Yuen Long clashes cast pall over Sun Hung Kai’s weekend home sales even as Great Eagle’s project drew buyers with cheaper prices

Sun Hung Kai Properties managed to sell seven units out of 145 flats on offer at its Park Yoho Napoli project in Kam Tin, a mere 3km from Yuen Long, where police fired tear gas to disperse an estimated 100,000 protesters marching through the suburb
Great Eagle sold all of the 238 flats at its Ontolo project in Pak Shek Kok, sales agents said

Hong Kong property

Yujing Liu

Published: 7:41pm, 27 Jul 2019

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A weekend apartment sale by Sun Hung Kai Properties flopped in Kam Tin, near Yuen Long where the police clashed with protesters, as nearly two months of incessant public unrest left their impact on Hong Kong’s real estate.

Sun Hung Kai sold only seven of 145 units of its Park Yoho Napoli project in Kam Tin, a mere 3km from Yuen Long, where tens of thousands of protesters marched today in protest against a July 21 mob attack on commuters. Police fired tear gas to disperse protesters.

Escalating social unrest is increasingly testing the sentiment in Hong Kong’s housing market, the least affordable in the world.

Demonstrations have sprang up in all corners of the city – including the airport – over the past seven weeks, initially triggered by the government’s push for a controversial bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China. Protesters have broadened their demands to universal suffrage from the withdrawal of the bill.

Yuen Long’s unrest was ignored in Pak Shek Kok in the eastern part of the New Territories, where Great Eagle sold all of the 238 flats on offer in the first batch of its Ontolo project, according to sales agents. Henderson Land Development was also selling 20 units at South Walk Aura in Aberdeen on the southern edge of Hong Kong Island. Sales data were not immediately available.

“The Ontolo project is selling very well, despite the recent incidents,” said Midland Realty’s residential department chief executive Sammy Po.

The mixed results add to the uncertainties facing the world’s most expensive residential property market, as a combination of the year-long US-China trade war and Hong Kong’s worst civic unrest on record drove many property buyers to the sidelines.

The number of unsold, newly completed homes rose to 10,000 units at the end of June, the highest in more than a decade. A February rally in the secondary market had already started to slow, with the average price of lived-in homes dropping 0.2 per cent in June among 50 major residential estates in Hong Kong to HK$15,555 per square foot, according to data from agency Ricacorp Properties.

“Buyers who are purchasing flats for living in are still enthusiastic, while those buying for pure investment have become hesitant,” Po said.

Models of the Ontolo project by Great Eagle Holdings in Pak Shek Kok on 18 July, 2019. Photo SCMP / Tory Ho

Great Eagle’s Ontolo project was helped by lower pricing than its neighbourhood, with prices ranging from HK$5.53 million to HK$19.94 million for flats of between 389 square feet and 1,231 sq ft, or between HK$11,446 per square foot and up to HK$16, 202 per sq ft.

Nearby at the Centra Horizon project, prices averaged HK$13,774 per sq ft when it was launched in April.

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