Top-end HK properties not affected by cooling measures

[HONG KONG] When the Opus project was unveiled in 2012, its developer boasted that the apartments there, designed by star architect Frank Gehry, would be the most expensive in Hong Kong - and, by extension, probably the world.

That year, the developer - Swire Pacific, a Hong Kong conglomerate - sold one of the 12 units for a record HK$455 million, then about US$58.7 million, making Opus an emblem of the city's superluxury market. Another unit sold the same year for about US$55.5 million. It was the high-water mark of a boom time: From the 2008 financial crisis until 2013, residential property prices in Hong Kong rose about 120 per cent.

Last year, the government sought to cool the market with tighter mortgage rules and a higher tax aimed at some high-end buyers from outside Hong Kong. Still, at the beginning of this month, Swire announced that another Opus unit had sold for US$55.5 million. The buyer was apparently local.