One of Hong Kong’s best-known real estate investors has put another luxury home up for sale at a discount, as the city’s property glut and elevated interest rates weigh on highly leveraged entrepreneurs.
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David Chan Ping-chi, dubbed the “Cassette King” for his fortunes made from producing audiovisual cassettes and compact discs, plans to sell a three-storey mansion at 51 Mount Davis Road on Hong Kong Island to repay debt, he said in a phone interview with the Post.
Chan is asking for about HK$450 million (US$57.65 million), according to agents. He paid HK$360 million for the property in 2017 and subsequently redeveloped it to include a swimming pool and a garden. He paid HK$10.47 million in land premium in November for lease modification, according to the Lands Department.
The planned sale is the second in a week by Chan, one of the 10 members of a consortium that paid a record HK$40.2 billion in 2018 to buy The Center office tower in Central from Li Ka-shing’s CK Asset Holdings, in what was then the world’s most expensive real estate transaction.
Some seven years and a pandemic later, most of the investors in the deal are feeling a collective bout of buyers’ remorse. Several of them, including Chan – who owned nine of the 73 floors of The Center – have had to sell off their assets to raise cash and repay debt. Chan sold his last two floors – the 66th and 75th – to DBS Bank (Hong Kong) at a discount of more than 20 per cent from the purchase price.
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Chan said he sold his family home at 188 Victoria Road in Pok Fu Lam for HK$315 million this week, 27 per cent cheaper than market valuations in May. The detached house, home to his family since the 1980s, was seized by receivers in April after Chan defaulted on a HK$350 million loan from Fubon Bank.