bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

sponsorType

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Joyce Ng

Olga Wong

The world's most expensive flat? Perhaps not.
More than six months after Henderson Land trumpeted the sale of 24 flats at a luxury Mid-Levels block, it now says 20 of the deals have fallen through - among them the world-record HK$439 million sale of a top-floor duplex.
The news prompted calls from professionals and lawmakers from across the political spectrum for an investigation into the handling of the sales at 39 Conduit Road. Some called for a law against property-market manipulation to be passed.
Lawrence Poon Wing-cheung, spokesman for the Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors, said the announcement did 'serious damage to the developer's image and integrity'. 
'It's also unfair to buyers who bought [flats there] later on,' he said.
Henderson's announcement of the sales  was controversial from the start. 
There was confusion about which floors some flats were on - and concern about how firemen would reach a flat in an emergency - because the developer skipped floor numbers to make the priciest ones appear to be on auspicious floors. 
The properties were bought using 24 different shell companies registered in the British Virgin Islands. All used the same law firm, Lo & Lo Solicitors, also registered in the Caribbean territory.  It later emerged that Henderson had allowed the buyers a lengthy delay before completion of the sales; that the agreements to delay had been struck only verbally was grist to the mill of Henderson's critics.
Henderson's trumpeting of the sales was blamed for subsequent price increases in the luxury market, which critics said had pushed up mass-market prices too. Their calls for government action on developers' sales tactics, steps to rein in prices and the resumption of subsidised-flat construction prompted Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen to proclaim that homes remained affordable and to warn of the risks of intervening in the market.
The Lands Department wrote to the developer six times asking for details of the transactions. 
Yesterday Henderson said that the four flats sold were on the 30th and 31st floors and that the buyers had paid between HK$37,800 and HK$40,900 per square foot - a far cry from the world-record price of HK$88,000 per square foot of saleable area the top-floor duplex went for.
The company said there had been no price reductions, nor had it helped with financing for the purchases. As well as paying the full purchase price, the buyers had been charged interest for delaying the completion of the deals.
The buyers who scrapped deals to buy the other 20 flats forfeited deposits totalling HK$133.36 million -  equivalent to  5 per cent of what they would have paid to complete the purchases. 
The developer suffered a loss of HK$734 million. As recently as March, when it announced its financial results, Henderson said there was no reason to believe that any of the sales would fall through. It projected a profit of HK$973 million from the sale of 25 flats in the block.
Henderson Group chairman Lee Shau-kee did not seem bothered by the scrapping of the sales. 'I may be able to sell them for more,' he said, pointing to improvement in the luxury property market since October, when it trumpeted the flat sales. 
Lee said the company would not cut the prices of the now-unsold flats and he was confident they would find buyers. New deals were already being negotiated, he said.
'It's just a simple matter. Why make it so complicated?' Lee said.
He has repeatedly insisted the 24 deals were genuine, at one point offering journalists a wager of 100 to 1 that they could not find evidence the deals were fake. 'For every HK$10,000 you put down, I'll wager HK$1 million,' he said.
Poon, of the surveyors' institute, urged the government to consider legislating to require that transactions be in writing and that buyers declare any relationship they have with the property's developer.
Democratic Party lawmaker Lee Wing-tat called the affair a scandal. He called for an investigation and for the government to set a time limit for completing sales.
The Civic Party's Ronny Tong Kah-wah said that, to avoid losing credibility, Henderson must say whether it would exercise its right to demand the buyers who pulled out make up the difference if the flats sold for less than they would have paid.
Starry Lee Wai-king, of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, said an investigation was needed because of the number of cancellations and the high prices involved.
The government said it shared the public's concerns. But Abraham Razack, who represents the property sector in Legco, saw no problem.




Record Mid-Levels sales fall through