Hong Kong buyers shun investment in Greater Bay Area homes amid uncertainty over project completions, border reopening

In the past six months there has been no interest from Hong Kong investors about buying homes in the Greater Bay Area, says Centaline China CEO

Overall transactions in the bay area fell 45 per cent year on year in the first half, according to Cushman & Wakefield

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Home prices in six of the nine mainland Greater Bay Area cities, including Shenzhen, rose in the first half. Photo: Martin Chan

Published: 9:30am, 3 Aug 2022

Hongkongers are rapidly losing interest in acquiring property in the Greater Bay Area, with transactions continuing to plunge in the first half amid travel restrictions and growing fears about mainland developers’ ability to complete projects.

Transactions involving Hongkongers tumbled by as much as 80 per cent year on year in the first six months, according to Andy Lee, CEO of Centaline China. A total of 648 deals worth 2.1 billion yuan (US$310.2 million) involving buyers from Hong Kong were finalised in the same period last year, according to data from Centaline China.

“In the past half a year, almost no Hongkonger has asked about buying homes in GBA,” Lee said. Hongkongers are also cautious of investing in the bay area’s property sector, mainly because of the crisis surrounding the mainland’s real estate sector and the overall economic slowdown, he added.

Last year, homebuyers from Hong Kong invested 3.5 billion yuan in the bay area, sharply lower than the 30.9 billion yuan in 2020 and the all-time high of 40 billion yuan in 2019, according to data from Centaline China.