Hong Kong Home Prices Look Immune to Protests
The world’s least affordable housing market is holding firm. There are reasons to believe it may stay that way.
Still riding high.
Photographer: ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP/Getty Images
Hong Kong’s protests are damping real estate activity, spurring speculation of a long-overdue tumble in the city’s notoriously expensive housing market. Prices are likely to prove more resilient than some expect.
Home transactions have dropped by more than half from this year’s peak in May, before the unrest began, to 3,447 in September and 4,001 last month, figures from the Hong Kong Land Registry show. While the series is volatile, that’s about a fifth below the average number of monthly sales in the past five years. Amid worsening violence in November, the number of transactions in 15 housing estates tracked by Midland Realty International Ltd. slumped 78% last weekend from a month earlier.