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Archive for December 9th, 2008

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Property agents say more private homes on sale amid downturn

Posted by luxuryasiahome on December 9, 2008

Property agents said there’s been an eight per cent jump in the number of private homes being put up for sale recently compared to previous two quarters.

HSR Property Consultants said about half of the sellers have bought units under the Deferred Payment Scheme.

The scheme which was scrapped last October allowed homebuyers to delay payments on new property until it is completed.

Eric Cheng, executive director, HSR Property Consultants, said: “They are afraid that the current loans may not sustain the current price which they bought. There’s also concern that the banks may not want to loan them at least an 80 per cent loan. So they are afraid they have to top up more cash.”

But calculations show that these sellers will still make marginal profits or break even if they cash in on their properties now.

Agents at ERA agree that concerns over the fallout from the Deferred Payment Scheme are legitimate but over-rated.

That’s because many investors would have already sold their units when prices peaked towards the end of last year.

Homebuyers are also unlikely to forfeit deposits on new units as they are legally bound to buy them.

However, there is no data available on the number of transactions sealed under the Deferred Payment Scheme.

Agents expect the market to hold up without heading to a fire sale situation where assets go at 20 to 30 per cent below valuation.

Eugene Lim, associate director, ERA Asia Pacific, said: “There are cases of fire sales but they are confined to sellers who generally need to raise cash fast. For example, they may be running a business and run into some cashflow problems.”

Despite the negative sentiment, market players said there’s still demand for properties especially those that are realistically priced. These are sold at between three and five per cent below market value.

Source : Channel NewsAsia – 9 Dec 2008

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Chinese tourists snap up cheap US property

Posted by luxuryasiahome on December 9, 2008

CHINA tourists in Hummers and limousines have been weaving through American neighbourhoods in recent months.

Their target: Foreclosures and other bargain properties, now that US housing prices have hit rock bottom.

Media company owner Zhao Hongjun, 48, is one them.

He has already been on a two-week road trip through the US, visiting scenic sites and checking out properties from Los Angeles to New York.

He’s now considering joining another prospecting group that is heading for San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, three of the hardest-hit housing markets in the US.

Mr Zhao’s budget: US$1 million (about $1.8 million).

‘LA is not bad; a lot of Chinese live there,’ he told the Los Angeles Times, noting that he was interested in both apartments and houses.

The purchasing tours in the US grew out of similar trips by well-heeled Chinese back home.

Investors from Wenzhou and other entrepreneurial hot spots were known for chartering buses to visit such cities as Shanghai to shop for apartments.

Now some of them are signing up with outfits like Soufun.com, the real estate website that is sponsoring the home-buying trip next month from Beijing to California and Nevada.

Mr Liu Jian, chief operating officer at Soufun Holdings, said his group’s tour would focus on homes priced between US$200,000 and US$300,000, just at or below the median for Southern California.

More than 300 people have registered for the trip, which could last 10 days and cost each person about US$2,200, excluding airfare.

‘Many of them want to buy because they have actual needs to live there or for their children,’ Mr Liu said.

‘They will hold the property for quite a long period.’

Mr James Chou of Coldwell Banker George Realty said the potential investors were keen to see foreclosed homes, but he warned that it would be difficult to educate them about the home-buying process in such a short time.

‘I don’t think they know much about the market here,’ he said.

Mr Mei Xinyu, a researcher for China’s Ministry of Commerce, doesn’t want to see a rush of Chinese buying homes in the US and getting burned.

‘The housing price right now in the US is fairly low already, but it’s hard to say how long it will remain in the valley,’ he said.

Chinese investors, Mr Mei added, should be careful to study the markets before plunging into them. In some places, they could face a backlash, just as there was when the Japanese went on a shopping spree in the US during the 1980s. What’s more, he warned, some American cities may not bounce back at all.

US market different ‘China is still in the process of urbanisation. It’s unlikely to turn into ghost towns,’ he said. ‘But the US is different.’

But China homebuyers are unlikely to make a big impact on the deeply depressed US housing market.

In Southern California, the median price has sunk more than 40 per cent since the spring and summer of 2007.

Ms Ling Chow, president of the San Gabriel-based Chinese American Real Estate Professionals Association who mostly serves mainland Chinese buyers, is also sceptical.

