HK Property

HK Property: HK homes face 20% price drop risk as banks raise rates. The biggest banks in HK have raised mortgage rates, and Deutsche is predicting that prices could fall as much as 20% the next two yrs. HSBC and Standard Chartered has raise their home loan rates by 25 bp in response to tighter risk rules. Midland Holdings, the city's biggest publicly traded realtor redicted that as many as one third of real estate agent branches in HK will close. Developers are responding, with Cheung Kong Holdings cutting prices at one of its projects by 11% on March 5, while Sun Hung Kai Properties, cut its target for the fiscal year ending June by 8.6% to HK$32b. New World Development lowered its sales target in response to the curbs.