All for one top price

It is always good to see small owners of run-down buildings teaming up to sell their blocks for redevelopment. They will all get more from a collective sale than if they put their units on the market separately.

Unless the buildings have great historical value and deserve to be conserved, any efforts to help owners unlock the hidden value of their properties should be encouraged.

This week, there is a happy story about the 45-year-old Kut Cheong Mansion in North Point. A property agent has volunteered - for a fee, of course - to sign up the owners of its 448 residential units and 56 shops, and then organise a block sale by auction.

Evaluators reckon that the unit square-foot price of its residential units would be $4,500 in a block sale, compared with $1,450 in an individual sale, as the redevelopment value of the site is estimated at $1.5 billion.

We should therefore urge the owners to be guided by their own self-interest in upholding the community spirit, to make the block sale possible. We have to offer them our best wishes because such exercises do not necessarily succeed. In the past, some owners have hijacked the collective interest because of their own personal greed, sometimes to the extent of undermining the whole exercise.

One such recent example is the case of Hoi Ming Court in Tai Kok Tsui. It sat amid a group of dilapidated buildings earmarked by the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) for re-development. Since Hoi Ming was built only a decade ago, it was excluded from the renewal exercise. However, its inclusion into the lot would have allowed the URA and its private partner, developer Nan Fung, to maximise the project's value.

The law provides that if owners holding at least 90 per cent of the building consent to a sale, then an application can be made to the Lands Tribunal for an order to compel the remaining owners to sell.