Hong Kongers are endlessly fascinated with real-estate prices, and it's not surprising. The market's booms and busts are more dramatic than virtually anywhere else on earth. Since the low in 2003, there have been gains of more than 15% in five out of eight years.
As a result, the high cost of real estate is reflected virtually everywhere you turn, whether you're parking your car at HK$32 an hour in Central or sending in a monthly rent cheque for thousands of dollars. This is a property town.
'Either you are paying your mortgage or you're paying someone else's mortgage,' communications consultant Chris Dillon notes. 'Whether it's going to the drug store and buying a Band-Aid or going to the grocery store and buying corn flakes, everything has a real-estate price tag to it.'
Dillon is the author of Landed: The expatriate's guide to buying and renovating property in Hong Kong, a primer on the ins and outs of real-estate ownership in the city. He notes that most of the fortunes in the city were made through property - and most of the city's conglomerates have real estate at their heart.
'Almost all the money in Hong Kong comes from property one way or another,' he says. 'It's the only game in town.'
Still, the rapid run-up in prices over the past two years leads many wealth managers to warn about taking on too much risk with property holdings at the moment. They caution against buyers getting overextended, lured in by record-low interest rates and a market that was widely forecast to continue to move higher again this year.