The first quarter was just a "warm-up", with a large number of new properties coming back for the second quarter, making Kai Tak the focus of home buyers again. After the Hong Kong-China border crossing, there have been many first-hand transactions in the new Kai Tak area, with prices hitting new highs, and some mainlanders even throwing more than $100 million into the market, unaffected by the fall in land prices in the area.
Benefiting from the effect of the border crossing, local and mainland buyers have been releasing their purchasing power, and a total of 141 first-hand transactions were recorded in Kai Tak in the first quarter of this year, which not only rebounded more than twice as much as the 42 transactions in the fourth quarter of last year, but also involved a total property price of $5.4 billion, a quarterly increase of nearly four times. About 84 or 60% of these transactions came from the "Park Peninsula" (a brand of runway area formed by a number of developers). There were 132 or 94% of transactions priced above $10 million, and 7 transactions priced above $100 million.
Of the 141 transactions recorded in Kai Tak in the first quarter of this year, nearly half came from the joint venture between China Resources Land (Overseas) and Poly Real Estate, which accounted for 64 transactions and about $3.3 billion, or an average of $51.9 million per unit, of the luxury river waves in the Kai Tak runway area. It is learnt that nearly 70% of the buyers of the project are Mainlanders, and last month, a group of Mainlanders even bought two units in a row, involving a total of over $200 million, of which one unit was sold for over $120 million at a price of $57,736 per square foot, setting a new record for the price per square foot and construction cost of the project.
On the other hand, although the "flour price" of residential land in Kai Tak continued to fall, the price of first-hand properties in the region remained firm. In the first quarter of this year alone, there were at least five new high-priced transactions for new properties in Kai Tak. Among them, K. Wah International's Kingsway at Kai Tak sold two houses in a row within a month at a high price of $135 million, a new high for the Kai Tak area.
Kai Tak's unique properties are available at a price. The sale of 7 units in March, including a 4-bedroom, 3-partition duplex with 2,567 square feet of saleable area on the ground floor of Block B and Room A on the first floor, and a 1,271-square-foot garden, sold for $125 million at $48,695 per square foot, a record price for the project.
MONACO MARINE, Wheelock's Kai Tak waterfront project, was also sold this month for $66.8 million, with a rooftop and podium unit on 38A of Tower 1B, with a saleable area of 1,570 square feet at $42,548 per square foot.
MONACO's highest price per square foot.
After the first season's warm-up, at least four new Kai Tak developments are lined up for sale in the second season, offering over 3,000 units, three of which are located in the runway area. Among them, the 566-unit, 3 and 4-bedroom Skytree at 22 Shing Fung Road, a joint venture between six major developers - Henderson Land, China Overseas, Chinachem, Empire, New World and Wheelock - is expected to be announced after the Easter holidays, while China Overseas' Victoria Harbour. Double Diamond, a subsidiary of China Overseas, has also been granted pre-sale consent and is expected to be launched shortly. Kai Tak Bay Phase 1, a joint venture between K. Wah, Wheelock and China Overseas, is also on track to be launched.
