Tag Archives: Hong Kong Property Market

Move may drive speculators to target lower end of property market

Hong Kong raised taxes on luxury homes for the first time in more than a decade, a move some analysts said may backfire by fuelling speculation in the cheaper housing market.

Stamp duty on sales of more than HK$20 million (S$3.6 million) will rise to 4.25 per cent from 3.75 per cent from April 1, Financial Secretary John Tsang said yesterday in his Budget speech, citing the increased risk of a property bubble.

For people buying their own homes ‘there might be some impact, but it shouldn’t be that big,’ said Buggle Lau, chief property analyst at realty company Midland Holdings Ltd. ‘For speculators, the cost of speculation increases, so they may shift their target to the lower end of the property market.’

The lowest mortgage rates in at least two decades and an influx of overseas capital equivalent to more than a third of Hong Kong’s annual gross domestic product helped fuel a 29 per cent gain in property prices last year.

The government is concerned at the risk to the economy should interest rates rise and will move to limit speculation if it spreads, Mr Tsang said.

‘If there’s a reappearance of speculation, we will act quickly with measures to cool down the market,’ Mr Tsang told reporters yesterday. While ‘it’s easy for the government to roll out some measures pushing home prices down, it’s difficult to push them back up. We won’t act recklessly.’

The new transaction tax on luxury homes, the first increase since 1999, will only affect about 2 per cent of the property market. Of 110,000 Hong Kong residential sales in 2009, about 2,000 sold for more than HK$20 million, according to Midland.

‘It will have a 0.01 per cent impact because they raised the stamp duty by half a percent on properties accounting for 2 per cent of the total market,’ said Nicole Wong, a Hong Kong- based real estate analyst at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, the regional brokerage unit of Credit Agricole SA. ‘What they announced today is only paying lip service. It will have almost no impact because there is no sign of determination.’

Mr Tsang said the government will also seek to address the supply of land for development by putting more residential sites up for auction.

The change in auction policy could also have an unintended effect as prices ‘in bull markets become signposts’, said Ms Wong. ‘More auctions more frequently could even fuel the property market further.’

In Hong Kong, the primary source of land available to property developers is through government auctions. The operator of the city’s Mass Transit Railway, the MTR Corp, and the Urban Renewal Authority also put sites up for tender.

Under the current system for government auctions, developers must indicate interest in a site on a government list. Once a ‘trigger price’ has been met, the land is auctioned. Mr Tsang said the government would now put sites up for sale at its own discretion.

He said the government will also ensure an increase in the supply of small and medium-sized flats by imposing conditions of future land sales. The government held the first land auction of 2010 on Feb 22.

‘Overall the government wants to increase the land supply,’ said Midland’s Mr Lau, who noted there were only two auctions last year. ‘In the past the land bank replenishment pace has not been very fast.’

Luxury property prices, for which there is no official index, may have risen as much as 40 per cent last year, Ms Wong said. Buyers of luxury homes were undeterred by an October increase in downpayment requirements from 30 per cent to 40 per cent.

Since the fourth quarter of 2008, HK$640 billion of capital had flowed into Hong Kong’s HK$215 billion economy, Mr Tsang said.

Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd, the world’s biggest developer by market value, reported selling 900 homes in the suburban Yuen Long area for HK$4.2 billion on Feb 20 and 21, or an average of HK$5,400 per square foot. That compared with HK$3,000 in the same area a year ago, Centaline Property Agency Ltd said.

‘The increased risk of a bubble forming in the property market has also aroused public concern about the difficulty in buying homes,’ Mr Tsang said.

Shares of real estate developers gained after the speech, with Sun Hung Kai adding 1.5 per cent to HK$107.20 at the close of trading and Sino Land Co. up 1 per cent at HK$13.92. The Hang Seng Property Index was the only one of the four industry groups on the benchmark gauge to rise.

The stocks gained because ‘there is nothing too radical on property’ in the Budget, said Andrew Sullivan, a sales trader at Mainfirst Securities Hong Kong Ltd.

Source : Business Times – 25 Feb 2010

Stamp duty on luxury property sales raised in Budget; supply of flats to increase

Mr Tsang: Warned that the govt may also raise the transaction tax on properties valued at under HK$20m, ‘if there is excessive speculation’ in their trading

Hong Kong’s government yesterday raised the stamp duty on luxury property sales and warned that more such measures could follow – the clearest sign yet that officials there fear the consequences of a bubble forming, and then bursting, in the territory’s private- home market.

The transaction tax on properties worth more than HK$20 million (S$3.63 million) will be increased to 4.25 per cent on April 1, from 3.75 per cent now, Financial Secretary John Tsang said in his Budget speech yesterday. In addition, buyers will no longer be allowed to defer payment of stamp duty on such transactions.

The government may also raise the transaction tax on properties valued at HK$20 million or less, ‘if there is excessive speculation in the trading of these properties’, Mr Tsang warned.

An inflow of over HK$640 billion of funds into Hong Kong since the fourth quarter of 2008 has increased the risk of creating asset-price bubbles, he said. ‘We are also concerned that if capital flows were to reverse or interest rates rebound, asset prices would become more volatile. This in turn may affect the stability of our financial system and the recovery of the real economy.’

The large inflow of capital has also pushed up the prices of luxury flats, as well as smaller apartments, he said. Overall, property prices are 8 per cent above their peaks before the recent financial crisis; some luxury-flat prices have even returned to their peaks reached during the 1997 property boom, he added.

The rise in property prices has picked up again after slowing slightly in the fourth quarter of last year, and turnover has also increased, Mr Tsang said. He added that he was ‘particularly concerned’ that some people would be unable to meet their mortgage payments if interest rates rise from their current, unusually low, levels.

The government will also work to increase the supply of affordable flats, and will put up several urban residential land sites for sale by auction or tender in the next two years, if the sites have not been triggered by an application by a private developer, Mr Tsang said.

‘The measures are quite similar to those introduced recently by Singapore to rein in excessive exuberance in the residential property market,’ said Leonard Ong, executive director at KPMG Tax Services here. ‘The Hong Kong government is clearly concerned with the risk of a property bubble forming.’

Tracy Ho, tax partner at Ernst & Young in Hong Kong, said that the moves to cool the property market were not surprising, given the sky-high prices seen in a number of property transactions in recent months. ‘I wouldn’t call it unbelievable, but you wouldn’t think some of this would happen after the financial tsunami.’

The aim of raising the stamp duty ‘is really to increase the transaction costs for speculators, to cut down the speculative atmosphere’, she added.

Last October, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority reduced the loan-to-value limit on housing loans for properties worth HK$20 million or more to 60 per cent, from 70 per cent, and capped the maximum loan amount for cheaper properties at HK$12 million.

In Singapore, the government also introduced various measures late last year to curb speculation in the property market.

Last Friday, it announced a seller’s stamp duty to be levied on those who buy a residential property and sell it within a year, and lowered the loan-to-value limit on housing loans to 80 per cent, from 90 per cent.

Yesterday, Mr Tsang said he expects the Hong Kong economy to expand 4-5 per cent this year, after shrinking 2.7 per cent last year.

He also introduced several proposals to promote a ‘green economy’, including a HK$300 million fund to spur the transport industry to test energy-saving and low-carbon-emission transport technologies; a HK$540 million subsidy scheme to encourage the replacement of older, more polluting diesel commercial vehicles; and tax incentives to promote the use of environment-friendly commercial vehicles.

Source : Business Times – 25 Feb 2010