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My Take | Sinking prices loom for Hong Kong harbourfront land
- Government should wait for market sentiments to improve before selling prime Central site that may not go to highest bidder, but one with ‘best designs’
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Described as the “last strategic business site”, a prime location in Central is being put on the market by the government at a time when economic sentiments are hitting rock bottom.
Moreover, top officials say it doesn’t need to go to the highest bidder, but the one with the “best designs”, whatever that means.
“Money is not our only consideration,” Secretary for Development Michael Wong Wai-lun said. “[It] is the last site that is so strategically located and iconic. Its proper design and utilisation is very important to our future economic development.”
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In other words, whoever gets the site may not have to pay top dollar for what is perhaps the best commercial plot of land left on Hong Kong Island. Am I missing something? This doesn’t sound like the government taking “a vote of confidence” in the local property market, as this newspaper has reported. It’s the eventual buyer or buyers who will be getting a steep discount, so long as the design ticks all the right boxes.
Analysts think the ailing business environment amid social unrest and the novel coronavirus crisis could lower developers’ bids by 10 to 15 per cent. If their estimates are right, who wouldn’t have confidence with such a large margin of safety?
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