HONG KONG'S soaring residential rents are starting to take a heavy toll on corporate accommodation budgets and the pockets of self-paying expatriate tenants.
In the worst cases, landlords are asking for increases of between 50 and 100 per cent to renew rent contracts negotiated in 1992, with tenants told to pay up or ship out. So severe are the price rises that some companies are scaling down flat sizes available to employees.
Although rent increases are always a step behind price rises in the property market, the severity of the recent boom has taken players by surprise.
A spokesman for one United States investment bank said it had managed to slow down some of the rent rises by taking owners to the rent tribunal.
''Most of our rent renewals are due next year and we plan to fight them as much as possible, but asking tenants to move out would be an anathema to us,'' he said.
''We have agreed to pay asking prices for apartments only to discover that landlords come back to us with higher rent demands,'' he said.