She said unless they’re willing to spend more than US$400,000, they’ll probably be disappointed in the available homes.

She said the Chinese are culturally inclined to buy new homes and prefer high-achieving school districts, demands that drive up prices.

Ms Jamie Lee, of the LA Convention and Visitors Bureau in Beijing, has mixed feelings about these ‘gou fang tuan’, Chinese for home-buying groups.

On one hand, she says, they will be staying and eating and shopping in Los Angeles, pumping dollars into the local economy.

On the other hand, Ms Lee has been working hard in China to publicise the biggest attractions of Los Angeles: its great weather, beaches, Hollywood and theme parks.

‘I’m promoting tourism to LA, but not to go to buy cheap houses,’ she said.

‘Are we that desperate?’

Source : The New Paper – 9 Dec 2008

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Time to put an official number to DPS units

Posted by luxuryasiahome on December 9, 2008

THE deferred payment scheme (DPS) was introduced more than 10 years ago in the middle of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which dented interest in Singapore’s property market.

Developers welcomed the scheme. The DPS allowed home buyers to put down just 10 per cent or 20 per cent of the purchase price when buying a property, with the rest due only after a project obtained its Temporary Occupation Permission (TOP).

The premise behind the DPS was to allow buyers, especially HDB upgraders, to buy a private home in advance of their HDB flats reaching the five-year minimum occupancy period.

However, during the recent property boom, the DPS gave both investors and speculators a window to bet on a rise in property prices.

They did not have to secure any form of financing upfront, which meant that the banks’ traditional role in measuring credit risk was effectively bypassed.

Securing loans

But questions are now being asked of many of the properties bought in the recent property boom using the DPS before it was suspended in October 2007. With the bulk of the property launches in 2007 due for TOP in 2009 and 2010, the tighter credit market and more stringent lending terms have made it harder for these buyers to secure loans.

‘In cases where the property is still ‘in the money’ and the buyer can’t secure a loan, we think the buyer would turn to the secondary market to exit the property,’ said OCBC Investment Research analyst Foo Sze Ming. ‘However, for properties that are not ‘in the money’, buyers may have to sell at lower prices or worse, default on the purchase.’

If many buyers end up defaulting, it will end up hurting the overall property market, depressing prices even further as supply increases. Developers’ operating cashflow and earnings will also come under pressure.

Estimating the impact

Given the consequences, estimating how big an impact the DPS will have has become the preoccupation of market watches and analysts in recent weeks.

But they do so with patchy data and many assumptions. To begin with, many of the homes initially sold under the scheme have been re-sold on the subsale market, which means that they are no longer under the DPS. So an assumption has to be made there. In a Dec 3 report, DBS Vickers Research analyst Adrian Chua looked at the subsale status of projects likely to obtain TOP in 2009 and compared the figure to the total number of units sold in the development.

‘This gives us an indication on the number of units potentially still under the DPS, given that many developers take the prudent approach of not extending the DPS to secondary buyers (from subsale transactions),’ he said.

Using this method, he estimated that some 50 per cent of units in CapitaLand projects expected to obtain TOP in 2009 – including RiverGate and Riveredge – were under the DPS. He used this figure to calculate the impact of both a 10 per cent default and a 20 per cent default on CapitaLand’s FY2009 earnings per share, operating cash flow, net gearing and interest cover.

His conclusion was that CapitaLand and five other developers – City Developments, Ho Bee Investment, Keppel Land, UOL Group and Wing Tai – are not likely to be too badly hit even under a 20 per cent default scenario.

But other analysts have made their own assumptions and have come up with more dire predictions. Some have cited the DPS issue hanging over the heads of developers here when issuing ’sell’ calls on property stocks. These negative reports have spread fear among investors and could cause jittery banks to withhold financing to developers.

Differing views

The wide spectrum in views highlights the problem – right now, no one knows how many units are still on the now-defunct DPS, and consequently, how badly developers will be hurt if some buyers walk away from their deals. One property consultant put the number of units still on the DPS at about 4,000-5,000. But the figure is still an estimate.

What is needed is for the authorities to sit down with the developers to pin down an exact figure to the number of units still on the DPS in projects obtaining TOP in 2009 and 2010, preferably project by project.

If the problem is not as bad as it’s now made out to be by some (which is what the developers are telling analysts and banks behind closed doors), then such a disclosure can only be good for all parties involved – developers, investors, home buyers, banks and the authorities, who have been working to ensure stability in the property market.

