Hong Kong luxury rents dropped in fourth quarter but rose slightly in 2023, good for 9th spot on Knight Frank global list
- Rents rose 0.9 per cent in 2023, raising Hong Kong from 10th to ninth place in the latest Knight Frank Prime Global Rental Index
- Singapore sits in fourth place with a 5 per cent annual gain, while Sydney tops the list with 18.1 per cent annual growth
The city appears in ninth place among the 10 cities covered in the company’s Prime Global Rental Index, released on Thursday, after rents rose 0.9 per cent year on year in 2023. The city occupied 10th place in 2022 with the largest year-on-year decline of 6.4 per cent.
Hong Kong’s prime residential rents fell 2 per cent quarter on quarter in the final three months of the year.
Knight Frank blamed the winter season, traditionally a quiet period, for most of the recent decline, but cited poor market performance for the anaemic annual growth.
“Securing tenants for high-end properties presents a challenge amid the scaling back of MNCs [multinational corporations] and weak IPO [initial public offering] activities,” said Lucia Leung, director of research and consultancy in Greater China at Knight Frank. “Although rental prices of the luxury segment have recovered from their pandemic-induced lows, they still fall short of the levels observed five years ago.”
