Shimao Properties (0813) plans to launch a luxury housing project in Kowloon and a new hotel in 2019 to avoid a possible downturn of the local property market.
Vice chairman Jason Hui Sai-tan yesterday said the local market might take two to three years to recover and the company is hopeful that its two large- scale projects will avoid the downward cycle. Its housing project involves a large gross area, he said.
Shimao has set this year's sales target at 67 billion yuan (HK$79.03 billion). It has already achieved 40 percent of the target in the first half of its current fiscal year and the company is confident it will achieve its whole year's target, Hui said.
He said Shimao plans to spend 30 billion yuan to buy plots of land and it has already spent 10 billion yuan to acquire sites in Beijing and Nanjing.
He said there may be more curbs in China, but the first-tier market may be excluded.
Another developer, Wing Tai Properties (0369), has designated Centaline Property Agency as exclusive sales agent in Hong Kong for its Le Nouvel KLCC housing project project in Malaysia. It has offered for sale an initial 10 units, with sizes of 1,722 to 2,110 saleable square feet, to Centaline's VIP customers. Wing Tai has set the minimum price of the flats at HK$9.5 million.
The Malaysia project, which will provide a total of 195 flats, comprises one 43-story block and a 49-story tower. In other news, Sun Hung Kai Properties (0016) received 1,800 expressions of interest in three days of sales of flats at its PARK YOHO Veneiza project. About 20,000 visitors viewed its show flats and the initial batch of flats on sale was oversubscribed 17 times.
Sammy Po Siu-ming, chief executive of Midland Realty's residential division, said about 30 percent of the visitors were lured by SHKP' offer of a 120 percent mortgage offer.
