A Rebound for Hong Kong’s Property Market

January 27, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

🎙️ The Voices & The Context

The Format: A concise solo monologue delivering a market research update, structured like a quick-hit podcast briefing with data-driven analysis and forward-looking predictions.
The Key Players:
- Prabeen Chaudhri: Morgan Stanley's Head of Asian Gaming and Lodging and Hong Kong India Real Estate Research. He's the sole voice, positioning himself as an expert guide for global investors decoding a misunderstood market.
The Vibe: Educational and optimistic, blending sharp economic insights with bullish forecasts to spark investor interest—think confident analyst rallying you on an overlooked opportunity.

🗝️ Key Themes & Topics

The episode unpacks why Hong Kong real estate is poised for a synchronized rebound across residential, office, and retail segments after years of decline, signaling broader Asian market shifts.

Topic 1: Global Relevance of Hong Kong Property. Chaudhri explains why investors worldwide—from New York to Singapore—should track HK real estate as a barometer for liquidity, capital flows, and macro sentiments in Asia. It's the first synchronized upturn in prices, office rents, and retail sales since 2018, predicting wider regional trends.
Topic 2: Residential Real Estate Turnaround. The core engine: prices bottomed after a 30% drop since 2018, with forecasts of **5% gro

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Hong Kong Real Estate: Global Relevance**
2 (01:00) **Residential Market Turnaround**
3 (01:22) **Key Driver 1: Policy Easing**
4 (02:47) **Key Driver 2: Demand Fundamentals**
5 (03:18) **Key Driver 3: Affordability and Wealth Effect**
6 (03:53) **Office and Retail Optimism**

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Our Head of Asian Gaming & Lodging and Hong Kong/India Real Estate Research Praveen Choudhary discusses the first synchronized growth cycle for Hong Kong’s major real estate segments in almost a decade.

Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.

----- Transcript -----

Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I’m Praveen Choudhary, Morgan Stanley’s Head of Asian Gaming & Lodging and Hong Kong/India Real Estate Research.

Today – a look at a market that global investors often watch but may not fully appreciate: Hong Kong real estate.

It’s Tuesday, January 27th, at 2pm in Hong Kong.

Why should investors in New York, London, or Singapore care about trends in Hong Kong property? That’s easy to answer. Because Hong Kong remains one of the world’s most globally sensitive real estate markets. When [the] cycle turns here, it often reflects – and sometimes predicts – broader shift in liquidity, capital flows, and macro sentiment across Asia.

And right now, for the first time since 2018, all three major Hong Kong property segments – residential prices, office rents in the Central district of Hong Kong, and retail sales – are set to grow together. That synchronized upturn hasn’t happened in almost a decade.

What’s driving this shift?

Residential real estate is the engine of this turnaround. Prices have finally bottomed after a 30 percent decline since 2018, and 2026 is shaping out to be a strong year. We actually expect home prices to grow more than 10 percent in 2026, after going up by 5 percent in 2025. And we think that it will grow further in 2027. There are three factors that give us confidence on this out-of-consensus call.

The first one is policy. Back in February 2024, Hong Kong scrapped all extra stamp duty that had made it tougher for mainland Chinese or foreign buyers to enter the market. Stamp duty is basically a tax you pay when buying property, or even selling property; and it has been a key way for [the] government to control demand and raise revenue. With those extra charges gone, buying and selling real estate in Hong Kong, especially for mainlanders, is a lot more straightforward and penalty-free. In fact, post the removal of the stamp duty, [the] percentage of units that has been sold to mainlanders have gone to 50 percent of total; earlier it used to be 10-20 percent.

Why is it non-consensus? That is because consensus believes that Hong Kong property price can’t go up when China residential outlook is negative. In mid-2025, consensus thought that the recovery was simply a cyclical response to a sharp drop in the Hong Kong Interbank Offered Rate, or HIBOR.

But we believe the drivers are supply/demand mismatch, positive carry as rental go up but rates go down, and Hong Kong as a place for global monetary interconnection betwe