Source : Business Times – 9 Dec 2008

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Weakness seen in Bangkok luxe condo market

Posted by luxuryasiahome on December 9, 2008

THE luxury condominium market will dive next year as the global economic downturn continues to dry up the much-needed pool of cash-rich foreign investors, local property analysts said.

They predict that luxury condominium prices would drop by 10-20 per cent in the first half of 2009. Current high prices will stifle local demand, as the domestic political turmoil undermines investor sentiment, they said.

Despite Bangkok’s luxury condominiums being relatively cheap – at around 100,000-150,000 baht (S$4,300-6,500) per square metre (psm), 8-12 times less than a similar property in Singapore or Hong Kong, according to Jones Lang LaSalle Research – demand has dropped off, analysts said.

‘Luxury condos depend on foreign buyers. With the global downturn, there are no buyers left,’ said Thaninee Satirareungchai, property analyst, KGI Securities (Thailand).

‘The price of the physical property should be corrected down by at least 15-20 per cent next year.’

UOB Kay Hian (Thailand) expects sector prices to drop by 10-15 per cent to stimulate demand from Thai buyers, who tend to opt for luxury single-detached houses rather than condominiums.

Thai law prevents foreigners from buying land, but they are allowed to purchase up to 49 per cent of the saleable space in a condominium, hence the sector’s dependence on overseas investors.

A fall will provide investment opportunities for bargain hunters, said Veena Naidu, head of research, UOB Kay Hian (Thailand).

‘I think the prices will bottom out before Q2 next year,’ she said. ‘Projects that were launched 18-24 months ago are being completed and coming onto the market now, so investors still have time to survey the market.’

CB Richard Ellis (Thailand), a leading realtor, said that predictions of an across-the-board sector drop were inaccurate, and that it had seen no evidence of falling prices in existing luxury properties.

It said that current resale values at projects such as the TCC Capital Land Athenee Residence remained at 125,000-150,000 baht psm.

Projects being sold off-plan will be affected by the decreasing pool of foreign investors and are likely to lower their prices, said James Pitchon, executive director, CB Richard Ellis (Thailand).

‘Some luxury projects increased their notional prices after units at the Sukhothai Residences sold at an average of more than 200,000 baht psm. But a number of those developers were not able to sell at the recalibrated prices.

‘We expect a return to the pre-Sukhothai prices, where developers that upwardly adjusted their prices revert to what they were six months ago.’

The biggest factors in Bangkok’s surging luxury property prices were rising land and commodity costs, he said. While the price of crude has dropped, said Mr Pitchon, the value of Bangkok’s CBD land was not contracting, adding that plunging commodity prices were unlikely to affect the sector in the next two years.

‘Commodity prices have fallen, so in theory new construction costs will also fall. There will be very few, if any, new projects launched in the next 24 months, so we are not going to have competing products with the new lower construction costs.’

Source : Business Times – 9 Dec 2008

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More hotels, rooms amid global gloom

Posted by luxuryasiahome on December 9, 2008

But hoteliers hope to woo customers by offering more bang for the buck

ABOUT 10 new hotels offering some 5,100 rooms are expected to open next year despite news that Singapore’s hotel industry is labouring amid the global economic downturn.

The buildings, conceptualised during a more prosperous period, face a difficult task ahead of filling up their rooms. However, hoteliers say there is still business to be done despite the gloom.

‘Ideally, we want to open in more favourable times,’ said Mr Puneet Dhawan, general manager of the 500-room Ibis hotel, which is scheduled to open early next year. ‘But we are still optimistic because people are coming to Singapore. We just have to offer them more bang for their buck.’

The optimism comes at a trying time for the industry. Visitor arrivals have been declining since June as travellers cut back on trips in the face of a worldwide recession.

October saw 8 per cent fewer visitors to Singapore than the same month last year – the biggest year-on-year drop of this year.

In the last year, hotel room occupancy rates islandwide have slid about 10 percentage points to about 80 per cent. The country has over 30,000 rooms.

Hotels slated to open next year range from the Marina Bay Sands integrated resort to mid-range establishments like the Park Hotel Clarke Quay. The number of openings is comparable to the last few years.

