Macau Business. By Therese Tu. 4 January 2023.
Macau’s property market is likely to welcome significant improvement in the second quarter of 2023, after sales of residential units hit a 40-year low last year, real estate agency Centaline Property predicts.
According to statistics from the Financial Services Bureau (DSF), the first nine months of last year only saw less than 400 flats sold, while the monthly volume of sales exceeded 400 in October alone.
Judging by the trend, the property agency estimated housing sales at 830 in the fourth quarter of 2022 overall in a statement, with the annual volume of sales past 2,900, a decrease of around 50 per cent year-on-year.
The 2022 volume of sales was the lowest in 40 years, accounting for 23 per cent of an average of 12,500 recorded between 2002 and 2021only, Lo Zeon Ming, senior regional sales director at Centaline Property said.
In terms of residential property prices, Centaline Property estimates that the average price per square meter was around MOP95,000 last year, adding that housing prices in the SAR have bottomed out with very little room for possible further decline.
The property market shrunk for many reasons, as the realtor pointed out, including consecutive interest rate hikes, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, a stock market crash, the suspension of satellite casino operations, rising unemployment rates, and repeated Covid outbreaks, the statement noted.
However, the property agency is convinced that a forthcoming recovery in the tourism and gaming industries will lead to a rebound in the housing market in the second quarter of 2023, in the wake of progressive relaxations of pandemic prevention policies and a gradual resumption of economic activity.
Against that backdrop, housing sales are expected to return to some 6,000 in the second half of the year as pent-up market demand continues to climb in tandem, according to the real estate agency’s forecast.
