US interest rates drag down Hong Kong property, with China economic recovery only ‘light at the end of the tunnel’: JLL chairman
- US interest rates continue to impact the rest of the world, especially China, Joseph Tsang says in interview
- The only light at the end of the tunnel is an economic recovery in mainland China: JLL chairman
“Over 40 years of my career at JLL, I’ve experienced several down cycles,” he said in an interview. The downward cycle in Hong Kong at the moment is not the same as those that have come before, Tsang added.
“During previous down cycles, people were still hopeful for the future,” he said. “Some developers and investors saw this sort of crisis as a business opportunity, as they believed that the market would eventually come back.”
Tsang joined JLL in 1984, at a difficult time for the property market. Negotiations between China and the United Kingdom over the future of Hong Kong had led to a crisis of confidence among investors.
However, property prices rose once again, before dropping by more than 40 per cent during the Asian financial crisis, he said. Then the market recovered at an accelerated pace before crashing during the global financial crisis in 2008.
Then Hong Kong’s property market recovered once again, with the prices of lived-in homes rising 271.7 per cent between 2009 and September 2021, an all-time peak, according to a widely tracked government index.