Park Island, Ma Wan, Hong Kong

Park Island Residents! Today I have some very good news to report. Our main beach on Park Island, Tung Wan beach is going to G R O W It will be made significantly wider. We are going to get more sand added, significantly more, which will provide for a broad, wide, and extended flat beach, care of the Hong Kong Government. Government approval for the project has already been granted, and a tender for these works will go out shortly. The beach improvement works will mainly involve filling of sand in an area of about 3.47 ha of foreshore and sea-bed to extend the sandy area of the Tung Wan Beach. To give you a sense of the size and scale of the improvement, the sandy area of the beach will increase from about 3,400m2 currently to about 15,000m2. So around a 5 times the increase in the current sandy beach area. In the map below you can see, marked in red where the new sand extension will go: Tung Wan beach extension plans marked on a map  Below you can...

Readers, I received the following email from Louise Westin, from Sweco Infrastructure, in Stockholm. If you feel like helping her and making contact with her, please feel free to do so. Dear Park Island Blogger, Thank you for your help about where to find information about Park Island and Ma Wan! Now I wonder if perhaps you maybe could give me some answers to my questions to? I would really appreciate your help! I am planning a study-trip to Hong Kong, for a group of approximately 100 traffic planers, urban planners and engineers. On our study-trip to Hong Kong, we have scheduled an visit to Ma Wan and the residential area Park Island. We have not yet sorted out exactly how the visit will be organized, but one idea is to handle out some information material before we visit the Island. This is the reason way I am writing to you, I wonder if you could post a question on the wall of your group. I wonder how the residents on Ma Wan experience that the traffic system to and fr...

According to agents on the island last week was a busy month, with lots of enquiries from potential buyers. I was sent the article below by a property agent on Park Island: Park Island Property Newspaper Article In summary, the article reports that  "small size apartment" sales broke record twice within the last month. Park Island, Block 17, Mid Floor, Flat G Size 449sqft Price sold 3.12M ($6949 per sqf) The owner brought in 2010 $2.45M and how now sold earning $1.33M up 54.8%. According to the agent, the seller is now looking at buying a larger apartment on the Park Island. My comment on that is that whilst it appear the seller made a good profit, the larger apartment will of course also have risen in price, so from that perspective his "relative gain" may not actually be that much, as apartment prices everywhere (not just on Park Island) have risen substantially since 2010.   Some of these "small size" apartments were originally...

Over the last month or so, more residents on Park Island have become aware of wrangling between the ferry service provider to Park Island, Park Island Transport Company Limited ("PITCL") http://www.pitcl.com.hk/eng/html/ferry.htm  and the Park Island Owners Committee regarding the ferry charges. For historical reasons, the raising of ferry charges in Hong Kong is a very sensitive issue. People unfamiliar with why this issue is sensitive may want to read up on what happened back in 1966 when the Star Ferry proposed raising prices: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_1966_riots . PITCL is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sun Hung Kai Properties Limited. It not only runs the ferry services but also the bus services to Park Island. There is no doubt that the bus services to Park Island are very profitable for PITCL. Some of the ferry trips are also profitable for PITCL, especially weekend ferry services and rush hour times, eg 7.30am to 9.30am and 5pm to 8.30pm. For times o...

I recently came across the blog site about Ma Wan Village http://mawanvillagecentral.wordpress.com/ . The site seems to be dormant now, but it did provide some information on what takes place each year in the structure that is erected in the Ma Wan Village, next to the Park Island Estate. Apparently its a traditional Chinese Opera, that performs each year around Chinese New Year. I never knew what happened there, and now am planning to attend the next one. I would assume foreigner's are more than welcome to attend? Or is this more for a long term Ma Wan villagers only? If someone can clarify or if anyone who is a foreigner in Hong Kong has attended, do feel free to post your comments about the Chinese opera here on this blog. Chinese opera on Ma Wan Village - the stage is constructed Chinese Opera Performance A traditional Chinese festival performance in Hong Kong

Tom Holland piece in his SCMP Monitor Column dated August 27, 2012 has commented on the question many are asking. Is Hong Kong property overvalued? He writes: As Hong Kong property prices set new highs, fears continue to mount that the market is a momentum-driven bubble in imminent danger of bursting. Yet, although some softening of prices is possible given the weakness of the global trade cycle and the mainland's slowing growth rate, this column has long argued that there is little threat of a 1997-style crash any time soon. The reason is simple: although prices have gained dramatically over the last few years, there is no sign that the current boom - unlike the one in 1997 - has been propelled by a rapid increase in leverage. If you doubt that - and many readers do - here is a little more evidence. The second chart shows the growth in value of outstanding mortgages plotted against the nominal growth rate of Hong Kong's economy. In the run-up to 1997, the rise in mortga...

Agents on Park Island are reporting that a number of "new records" for property prices, both apartments for rent and for sale were achieved this month. Transaction values also have noticably picked up after being quite low, historically, over the last year. I'm trying to get some exact data from agents and then will put it up here. What is happening on Park Island is probably a reflection of what is happening in general for the Hong Kong property market, which seems to be super high priced property is slowing or falling (both rentals and sales prices), with low and medium priced property continuing to increase.