HK$10m for buyers in Peak flats 'disaster'
The High Court yesterday ordered a developer to pay HK$10 million compensation for selling 'uninhabitable' flats on The Peak.
The Oasis on Peak Road was built by a company called Holyrood to a 'thoroughly defective standard', ruled Mr Justice Ian Carlson, granting two companies that bought flats almost HK$5 million each to make up for the nightmare.
The flats cost HK$47 million and HK$46 million but were far from finished when handed over to the buyers in 2004. It took three years to make them fit to rent out, according to a judgment handed down yesterday.
When Sun Crown Trading and Gateway International Development were handed the keys to their flats, they were still behind scaffolding. Building material, debris and dirt were strewn over the development, with the main access road blocked. Lifts were not even in operation.
The judge said Holyrood, run by Lilian Oung and owned by listed company Paladin, had turned 'what must have been one of Hong Kong's prime building locations into a complete disaster'.
'The noise and dust were intolerable. The swimming pool was not up and running, neither was the clubhouse,' Carlson wrote.
2,719
The typical area in square feet of a four-bedroom, three-bathroom luxury flat at Oasis on Peak Road, now selling at around HK$78 million
