Japanese realtor Daikyo expands real estate brokerage business to Hong Kong

Leading Japanese developer Daikyo has expanded its real estate brokerage business to Hong Kong as part of its global expansion, as foreign buying of Japanese properties keeps rising.

Since 2012, foreign investors, including those from Hong Kong, are flocking to Japan as the falling yen made properties there more affordable.

"Compared with Hong Kong, home prices in Japan are just one-fifth of those here," said Kazuhiko Kaise, the president of Daikyo Anabuki Real Estate, the realtor arm of Daikyo.

Prices in Japan were also lower than those in China's first-tier cities such as Shanghai and Beijing but with high occupancy rates, Kaise said. Almost 90 per cent of rental units in Tokyo had been leased.

He said foreign buyers of properties, mostly in Tokyo, last year accounted for 20 per cent of the total transaction value for the first time in the country's history.

"It meant foreign buyers forked out nearly one trillion yen snapping up property in Japan," he said.

It represented a sevenfold rise in terms of total value.

Riding on the strong wave of foreign buying, Daikyo has set up agency offices in Australia and Taiwan. "We aim to offer fully fledged services to overseas buyers," Kaise said.

He has set a sales target of 100 transactions of 20 million yen to 30 million yen for the Hong Kong office, which officially launched in May, in its first year of operation.

"After establishing our presence in Hong Kong, we will raise our target," he said.

Daikyo provides all-round property services, from developing, leasing, management to sales.

The group was ranked the No1 real estate broker in Japan in terms of cumulative supply of apartments, with nearly 450,000 offered for sale, and a management portfolio of 520,000 units.

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