China credit crunch may be good for rural Hong Kong

[DocMartin Williams]

I’ve believed much of the new pressure on Hong Kong countryside has come from “hot” money from China, looking for a place to go.

So idea of building houses where few people or no people want to live can look good: properties simply for sake of investment, until someone else who did not want to live there is left holding a “home”, and wondering where to find the next schmuck [or, “investor”, but not home buyer.

A guess; but I know of such things in China, and why else the sudden “need” for hundreds of apartments in north Sai Kung, or way out in the northeast New Territories? Or even on artificial islands that have not even been built yet?

If right, then this report from Reuters would seem good news.

Might be some relaxation of the pressure on rural HK, for a little while anyway.

Includes:

Quote:

Cash-strapped Chinese are scrambling to sell their luxury homes in Hong Kong, and some are knocking up to a fifth off the price for a quick sale, as a liquidity crunch looms on the mainland.

…

 

In a Hong Kong housing development called Valais, about 10 minutes drive from the Chinese border, real estate agents said that between a quarter and a half of the 330 houses are now on sale. At the development's frenzied debut in 2010, a third of the HK$30-HK$66 million units were sold on the first day, with nearly half going to mainland China buyers.

Dubbed a "ghost town" by local media, the development built by the city's largest developer, Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd , is one of many estates in Hong Kong where agents are seeing an increasing number of Chinese eager to sell.

"Many mainland buyers bought lots of properties in Hong Kong when the market was red-hot three years ago," said Joseph Tsang, managing director at Jones Lang LaSalle. "But now they want to cash in as liquidity is quite tight in the mainland."

As credit tightens at home, Chinese sell Hong Kong luxury real estate

While as further evidence that building housing in rural areas can be wasteful, here's Sea Ranch in southeast Lantau: rather grand, but very very poorly occupied:

 

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