Loophole puts noodle shop at risk
Developer's 'innovative' tactic could see family business forced to sell up
A family-owned noodle shop is in danger of being forced out after a developer adopted "innovative" tactics to attempt to force the business to surrender its premises of 38 years.
The case centres on Leung Faat Noodle Shop, on the ground floor of a six-storey building at 54 Ki Lung Street in Sham Shui Po.
A subsidiary of Lai Sun Development has, since 2010, owned all the other units in the building: 15 flats and another shop on the ground floor.
So far, the developer has seen its attempts to buy the noodle shop rejected. A change in the law four years ago allowed for forced sales in cases where the owners of 80 per cent of properties in a building supported it, but only if one of three other conditions was met: the building was industrial, or more than 50 years old, or if each unit made up 10 per cent or more of the lot.
An investigation by land-policy pressure group the Land Justice League has discovered that the developer combined the three flats on each floor into one and registered the change in ownership structure with the Land Registry, thus meeting the 10 per cent requirement.