Hong Kong home sales grind to a near halt ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday
- A seasonal slowdown in sales ahead of the Lunar New Year has been aggravated by concerns over the outlook for the housing market, analysts say
Hong Kong’s primary real estate market has hit a soft patch ahead of the Lunar New Year, a normal seasonal pattern before the annual holiday which gets underway next week, although analysts caution that potential buyers are especially jittery amid the current drop in home prices.
Only two of 101 flats on offer were sold on Friday at Reach Summit, a Yuen Long project developed by Henderson Land Development and New World Development, as of 3.50pm.
“As the Lunar New Year is coming, sales have been slowing down. Buyers are not in Hong Kong,” said Bernie Chan, sales director at Midland Realty. “A lot of them are leftover stock. Buyers now will not be very enthusiastic.”
Chan said that sales at the project have improved recently, as about 50 flats were sold in January.
Chan said developers may choose to sell flats on a first-come-first-served basis, as the number of buyers is no longer enough to justify the use of a balloting system.
Sammy Po, chief executive of Midland, said leftover stock tends to sell more slowly than initial launches and developers intentionally offered a larger number of flats than the market could absorb to let buyers choose slowly.