Business News

Hong Kong property prices
cut amid crisis
Agence France-Presse . Hong Kong

The window displays at the Hong Kong property agency where Stephen Poon works are bursting with cut prices, last minute reductions and cash incentives.
But buyers were still few and far between, as the stumbling global economy has cut dead the city’s five-year booming property market. ‘It has been very quiet,’ said Poon, a property agent for Midland Realty, a large city firm.
‘Before September our branch was making two to three million Hong Kong dollars (US$256,000-385,000) every month, but now it’s only around 50,000 dollars,’ he said, describing a 98 per cent drop in revenue.
‘I have six kids, three are at university in the UK where fees are high,’ said Poon, whose commission has inevitably suffered. ‘It’s my mission to make sure I can put them through school, but it is now also my cross to bear.’
The global financial crisis is rapidly stunting Hong Kong’s office, luxury and residential property markets after they hit a peak in the early summer.
Signs outside agents have shown discounts of more than a million HK dollars in recent weeks and analysts said they expected prices in every sector to drop by an average of 20-30 per cent before next July.