Buyers pour back into home market
Sales of homes at new developments beat property agents' expectations
Sales at two new residential property projects over the weekend exceeded the expectations of agencies by almost a third, showing that buyers are becoming active again after a standstill following the government's measures to cool the property market.
Competition for home buyers among developers heated up as two residential projects in Yuen Long started offering flats for pre-sale on Saturday. The day saw the largest number of units put on sale since the new rules to regulate the sale of new flats took effect on April 29.
A joint project between Henderson Land and New World Development, The Reach in Yuen Long saw 103 units sold on the first day of its sales on Saturday.
The developers offered 516 The Reach units at an average price of HK$10,086 per square foot of saleable area.
"Sales at The Reach are 30 per cent higher than our expectation," said Yu Lap-san, Yuen Long district marketing manager of Ricacorp Properties.
The new vitality should be attributed to the resale of government Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) flats, which was started on June 10.
"Potential buyers are coming back into the market, especially those looking for mid to low-end properties," Yu said. New World offered the first batch of 50 units at The Woodsville, Hung Shui Kiu, Yuen Long, at an average HK$9,535 per square foot of saleable area. On Saturday, 38 units were sold. On Sunday another five units at The Woodsville were gone and 10 were sold at The Reach by 5.30pm.
Buyers at the Woodsville will get a car parking space worth HK$600,000 and a shopping coupon worth HK$25,000.
Yu said the slump in sales on the second day was because the most popular layouts were usually sold on the first day, and the relatively more expensive flats were left to those buyers who came later.
"At The Reach, the most popular flat type is the 411 square feet one, with a price tag between HK$3.5 million and HK$3.6 million," Yu said.
He said he expected sales at the new projects to be stable in the next couple of weeks.
In the secondary housing market, according to Midland Realty, 15 deals were closed over the weekend in the 15 major housing estates monitored by the property agency, against 14 the previous weekend.
