(Yicai) Aug. 18 -- A luxury housing project being developed by Hong Kong’s richest man Li Kashing is finally coming on the market. But, after his developer CK Asset Holdings marked down the price of some of its properties in Hong Kong by 30 percent, there is speculation that the Beijing housing could go for much less than the advertised price.

Yucuiyuan, which sits outside Beijing’s Fourth Ring Road in the east of the city, received its pre-sales license last month but we haven’t started pre-sales yet, a consultant to the development told Yicai yesterday. “The developer will decide when pre-sales begin. We are still waiting for instructions.”

Properties at Yucuiyuan, which first went on show in 2019, are expected to fetch a price of around CNY100,000 (USD13,805.67) per square meter. This is more than 50 times the cost of the land. Li's conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa bought the 400,000-square-meter plot for CNY700 million (USD96.6 million) in 2001, which equates to CNY1,750 (USD240) per square meter.

The properties are now available for viewing, the consultant said.  According to a media report in October last year, buyers must make a downpayment of between CNY2 million (USD274.5 million) and USD8 million, which can include wealth management products and stocks. But no such deposits are needed at present, the consultant said.

CK Asset aims to sell houses faster and to finish more housing projects as soon as possible this year, Chairman Victor Li said. “Both ourselves and the buyers will be happy if we are given opportunities to buy land at a fair price and sell houses at cheaper prices.”

The Hong Kong-based developer will consider buying land which can generate good returns regardless of where it is located, Li said at the annual general meeting earlier this year.

CK Asset’s revenue plunged 56.2 percent in the first half from a year earlier to HKD3.5 billion (USD447 million) and sales plummeted 59.6 percent to HKD8.2 billion (USD1.1 billion), according to the firm’s first-half earnings report released on Aug. 3.

This is within expectations as property sales in Hong Kong and on the mainland were sluggish in the first half due to the cool real estate market, it added.

Editor: Kim Taylor