Last week we reported that UBS projected a 10 percent slide in Hong Kong’s residential market during 2016. Now the latest market data has shown sales in Hong Kong fell a worrying 41.7 percent year-on-year in November to a record low.
There were just 2,826 registered residential transactions, down 14.4 percent month-on-month, new figures from the Hong Kong Land Registry show. The value of residential sales dropped 7.7% month on month to HK$20.8 billion. Such lackluster numbers will also be placing pressure on real estate agents who need transactions to generate fee income.
Commentators believe that buyers were deterred by the anxiety of imminent interest rate rises in the United States. As the Hong Kong dollar is pegged to the US dollar, the market is obviously sensitive to US rate changes.
Wong Leung-sing, Associate Director of Research at Centaline Property Agency, told the South China Morning Post, “Total home sales including those in primary and the secondary market dropped to the lowest level since we have started to gauge property transactions in 1996.”
The number of sale and purchase agreements for all buildings registered in November was 4,736 rose 5.5% on October, but were down 26.7% year-on-year. The 12-month moving average for November was 6,537, 2.1% below the 12-month moving average for October and 1.8% below that for November 2014. The total sale and purchase agreements in November was $29.8billion, a fall of 16.9% since October and 31.5% down on November 2014. The number of searches of land registers made by the public in November was at 374,423, down 4.6% compared with October and 3.9% compared with November 2014.