Among the new additions is the five-star Capella Hotel in Sentosa, which is scheduled to open in March. While its daily rates will be between $600 and $800, a spokesman said the hotel will be able to pull in business and luxury travellers because demand for posh rooms remains strong.

Still, hotel analysts predict that 2009 will be a tough year. Ms Chee Hok Yean, executive vice-president and head of corporate advisory for Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels, said occupancy rates will likely drop to between 70 and 75 per cent and room rates will remain flat.

The new properties, she said, will have to work harder to make their mark. ‘Competition will be tough next year and hotels have to be constantly aware of the market condition and their competitors.’

The lull in visitors has prompted some hotels to publicise below-market rates even before they open their doors.

The three-star Ibis, which is scheduled to open in February in Bencoolen Street, is offering rooms for $148++ per night – almost 25 per cent lower than the average for mid-range hotels.

Mr Dhawan said the promotion is designed to appeal to budget-conscious travellers, adding there will always be a market for hotels like his. ‘During times of recession, people tend to trade down, so it is a good time for a property like ours to open.’

However, Mr Klaus Kohlmayr, director of service at hotel consultancy Integrated Decisions and Systems International, advised against cutting prices.

He said hotels ‘which discount almost always lose money’ as there is no guarantee they will get better occupancy. His advice is for hoteliers to establish closer partnerships with the local community.

With the declining tourism numbers, hotels are looking at the local market to boost occupancy. Mr Cheng Chee Chiang is the general manager of home-grown firm Santa United, which plans to open a 74-room hotel in Bugis early next year.

He said the hotel, the Santa Grand, may introduce special weekend packages for locals.

Competition hots up

~ THE three-star Ibis, which is scheduled to open in February in Bencoolen Street, is offering rooms at $148++ per night – almost 25 per cent lower than the average for mid-range hotels.
~ THE 74-room Santa Grand by home-grown firm Santa United International Holdings will sell rooms in Bugis for between $135 and $224 when it opens in the second quarter of next year.
~ THE Four Seasons Singapore has pumped in $11 million over five months to overhaul its 255 rooms.

Source : Straits Times – 9 Dec 2008

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HDB factory rents can be staggered

Posted by luxuryasiahome on December 9, 2008

I REFER to Madam Tay Boon Yong’s letter, ‘HDB factory rents up 20%’ (Nov 29).

Our industrial tenants pay a fixed rent during their tenancy period, which could range from one to three years. Before the tenancy expires, they are offered the option of renewing their tenancies at the prevailing market rent.

In Madam Tay’s case, she last renewed her tenancy in January 2006, with a three-year tenancy expiring at the end of this month. Since 2006, the rent of similar industrial premises has increased by about 22.5 per cent. Since September last year, HDB has offered to stagger rent increases to assist industrial tenants like Madam Tay who face significant rent increases at tenancy renewal, by spreading their rent increases over the renewal term of three years.

To help Madam Tay confirm the prevailing market rent of her unit, she can opt for an independent assessment from a private valuer. Alternatively, HDB is prepared to put the unit up for tender so her company can re-bid for it. We will contact Madam Tay directly on the details.

HDB will continue to monitor the market closely and provide additional measures, if necessary.

Lee-Tang Li Fun (Mrs)
Acting Deputy Director (Industrial Properties Management Section)
Housing & Development Board

Source : Straits Times – 9 Dec 2008

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NOVA 48 @ Prome Road

Posted by luxuryasiahome on December 9, 2008

Nova48

Location: Prome Road
Tenure: Freehold
Description: 1 Block of 12 Storey with a part 4 storey apartment
Estimated Completion: 2012
Total Units: 48
Unit Types:
1+Study, 657sqft (2 units) from $63XK
2 bdrm, 861sqft (2 units) from $98XK
3 bdrm, 936sqft to 1453sqft (28 units) from $89XK to $1.1XM
3+Study, 1098sqft to 1152sqft (13 units) from $1.0XM to $1.1XM
Penthouses, 1346sqft to 1948sqft (3 units) from $1.2XM to 1.6XM

Estimate Maintenance: $270 to $360 monthly

Facilities: Heated Swimming Pool, Gym, Pool Deck, Children Pool, BBQ area, Children Playground, basement carpark

Payment Scheme: Normal Progressive with interest absorption, exclusively with OCBC. Pay 5% +15% + NO payment till TOP + Interest absorb till TOP.

