From the Standard

Red hot Lamma

Colleen Lee

Monday, May 16, 2011


Red hot property prices have hit Lamma Island - a top-floor village house of 700 square feet sold recently for a whopping HK$3.3 million.

The top unit of the two-story village house near Yung Shue Wan pier was sold to an unidentified buyer a couple of weeks ago, a source said.

It fetched about HK$4,700 per sq ft, the highest psf price recorded on the island, even dwarfing some real estate in the New Territories and urban areas.

The property was earlier estimated by banks to be worth about HK$2.8 million.

The transaction in the village house cluster at Po Wah Yuen, popular among expatriates, has rattled the tranquil island.

"Things are no longer the same," a property agent on the island said. "It is difficult to find a cheap flat in Po Wah Yuen now."

There are nearly 100 houses of two and three stories in Po Wah Yuen, which is more than 30 years old. Situated near the pier, houses there are generally priced about a quarter more than those further away.

Agents said home prices on Lamma largely depend on their proximity to the pier rather than their age and view.

They said at present there is only a 450 sq ft ground-floor flat with two bedrooms and a sea view for sale, with the owner asking HK$1.8 million. That means a psf price of around HK$4,000.

An American who identified himself as Richard moved to a 700 sq ft seaview flat on the island six years ago.

The apartment was then worth about HK$1.5 million, he said.

"Are you kidding?" said Richard, who appeared surprised when told about the price of the latest transaction. He said a property agent told him last month that home prices on the island were stable.

He fears people who want to settle on Lamma may now find it more difficult to buy a dream home.

A Mrs Chan, who has lived on Lamma for more than 40 years, said it is not possible to stop skyrocketing property prices from spreading to the island.

She expects people may have to opt for Cheung Chau if they want to buy cheaper flats.

A couple surnamed Cheung, who live in an urban area and were visiting Lamma, found the price "a bit too expensive."

They joked they had planned to spend their retirement on Lamma but this now appears difficult.

The whole story is based on the sale price of one flat.

Yes, the story was based on a phone interview with Jackson, as he told me yesterday in Man Fung Rest, a place up in Po Wah Yuen he just sold, not even a new house.

The SCMP also contacted me on Saturday fishing for a similar story, seeing my "$50,000 Rent for Village House?" Lamma-zine story. They asked for photos of a record-selling house, but I was too busy with 4 different Lamma-zine event photo shoots yesterday (Lamma 500 @ PS Beach, annual celebration @ Kung Fu School in Ko Long and their fund-raising dinner @ Man Fung Seaview Rest, plus Lamma Dragons @ Island Bar celebrating their double wins).

It looks like The Standard beat them to it, including photos. There were actually just very few flats sold at these insane prices but they might damage the market badly, attract less people to move here and some of us even leaving, faced with unreasonable rent increase demands (30% in our own case, starting Aug).

Rents far from the ferry pier still look reasonable, maybe we should start looking at Tai Peng, Pak Kok, Lo So Shing, Mo Tat Wan or even Tung O Wan?

_________________
Click here for Lamma-zine stories and recent Lamma Spotlights of the Week:
Photo, Video, Person, Wildlife, Bird, Artwork.

how about this one? record high?

FLOOR 2, YUNG SHUE LONG NEW VILLAGE 24, RF. LAMMA ISL
南丫島榕樹塱新村24號, 2樓, 3.5M

ref: 登記編號 11051600220X3X

Who offered this place? One of the local agents or online somewhere?
That's the old house right after the Waterworks on the path to Tai Peng, correct?<HR>
A property agent told me yesterday that these very few and rare top rental prices are due to "better quality of Lamma flats these days at the top end of the market" - some of them built by her agency - and these are pushing up medium rentals as well. Landlords hear about these records and are trying to maximise their income by pushing up the prices of their older properties as well, testing out what is the absolute maximum they can get.

So the extreme prices in agents' windows are often just "asking prices" and can be negotiated down substantially, if you're patient till the landlord realises that no potential "good tenant" is willing to pay his "market testing" price and he's lost several weeks or even months of rental income due to the wait.<HR>
We're meeting a bilingual SCMP reporter visiting Lamma tomorrow morning. She's writing a story about renting Lamma property now and in the future.

Anything our forum members would like to add or even meet her tomorrow, Thursday, May 19, between 11am and 4pm?
Contact me of you'd like to meet her and give her an earful about current rental prices ... or if you're a landlord and love these increases.

