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Jardine’s property in Hong Kong’s Shek O ‘Tycoon Village’ gets the redevelopment nod that may turn it into a HK$918 million mansion

  • Hongkong Land and Simon Lindley Keswick received the green light to build a 15,306 sq ft single-storey house in Shek O, on the south-eastern tip of Hong Kong island
  • The property could be worth at least HK$918 million, or HK$60,000 per square foot

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Aerial view of the Shek O Country Club and golf course, around which are dozens of billion-dollar homes owned by Hong Kong’s wealthiest people, on 19 May 2018. Photo: Roy Issa
Sandy Li

The plans are being drawn for another US$100 million mansion in Hong Kong, as the ultra rich in one of the world’s most expensive residential property markets managed to thrive amid the city’s worst recession in decades.

Descendants of the Keswick family, taipans of Hong Kong during the British colonial era and most closely associated with the Jardine Matheson Group, received approvals in July to demolish a property at 9 Big Wave Bay Road on the Shek O peninsula. The family and Jardine’s 50.4-per cent owned Hongkong Land Holdings plan to redevelop the property into a single-storey mansion measuring 15,306 square feet (1,421 square metres), according to the city’s Buildings Department.

“Such a huge house will attract the super-rich from mainland China if the owners plan to sell it after the completion of the redevelopment,” said Knight Frank’s executive director Thomas Lam, who estimates a mansion of such a scale to be worth at least HK$918 million (US$118.4 million), or HK$60,000 per square foot. “Its uniqueness plus prestigious location will definitely fetch a premium price.”

The ambitious plan underscores how Hong Kong continues to be the playground of the ultra wealthy class, even as the city’s economy has been squeezed by the coronavirus pandemic and more than a year of anti-government protests into its worst recession on record. The number of US dollar-denominated millionaires in Hong Kong grew 22 per cent to 504,000 as of May 2020, according to a September 23 report by Citibank Hong Kong.

Shek O, a peninsula on the south-eastern tip of Hong Kong Island, is dubbed the Tycoon Village for the number of billion-dollar homes clustered around the Shek O Country Club, each with unobstructed views of the South China Sea and private gardens.

Peter Woo Kwong-ching, the chairman of Wheelock and Company, has a property here. Robert Ng Chee Siong, chairman of Sino Land, also has a mansion here.

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