'Haunted' flats a tough sell in Asia's priciest real estate market

Hong Kong

THERE'S a grim phenomenon in Hong Kong's real estate market: discounts of as much as 50 per cent for home-seekers willing to live in an apartment where a murder has occurred.

Unnatural deaths typically result in rental discounts of 10 per cent to 20 per cent and can be more than double that for sinister killings, according to Sammy Po, head of the residential department of realtor Midland Holdings. Chinese believe such places, known as "hung jaak", the Cantonese term for "haunted apartments", are unlucky, he said.

"The Chinese really do care" about living in these places, Mr Po said.

The rent for a Wan Chai district apartment where police found two women's bodies on Nov 1 - HK$29,000 (S$4,823) a month at the time of the murders - will probably drop by half when it's released from being a crime scene, cleaned and rented again, according to a director of the company that owns the unit, who didn't want his name or firm identified because he isn't permitted to speak publicly. The sales value of the unit in the luxury J …