Another Real Estate Market Bites the Dust – Hong Kong Prices Plunge, Transactions Hit 25-Year Low

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A stunning reversal across various global real estate hubs which have served as focal points for both international investors and criminal oligarchs, has made itself clear over the past several months. I’ve highlighted plunging sales and prices in high-end London, a multi-month slowdown in Manhattan’s luxury market, as well as a burst bubble in mansion prices in various articles over the last several months. We now have another region to add to the list: Hong Kong.

Bloomberg reports:

In a city that saw demand propel property prices to a record last year, the estimate that transactions reached a 25 year-low in Hong Kong shows how quickly sentiment has turned.

Home prices have slumped almost 10 percent since September and monthly sales in January fell to the lowest since at least 1991, according to Centaline Property Agency Ltd. Amid a spike in flexible mortgage rates this month and anemic demand for new developments, the low transactions volume for January is the latest evidence that prices have further to fall.

Talk about a reversal.

Developers are showing caution too, which could further weaken the outlook for the property market. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, two out of three government attempts to sell residential land sites through tenders since November failed after bids failed to match the minimum price.

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The Luxury Housing Bubble Pops – Overseas Investors Struggle to Sell Overpriced Mansions

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It appears the music may have finally stopped for one of the world’s largest luxury real estate bubbles: London.

It’s well known that foreign oligarchs love London real estate as a means to launder funds, typically “earned” by soaking their host countries dry via corruption and fraud. This has caused absurd and irrational spikes in high-end residential real estate in the English capital, as well as a flood of new construction.

With emerging markets now completely collapsing, the seemingly endless flood of foreign money is drying up, and with it, London real estate.

So has the London real estate bubble popped? Probably.

– From the September 9, 2015 article: Luxury London Home Sales Plunge 26% – Has this Mega Real Estate Bubble Finally Burst?

The first real signs that the global luxury home price bubble had popped emerged last fall in the world’s capital of oligarch money laundering: London.

Since then, we have seen weakness in high end Manhattan real estate, but the trend has now spread and is starting to make itself apparent all over the place.

Yesterday’s Bloomberg article titled,The Surge in U.S. Mansion Prices Is Now Over, is really interesting. Here are a few choice excerpts:

The six-bedroom mansion in the shadow of Southern California’s Sierra Madre Mountains has lime trees and a swimming pool, tennis courts and a sauna — the kind of place that would have sold quickly just a year ago, according to real estate agent Kanney Zhang.

Not now.

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