Galliard sets up Hong Kong sales office to serve rising demand for UK homes by BN(O) migrants
- Galliard Homes has set up a new sales centre in Wan Chai with five employees, part of a 10-member team in the Asia-Pacific region
- The 2022 sales target for the Hong Kong office is £50 million to £80 million. So far, it has sold seven units in Hong Kong worth a total of £5 million
United Kingdom developers are lining up to set up offices in Hong Kong to serve the hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers who are expected to buy homes there under the fast-track British National (Overseas) residency scheme.
Galliard Homes, one of the largest privately held property developers in London and across the UK, has set up a new sales centre in Wan Chai with five employees, part of a 10-member team in the Asia-Pacific region.
Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, customers from Hong Kong and mainland China have been “less willing to travel to London to buy [property], but prefer to buy [while] being based in Hong Kong,” said the developer’s director of international sales Ben Waterman. “They want face-to-face meetings with Galliard’s staff [who are equipped with] scale models, a large marketing suite and dedicated staff.”
About 5.4 million of Hong Kong’s 7.5 million residents are eligible to relocate to the UK under the BN(O) scheme, creating the demand for between 258,000 and 322,400 homes over the next five years, according to estimates by the British government. About 89,000 of those eligible have applied for migration under the scheme since January 2021, with more than 76,000 approvals as of September.
Galliard has been selling UK properties and holding exhibitions in Hong Kong for about 30 years. The developer sold the entire top floor of its TCRW Soho apartment building with seven penthouse units to a Chinese billionaire last November for a record £21.4 million (US$29.1 million) for conversion into one or two “mega penthouse units.”