A double apartment, converted into one, is a happy and comfortable family home in Ocean Gardens.
Regina Tam and her family have lived for the past 15 years in an elegantly designed and decorated 4-bedroom apartment on the waterfront of Ocean Gardens. She and her husband bought in 2002; initially a B unit, 1,118 square feet, that was 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms. Then when they discovered that the next door A unit – 2,000 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms – was available, they decided to buy this as well and combine the two into one.
“Planning for the project took about one month,” Regina explains, “and construction about three months.”
With over 3,000 square feet to play with, “our idea was to use as much of the area as possible, to push out to the external walls to give us maximum living space. The first job was making a single entrance. We cancelled B’s front door, and joined the two apartments by making an opening along the corridor from entrance A. We then enclosed A’s balcony to enlarge the living room”.
A ceiling-to-floor glass picture window was installed to make the most of the stunning views looking down to the Ocean Gardens park and waterfront and beyond to the Macau tower and skyline.
The kitchen was a major project: “I love cooking and always wanted a kitchen with an island cook-and-work station, and to have it open through to the living area so that I can enjoy the great view and not feel alone or separated from family or friends while I’m cooking.”
And if she’s cooking something very strong smelling, the sliding glass paneled doors to the living room can always be closed.
For privacy when eating, the end of the corridor was built to section off the dining room from the kitchen. The original housekeeper’s room and small toilet area off the kitchen were converted into a laundry and useful storage.
The kitchen is modern, white and sleek, with white corian countertops, stainless steel appliances, sliding smoked-glass fronted cabinets and black marble floor tiles that give a sense of grandeur to the space.
Throughout the combined apartment, the flooring of the corridor and all common areas are a caramel cream Spanish marble.
“All except the bedrooms, which we kept in their original wood parquet. You need the bedrooms to feel warmer and to be different from the public areas,” says Regina.
As one enters the living room, the first impression is how bright it is. The sea view dominates and natural light floods the space. A large, round, white carpet mirrors the shape of the curved half circle window. A white day bed, perfect for reading or just enjoying the view from is matched with a pair of steel-framed, black leather seated armchairs, and a grey fabric-covered chair – such attention to detail to complementing the colour palette! A 6-sided clear acrylic coffee table is centre piece and completes this very light, chic and modern look.
The open plan space leads to the dining room, which is dominated by a huge gold framed oil painting original by Jean Francois Larrieu. Bought from Opera Gallery in Hong Kong, Regina says that she fell in love with the painting because of its vibrant colours. Clearly an enthusiastic fan of the artist, she pulls out a large coffee-table sized book of his collection of paintings. On the opposite wall is another colourful piece brought from South America, an oil abstract closely resembling many hundreds of eyes, appropriately named Observe. On the deep window sill sits a 3’ sculpture by talented local artist Todi Kong. And along side these, standing on the floor about 5’ high, are two gilded wood Thai ladies.
The three bedrooms have been kept as the original layout, with eldest daughter Filipa having the master and Joana the slightly smaller guest room opposite. Both have a similar look and feel, with a floral grey, black and white papered feature wall, other walls painted in pale grey, and the two slatted bed heads in pale, natural wood. The third bedroom with its pull out sofa-bed is a useful guestroom for visitors.
Moving now to the B unit part of this home, the original 2 bed – 2 bath, open living-dining and small closed kitchen layout was converted into a private wing comprising spacious master bedroom and ensuite bathroom, built-in cabinets and work-area. The kitchen was opened up into a bar counter and breakfast area with more ceiling-to-floor windows to bring in the view. Another smart colour scheme of grey floor tiles, black counter-top, white cabinets, and two striking, red art pieces with their red highlighted in the dining chair cushions.
“I like red, and grey goes well with it, but to use too much grey can make a space feel sad,” Regina says, “so to balance the harmony of the red colours we chose to paint the walls a pale yellow in the kitchen and living area. Yellow is a sunny, warm colour and adds to the brightness of the space.
The book-filled shelves, sink-in L-shaped black leather sofa, long pile grey floor rug and large screen TV give the living room a cozy, family, lived-in feel. Following through from the kitchen, the black, yellow, grey color scheme is echoed in the 3-piece Thai artwork hanging above the sofa. The semi-circle balcony was retained but not a plant in sight: “Ah, I have no time!” exclaims Regina. But she plans to upgrade the balcony by replacing the original metal railings with glass to further enhance the view, and then she may feel more encouraged to do a spot of light gardening.
After 34 years as a banker here in Macau, Regina has decided that it’s time now to turn her focus more to projects close to her heart in Portugal.
“We have a small plot of land in Porto which we plan to develop into apartments and a restaurant on the ground floor, and this needs my close supervision,” she explains.
Besides, with both daughters away studying in England, Regina and her husband must surely be feeling the ‘empty-nester’ syndrome and a stronger pull back to Europe.