_________________
Click here for Lamma-zine stories and recent Lamma Spotlights of the Week:
Photo, Video, Person, Wildlife, Bird, Artwork.

3.3M for a flat at Po Wah Yuen. Hahaha. The daily climb up the slope is good exercise.
3.5M for one in Yung Shue Long? Does it have seaview?

I'm almost sure this is the flat I lived in for nine years until we were turfed out a year ago so that the owner could renovate. We were paying 8K a month rent at the time. The rooftop flat next door sold in early 2010 for 2.2 million, and we thought that was overpriced at the time so we didn't make an offer. Of course we regret that now, but who could have predicted the madness that's descended on us?

_________________
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.

Which house no.?

I could probably find out the no. of the house sold, it's close behind the Lamma Church of Christ.

_________________
Click here for Lamma-zine stories and recent Lamma Spotlights of the Week:
Photo, Video, Person, Wildlife, Bird, Artwork.

source: the land registry

it does not has seaview. it is just next to the water supply department.

It does have a pretty nice seaview. I went for a look today with a property agent and an SCMP reporter doing yet another Lamma Property story.

But it's over 30 years old and it doesn't even have a fixed canopy or glasshouse on the rooftop, see my photo below.
A Chinese bank offered much of the mortgage, valuing it at over 2.5 million, sold around 1.5 months ago.

$5,000/sqft, an absolute record for Lamma and for most of HK's areas...
By the way, that quoted price in many newspapers of $3.3 million for the former Lamma record holder is wrong, it was $3.2 million, confirmed today, sold at around the same time by the same agent.

See below, a story from today's Standard, scanned and emailed by an Alert Reader.
The article talks of only 10 new village houses being built per year, hard to believe, I'll go and check this and other numbers in the story below.<HR>
The recently totally destroyed forest close to Power Station Beach - along the former, popular, now cut-off shortcut via a forest path to the beach from Wang Long, used by dog walkers and PS Beach visitors daily - is scheduled for up to 100 (!) new Village Houses by the Islands District Council and the Lands Dept., as I've just got confirmation from 2 very reliable sources today.

The area is just a few dozen metres from Power Station Beach, just across Cable Road, these houses might set new all-time records when they'll be completed in a number of years in stages.

_________________
Click here for Lamma-zine stories and recent Lamma Spotlights of the Week:
Photo, Video, Person, Wildlife, Bird, Artwork.

It's 15 minutes' walk to YSW and the ferry. I don't think they'll have that much of a premium.

And PSB is ungazetted, has no facilities, and has a nullah emptying into it. No doubt these new houses will be pouring all their waste water into the nullah and thus the beach. Unless their pipes all connect to the sewage -- possible I suppose, but it would be a first.

ANYBODY SEEN A POWERSTATION AROUND HERE LATELY?

_________________
Sabe 1

So what? If it was a nuclear plant or a funeral palour, it might make a difference, The prices there are not much cheaper than elsewhere.

Thumbs up to the Standard's photograph. YSW is so colourful. Damn the reclamation plan.

Who has the rights to build all these houses? I thought all the land was all owned by indivudulas or do they just sell it on to property developers who then will build en masse? Also what's with all the waste that has just been dumped around the area where the new houses are just past cable road?? At first I thought they were putting it there temporarily but now they have covered it all over with dirt. Is this not considered dumping? Surely the people who have built these houses are responsible for the clean up.

All land in Hong Kong is owned by the government.
The Small House Policy in the New Territories gives a plot of land to male descendants of those living here in 1898 to build a "family house".

The government allocates land, usually from unused agricultural land. And so there is an incentive to destroy agricultural land in the hope the government will later allow it to be built on.

Developers aren't allowed to buy land, though in practice they buy rights from villagers.

The construction waste is to make foundations for the houses, as the former paddy fields are, by design, subject to flooding.

I always thought that the dumping of construction waste on natural land, was that a house would eventually be built on it.

On the way to HSY, just near Tai Yuen village there is a huge mound of construction waste. I asked the VV driving (who was dumping stuff at the time) if there was going to be a new house built there, and he said no....... we are just going to plant flowers?! I couldn't help but laugh.. cynically of course.

yeah i took a picture of a VV driver dumping a load of stuff there and he got pretty angry with me and said it was private land. Seems crazy that they are allowed to just dump mounds of stuff including old washing machines and sinks etc!!!