CK Asset’s second batch of Blue Coast flats sell briskly as home-buying curbs ease
The second batch of CK Asset’s Blue Coast project in Wong Chuk Hang has received a warm response from homebuyers, as sales continue to surge after the easing of property curbs.
A total of 130, or 70 per cent, of the 184 units on offer were sold by 8pm yesterday, when sales closed for the day, said Sammy Po Siuming, CEO of Midland’s residential division for Hong Kong and Macau.
“Including the flats sold today, more than 540 units [from the Blue Coast project] were sold in the past eight days, with the average price reaching HK$18 million per unit,” he said. “The combined worth of the flats sold has surpassed HK$10 billion, a truly impressive result.”
As of Friday, CK Asset sold 415, or 98 per cent, of the 422 units it put up for sale in the first round last Saturday.
Around 2,000 homebuyers and agents had gathered at the developers’ sales office in Metropolis Drive in Hung Hom earlier yesterday to wait for the results of a lottery to determine their eligible flats, CK Asset said.
Among them, one family had offered to snap up five flats, while another prospective buyer offered HK$120 million for six flats, sales agents said.
The flats released in this round include two-bedroom to four-bedroom units ranging from 454 sq ft to 1,276 sq ft. The price was set between HK$10,548,000 and HK$37,691,000, with an average price of HK$24,835 per square foot.
CK Asset expected to raise prices in future Blue Coast sales, but would also release new flats with lower prices, Justin Chiu Kwok-hung, executive director at the firm, said. He said CK Asset was planning to launch other projects from late April to May.
Around 70 per cent of homebuyers who showed up yesterday were buying for their own use, while the rest were investors, said Midland’s Po. Around 40 per cent were from the mainland.
One of the mainland buyers, a woman who gave her surname as Wu, said she had been living in the city for seven years working in the legal industry. She said she was attracted by Blue Coast’s price level and its location above an MTR station on Hong Kong Island. “As a permanent Hong Kong resident, it may have been more beneficial to us when the stamp duty was not yet abolished,” she said. She worried that the easing of property curbs would attract more potential homebuyers to Hong Kong, reduce her chance of snapping up a flat and drive up housing prices.
After the announcement in February to scrap Buyer’s Stamp Duty targeting non-permanent residents and a New Residential Stamp Duty for second-time purchasers, property sales rose to a 10-month high in March, surpassing 5,000 deals, compared to 3,189 deals in February.