Country Garden: Hong Kong's new homes recorded 449 deals in 2024, a 1.6 times increase from the previous quarter.

Yang Mingyi, Senior Co-Chairman of the Research Department of Midland Realty, pointed out that a total of 449 new units in Hong Kong were booked in 2024, compared to 256 units in 2023, a significant increase of 75.4%. Of these, 346 units were booked in 2024, with a booking rate of 77%, slightly higher than the 73% in 2023. In the fourth quarter of 2024, 104 units were booked, up 1.6 times from the 40 units in the third quarter. Benefiting from the start of the fourth quarter interest rate cut cycle, the property market stabilized, transaction volumes increased, and developers accelerated the sale of booked units. In December last year, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority introduced a one-time special arrangement, allowing buyers of pre-sale properties who had chosen installment payments during the construction period from 2021 to 2023 to apply for a maximum of 80% mortgage loans from banks. In January 2025, private mortgage insurance companies will provide new mortgage plans for designated properties, with loan amounts of 110% of the valuation or 90% of the purchase price. Although the above measures helped to reduce the number of bookings, it is believed that with the market picking up after the Spring Festival, and developers continuing to reduce prices to promote sales, the number of new unit bookings in the short term will remain high, with an estimated level of around 100 units in the first quarter of 2025. Of the 104 first-hand private residential transactions cancelled in the fourth quarter of 2024, 55 had been successfully resold by December, with a resale rate of 53%, up significantly from the 43% resale rate in the third quarter. Reflecting the decline in interest rates, along with some developers lowering prices and reselling after reclaiming booked units, buyers were attracted to the market, thus pushing up the resale rate to over fifty percent. Among the ten projects with the most bookings in the fourth quarter, seven had a resale rate of fifty percent or more. The top two projects in terms of bookings in the fourth quarter were Le Grandeur, Diamond Hill with 15 bookings, and WINGS II, Tuen Mun with 11 bookings, both of which were large unit bookings. South Horizon Phase 2 in Wong Chuk Hang, La Salle Pierre 2B in Ho Man Tin, and City One in Kai Tak recorded 5 bookings each, with large unit booking rates of 80%, 100%, and 0% respectively. In the above five projects, South Horizon and La Salle Pierre 2B had all been resold, while City One had an eighty percent resale rate, but WINGS II had a slightly lower resale rate of 18%. Cases where the resale price in the fourth quarter dropped by more than twenty-five percent, ninety percent were units sold in the peak prices between December 2019 and December 2021, mainly focusing on small units below 500 square feet in Cheung Sha Wan and V City 1. Among them, two handbooked units were resold with a price drop of thirty percent, including High-floor unit F in Wing West of Rayfont in Cheung Sha Wan, with a practical area of 435 square feet. It was originally purchased for 14.837 million HKD in December 2023, with a price per square foot of 34,108 HKD, the unit was resold in October 2024 for 9.5 million HKD, with a price per square foot of 21,839 HKD, a drop of 36%. In addition, Low-floor unit F of Block 2B of Dragon Plaza in Kai Tak, with a practical area of 865 square feet, was purchased for 25.568 million HKD in December 2019, with a price per square foot of 29,558 HKD. It was resold in December last year for 18 million HKD, with a price per square foot of 20,809 HKD, a price reduction of 30%.