HONG KONG • Hong Kong home prices are the highest relative to shares of the city's publicly traded developers in almost two decades.
For Bocom International Holdings analyst Alfred Lau, that's a sign that the property market's about to drop as much as 20 per cent.
The Hang Seng Properties Index slumped 15 per cent this quarter, even as a gauge of Hong Kong housing prices compiled by Centaline Property Agency rose to a record.
The stock gauge is at the lowest compared with the real estate measure since 1998, when the city's last property bubble was bursting.
"We're just at the beginning of the correction cycle for physical property prices," Bocom's Mr Lau said yesterday. "We expect a 10 to 20 per cent decline in prices. Shares are already pricing in a 10 to 15 per cent decline."
While home values kept rising in August, sales showed signs of a slowdown. The number of transactions tumbled 37 per cent from a year earlier amid concern about China's economic outlook and the prospect of higher borrowing costs as the Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates.
Analysts including JPMorgan Chase's Cusson Leung and Morgan Stanley's Praveen K. Choudhary are calling for Hong Kong property prices to slide as much as 10 per cent next year.
A 20 per cent plunge by the property stock gauge from its June peak dragged valuations to the lowest level relative to the benchmark Hang Seng Index since 2001.
The measure of 10 developers trades at 5.9 times reported earnings, compared with the 10.8 multiple on a Bloomberg gauge of global real estate shares.
Sun Hung Kai Properties, the city's biggest developer by market value, is down 13 per cent in 2015.
Hong Kong's retail sales fell 2.8 per cent in July, and shop rents are declining. UBS lowered its target for Hong Kong's benchmark stock gauge by 25 per cent this month, saying its worst-case scenario for the city is coming true.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority said in a report last Friday that the risk of a "downward adjustment" in home prices is increasing amid volatility in global and domestic financial markets.
BLOOMBERG