Contact us at info@lushhomemedia.com or +65 9631 8037 with the following for more information:

Nova 48 / Name / Contact # / Unit Type Interested

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Henderson hopes to buy farm land

Posted by luxuryasiahome on December 9, 2008

It wants to take advantage of prices in weak market

Developer Henderson Land plans to persuade the Hong Kong government to sell agricultural land so that it can take advantage of cheaper prices as the property market weakens, an executive said yesterday.

Property firms who bought land in a slump during a 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), including heavyweight Sun Hung Kai Properties, notched up big profit margins when they built on it as the market recovered.

Henderson Land would try to follow a similar tactic, company vice-chairman Colin Lam said.

‘Property prices have fallen in 2008 and future land premium payments will also be lower,’ he told reporters after a shareholders’ meeting. ‘The company will take advantage of that to up its land bank in the city.’

A Reuters poll of analysts earlier this month showed that apartment prices were expected to slide more than 20 per cent by the end of 2009.

A Hong Kong University index, which is based on real transactions, shows that home prices on Hong Kong island slipped 6.3 per cent from a peak at the end of March to the end of September.

But brokers GFI said that indicative property derivative levels suggest that investors believe that prices will reach the bottom of a trough in December 2009, falling 30 per cent from the March 2008 level.

Reflecting the downturn, Sun Hung Kai cut its apartment sales target last week by a fifth, and the firm has seen stronger sales at its projects in recent weeks than many rivals.

But Henderson’s chairman, Lee Shau-kee, insisted that Hong Kong’s property market had already bottomed, and would pick up towards the end of 2009, even though he believed that the worst of the global economic slowdown was yet to come.

‘The worst for the local property market has already been seen this year. The property market has now stabilised,’ Mr Lee said. ‘We hope the overall market will pick up in the second half.’

Mr Lee, adding his voice to other optimistic predictions by Hong Kong developers, said that his firm was well protected because it did not buy land when the market was at its peak earlier this year.

Sun Hung Kai Properties said last week that it expected a 5 per cent rise in Hong Kong property prices next year.

Shares of Henderson Land, which have fallen more than 67 per cent so far this year, soared 10.8 per cent to HK$26.7 yesterday afternoon, slightly more than a 9.4 per cent rise in the benchmark property sub-index.

Source : Business Times – 9 Dec 2008

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Hong Kong home prices may fall more on tighter credit

Posted by luxuryasiahome on December 9, 2008

Memories revived of 1997-98 Asian crisis, when prices slumped two-thirds from peak

Hong Kong home prices, down almost a quarter from their five- year high in March, may drop further as the credit crisis drives up joblessness and threatens to spark defaults.

‘There’s a real lack of funds,’ Leland Sun, chairman of Hong Kong-based Pan Asian Mortgage Co, said at a Bloomberg forum last Thursday. ‘Banks are unwilling to lend to other banks, let alone individuals and small and medium businesses.’

HSBC Holdings Plc, the city’s biggest bank by branches, raised mortgage rates as much as 75 basis points last week – the most in a decade.

Increased risk has prompted banks to tighten credit even as benchmark borrowing costs fall worldwide, reviving memories of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis when Hong Kong home prices slumped by two-thirds from their peak.

‘Mass market home prices will ease down the curve rather than falling off the cliff,’ said Nicholas Brooke, chairman of Hong Kong- based Professional Property Service Ltd. ‘The fundamentals are so different this time’ compared with the Asian crisis, he said.

Mortgage rates in Hong Kong have climbed even as the de facto central bank has cut benchmark borrowing costs in line with the US Federal Reserve.

Higher mortgage rates make it more expensive for homebuyers to borrow. This could trigger a further drop in home prices, already down 22 per cent since March, according to Centaline Property Agency Ltd.

Banks in Hong Kong are raising mortgage charges after having tracked six of the Fed’s past nine benchmark rate cuts.

HSBC cut its best rate to a four-year low of 5 per cent on Nov 7.

The Hong Kong University Property Derivative Index shows investors expect a drop of as much as 30 per cent in property prices in the next year, Richard Wo, head of product services and training at Sun Hung Kai Financial Ltd, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

The number of homeowners with apartments worth less than their mortgages surged 174 per cent in the third quarter, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) said last month.

