Fund puts luxury property up for sale
Lend Lease Real Estate Investment, a subsidiary of Australian property giant Lend Lease Corp, is the latest foreign fund to attempt to cash in on rising sentiment in Hong Kong's luxury property sector, putting its residential tower on Kennedy Road, Mid-Levels, up for tender.
Asia Pacific Investment Co (Apic), a fund managed by Lend Lease Real Estate Investment, is hoping to sell the Lodge on the Park, which comprises 56 flats, for about HK$1 billion.
Earlier this month, British developer Grosvenor sold its first Asian residential development, Grosvenor Place in Repulse Bay, for HK$939 million.
David Kirkby, the chief executive of Lend Lease Real Estate Investment for Asia, said the fund bought the Lodge in June 1999 for less than HK$600 million.
'We are not under any pressure to sell the property, we are selling as we were approached by potential buyers and the offered prices are quite high ... we want to see how much the price has increased actually in Hong Kong,' he said.
The fund currently has a portfolio of about S$1.1 billion (HK$5.04 billion). Thirty per cent of total investment, which includes the Lodge, is located in Hong Kong. The rest is in Singapore.
Mr Kirkby said sister fund Apic 2 was in the process of implementing a growth strategy focused on retail sectors in markets such as Hong Kong and Singapore.
Meanwhile, Kerry Properties has sold 48,000 square feet of office space in Enterprise Square Three, in Kowloon Bay, to garment manufacturer Silvereed Group and joint-venture partners Guess and BCBG MaxAzria. The average price was about HK$3,000 per square foot, which translates into a total price of about $144 million.
Silvereed chairman Geroges Bohbot said the new office space was twice the size of its existing office in Tsim Sha Tsui.
He said the company would reserve about 7,000 sqft of office space for future expansion.
