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Peggy Sito

Sandy Li

A five-bedroom luxury unit in a Henderson Land Development project in West Mid-Levels has fetched a stunning HK$71,280 per square foot, setting a new world record.
The sale of the HK$439 million duplex at 39 Conduit Road was announced yesterday just hours after Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen warned of a property bubble in the city.
It also came a day after the developer had touted another flat a couple of floors lower in the same building as being the one to command a world record price. 
'The relatively small number of residential units completed and the record prices attained in certain transactions this year have caused concern about the supply of flats, difficulty in buying a home and the possibility of a property bubble,' Tsang said in his annual policy address.
He said the government would monitor the market changes and might release more land to cool the market.
Henderson said it sold a 6,158 sqft duplex on the third and fourth floors from the top of the building.
'The buyer is a Hong Kong-registered company. But I believe [the owner] is from the mainland,' said Thomas Lam, the general manager of Henderson's sales department. 'This is a record high among all types of property units in Hong Kong.'
The HK$71,280 per square foot is calculated on the basis of gross floor area, which includes common area. In terms of saleable area per square foot, the price is about HK$88,000.
That breaks the world record set by One Hyde Park in London, which fetched GBP6,000 (HK$74,286) calculated on the basis of saleable area per square foot, according to Lam.
Lam also announced the sale of a 6,144 sqft unit on the same floor for HK$397 million, which averaged out to HK$64,605 per square foot.
The asking price for the two duplexes on the top two floors of the building is HK$100,000 per square foot. 
Buyers of  those two units will each have a  private lift, according to the sales brochure.
The deal took the property community by surprise.
'How ridiculous! I wonder whether the buyer will complete [the deal],' said David Webb, the editor of Webb-site.com, a shareholder activist site.
Peter Churchouse, a director at hedge fund manager LIM Advisors, said: 'We don't know that it's a straight transaction? I'm always suspicious of things sold for astonishingly high [prices]. How can anyone spend US$10,000 per square foot on an apartment?' 
However, Lam said it was a straightforward deal.
Churchouse believed the transaction could not serve as a benchmark because it represented only a tiny percentage of the flats sold in Hong Kong. 
Luxury home prices have surged 180 per cent from the HK$25,000 per square foot record set at the previous market peak in 1997 to the current level of HK$71,000, he said.
Nicholas Brooke, the chairman of Professional Property Services, said 'trophy prices' were being paid that had no relation to a property's value.
'It is about status and claiming that they paid the highest prices for an apartment,' he said.
Paul Louie, the regional head of property research at Nomura International (Hong Kong), said one-off deals could not be taken as evidence of a bubble. But  they could affect prices for nearby buildings.
Through the roof
The Mid-Levels flat sold for HK$88,000 a square foot of saleable area
A London flat held the previous record of, per square foot of saleable area: GBP6,000



Mid-Levels flat fetches record HK$71,280 psf