The number of housing units changing hands fell 79 per cent in November, the biggest decline in at least 12 years, according to the government.

Mr Sun at mortgage originator Pan Asian said ‘negative equity’ homeowners in Hong Kong might rise higher than in 2003, though he said people will keep paying their mortgages, as long as joblessness doesn’t spiral. Homebuyers and banks may be concerned both about Hong Kong’s economy, which contracted 0.5 per cent in the third quarter to put the city in its first recession since 2003, and the jobless rate – which rose to 3.5 per cent in October.

A further 6,000 jobs have been lost in the past six weeks, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported on Dec 1.

Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd, Hong Kong’s biggest developer by market value, had its target price cut by Citigroup Inc on expectations that prices will fall further.

Still, Sun Hung Kai told shareholders last Thursday that prices had stabilised in the past two weeks.

In 1997-2003, home prices had periods of stability, then fell further.

HSBC itself, which employs more than 21,000 people in Hong Kong, said last month that it is cutting 450 jobs in the city.

Standard Chartered Plc said on Dec 2 that it will fire 200 people, 4 per cent of Hong Kong employees.

‘This aggressive rate hike comes across to us as severe risk aversion, unlike previous hikes, which were aimed at regaining a reasonable spread for the mortgage product in light of a rising Hibor,’ Citigroup Inc Hong Kong-based analysts Tony Tsang and Marco Sze wrote in a Dec 2 research note.

Rising unemployment rates can mean an increase in people who can’t service mortgages. With prices of some homes lower than the value of the loans they secure, banks may not be able to recoup the money they are owed when they sell apartments on which they have foreclosed.

‘The latest rate hikes in mortgage interest rates, more job losses and weak retail sales figures suggest that the outlook for the property markets in Hong Kong will remain difficult,’ Citigroup’s Mr Tsang and Mr Sze wrote.

The Hang Seng Property Index, tracking the share of the city’s biggest developers, has fallen 61 per cent in 2008, more than the 50 per cent drop in the benchmark Hang Seng Index.

Still, the mortgage delinquency ratio was unchanged at 0.05 per cent in October, the HKMA said last month. That compares with a ratio of 0.78 per cent in October 1998.

Peter Wong, an executive director at HSBC’s Asia-Pacific unit, said economic conditions may dictate further mortgage rate increases.

Hong Kong mortgages carry interest at a discount or premium to the benchmark cost, the so- called best lending rate.

‘We have not decided whether we will raise interest rates again,’ Mr Wong told reporters in a briefing last week.

‘That depends on the operating environment, and also on the credit and risk profile in the economy. We have just increased,’ he said.

Source : Business Times – 9 Dec 2008

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DTZ sees HK office rents falling next year

Posted by luxuryasiahome on December 9, 2008

Hong Kong office rents may fall in 2009, as the global financial crisis hurts the city’s economy, property adviser DTZ Holding plc said.

‘Office rents in Hong Kong, especially those for grade A offices, would be mostly affected as their tenants such as investment banks and finance companies are badly hit in the global financial turmoil,’ Leung Chun Ying, chairman of DTZ in Asia-Pacific, told reporters in Hong Kong yesterday.

The credit market seizure that has left global financial companies with almost US$1 trillion in writedowns and credit losses has led to banks such as Citigroup Inc and DBS Group Holdings downsizing their businesses and cutting jobs in the city.

Hong Kong has slipped into its first recession since the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic in 2003 as the economy shrank a seasonally adjusted 0.5 per cent in the third quarter from the previous three months, after contracting 1.4 per cent in the second quarter.

CLSA forecast a 60 per cent decline in rents in the city’s central business district in the next two years, while UBS forecast a 25 per cent drop by Sept next year, the South China Morning Post reported on Nov 19, citing property analysts. Central office rents surged to a peak of HK$120 (S$23.61) per square foot this summer, the report said.

‘It’s difficult to predict the magnitude of the consolidation in office rents as the impact of the financial turmoil hasn’t been fully reflected,’ said Mr Leung.

Separately, Hong Kong ranked third, after Tokyo and Singapore, in the top five cities in terms of investment prospects, says a survey by Urban Land Institute and Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

The rankings implied that those markets have long-term investment values, though many see volatilities in the short term, said Mr Leung, who is also the institute’s Asia chairman.

Source : Business Times – 9 Dec 2008

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