New | Mainland developers stay away from Hong Kong’s costliest land sale, as remittance rules bite
Nine bids were received for the Murray Road site, valued at between HK$15.7 billion to as much as HK$22 billion, which can be developed into a 30-storey office building.
Mainland Chinese buyers had been setting one price record after another as they snapped up Hong Kong’s commercial land and residential property for the past year.
But as the city’s government prepared to sell what could become the costliest land parcel in the city -- the first grade A commercial land site in downtown Central to go on the market in two decades -- mainland Chinese developers were nowhere to be seen, snared by a tightened remittance process that made it more difficult for capital to flow out of China.
“Without mainland buyers aggressively bidding, it will be difficult to achieve some of the eye-popping prices that were being flaunted,” said Denis Ma, head of research at JLL.“This may potentially open the door for local developers, who’ve been adopting a more pragmatic approach toward their bidding strategies, to sweep in and win the site.”
Nine bids were received on Friday noon when the tender closed on the Murray Road site in Central, where a five-storey public car park now stands, according to the Lands Department.
The site, which can be developed into a 30-storey grade A office building with 450,996 square feet of gross floor area, or 16,000 sq ft per floor, is valued at between HK$15.7 billion to as much as HK$22 billion (US$2.82 billion), or HK$35,000 to HK$48,000 per sq ft, according to surveyors.