Why the property market's pick-up still remains elusive post-CNY

Developers sold only 23 units over the weekend.

According to the Hong Kong Economic Journal, developers only sold 23 units this past weekend, similar to the previous week’s 26 units. 

"We continue to see signs of homebuyer exhaustion as new project take-up remains slow. Over the weekend, Kerry Properties sold 5 out of 18 units on offer at The Summa in Western District while Cheung Kong sold four out of 12 units on offer at The Diva in North Point," Barclays said in a report.

Here's more from Barclays:

Looking more broadly at Wang On’s launch of The Met.Delight in Sham Shui Po last Friday (14 February), take up was also only lukewarm with 18 out of 32 offered units sold. Similarly, at the re-launch of Henderson Land/NWD’s The Reach in Yuen Long, although 326 units were made available, no sales were registered.

This was partly attributed to home buyers taking a wait and see attitude ahead of SHKP’s sale of The Riva.

The price list of 156 units at Riva was released by SHKP last week with an average price of HK$9,268psf (SFA basis). Net of various discounts, the net price of HK$8,056psf is approximately 14-17% below that of recent presales in the area – The Reach at HK$9,345psf and Residence 88 at HK$9,687psf.

SHKP will offer 62 units for sale tomorrow, 18 February. So far, Riva has received 3,000 expressions of interest from potential buyers, representing an oversubscription rate of 19x. SHKP’s discounting versus recent launches is no surprise to us.

We expect the price competition between developers to continue as the perception of a bargain is the main hook to appeal to price-sensitive home buyers and developers, and secondary owners will have to continue to move down the price curve in
order to draw out demand.