長江實業地產) and MTR Corp (香港鐵路).
“Successive moves by the government in recent memory to cool the property market only resulted in it becoming crazier,” the Standard newspaper said in an editorial yesterday. “The result is a sea of madness.”
Photo: Bloomberg
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has been tightening rules for lenders, including restricting levels of lending to developers, as it tries to limit financial risks and take some of the heat out of the market.
The Centaline Property Centa-City Leading Index of existing homes has advanced 23 percent in the past year, setting new price records week after week.
At a Legislative Council meeting yesterday, HKMA Chief Executive Norman Chan (陳德霖) said levels of demand were reminiscent of 20 years ago — before Hong Kong suffered a property bust — and he expressed concern that people with limited financial resources were buying just because they thought prices would only keep going up.
Developers sold 8,616 homes in the first five months of the year, already more than were sold in any first half since new purchasing rules were introduced in 2013, the Hong Kong Economic Times reported.
K&K Property (建灝地產) has offered an additional 200 units at Victoria Skye after it sold 306 apartments on Saturday, Ming Pao newspaper reported.
Cheung Kong is to put another 346 up for grabs after selling 496 in a single day on Friday last week, it said, adding that the developers are to raise the prices of the additional units by about 2 percent.
The Hang Seng Properties Index of developers yesterday rose as much as 1.2 percent, up more than 20 percent this year, ignoring Hong Kong banks’ move over the weekend to up mortgage rates.
Commercial banks in the mortgage loans market, including Standard Chartered PLC, HSBC Holdings PLC and Bank of China (Hong Kong) Ltd (中國銀行香港), said they would raise interest rates following the latest round of mortgage tightening measures by the territory’s de facto central bank, the HKMA.
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