With all this comes a re-evaluation of their home and a plan to downsize. Never one to shy away from a project, Regina is gathering her energies for yet another renovation on their home – this time converting it back again to two separate units! She intends to sell the larger unit A and keep the small unit B, which after some modifications, will serve well as a pied-à-terre in Macau for visits.
“2018 will be a year of stability for Macau’s property market“. So anticipates Jeff Wong of Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) in Macau, who addressed an audience of inter-chamber members and their guests at this year’s kick off business lunch event for the American Chamber of Commerce in Macau, British Business Association of Macau and the France Macau Chamber of Commerce.
Wong summarized the key elements impacting Macau’s residential market; the negatives being: insufficient land supply, policy uncertainty and possibly higher interest rates, and on the positive side: continued economic growth.
An economist and chartered surveyor by background, involved in real estate for the past 20 years, Wong specializes in investment and project sales and residential marketing consulting. Currently National Director of Capital Market, for JLL Macau, his presentation included a number of fascinating statistics to support his proposition.
Firstly, whatever anyone says, the perception of whether Macau is doing well or badly is all driven by gaming revenues and how they in turn have an impact on the property market. From the high in February 2014 of MOP38 billion, Wong’s figures highlighted the following nose-dive slump to MOP15.9 billion in June 2016, which then picked up for a continuous 17 month year-on-year growth to MOP22.7 billion in December 2017. So there’s definitely a ‘feel-good’ factor that’s come back in the market as a result.
The approximately 10,000 residential sale transactions in 2017 were up slightly from 2016 and almost double that of 2015. By 4Q17, the capital value and rental value of high end residential properties was up 8.8% and 8.4% year-on-year respectively, whereas capital and rental value figures for mass and medium residential were up 5.7% and 8.1%.
The wealth of the Macau people continues to grow; median income of Macau local residents is MOP19,000 per month today, up from under MOP18,000 per month for the previous two years (and interestingly just MOP9,000 in 2008). Unemployment of less than 2% has remained stable for the past six years and the number of imported workers has stayed consistent for the past three years at around 180,000.
Changes in affordability of property over the past six years were examined, comparing 2012 with 2017. Wong’s figures show that the median income is up 46%, but average house prices are up 51%, with properties getting smaller (average net areas reducing by 11%), and prices per square foot going up an average of 70%. The amount of down-payment required by buyers is up 97%.
Some fascinating price-income ratio comparisons in the Pearl River Delta were also provided. Wong illustrated that Macau’s property is still considerably cheaper than its sister cities, with an average payback of 19 years in Macau, 29 years in Guangzhou, 38 years in Hong Kong and 39 years in Shenzhen. Having said that, Macau’s price-income ratio is still up by 73%. Hong Kong (West Kowloon) is up 12%, Shenzhen and Guangzhou have both more than doubled.
In total, 4,313 new residential units were completed between January and November 2017. Pre-sale residential transactions were mostly within the bands of MOP6-9 million and MOP12-14 million. Overall residential sales transactions for the year showed that the majority were priced at between MOP3-6 million.
Looking at the prices for different types of buildings, high-rise against low-rise, the majority of transaction sales were between MOP6-8 million and between MOP3-5 million, respectively.
Size of properties being bought are smaller; back in 2011, the number of transactions, for buildings under five years, including pre-sale, were for an average size unit of 1,130 sq ft. Today the average size unit purchased is about 840 sq ft.
The size mix of new builds has changed dramatically. For the five years between 2009 and 2013, of the number of units under construction, 15% were studios, 12% 1-bedroom, 44% 2-bedrooms and 24% 3-bedrooms. After 2014, new build studios ballooned to 52%. One-bedrooms stayed fairly constant at 16%, but 2-bedrooms and 3-bedrooms dipped to only 14% and 8% respectively. Studios and 1-bedroom units now make up over 68% of new builds.
The implications of this on Macau’s future demographics will mean less extended families living together – or if they are, it will be in older properties. It is anticipated that more local singles and newly married couples will be taking up the new build studios and 1-bedrooms. The challenges will be that a) whether they will be able to afford to buy new given bank mortgage loan restrictions and b) whether they will be able to trade up to a larger unit of the same quality when they start having a family, or have to move back to older more affordable homes.
The implications of this on Macau’s future demographics will mean less extended families living together – or if they are, it will be in older properties. It is anticipated that more local singles and newly married couples will be taking up the new build studios and 1-bedrooms. The challenges will be that a) whether they will be able to afford to buy new given bank mortgage loan restrictions and b) whether they will be able to trade up to a larger unit of the same quality when they start having a family, or have to move back to older more affordable homes.
What of the future supply of residential units? For this year and the next two, studio and 1-bedroom units will continue to make up over 75% of the new supply. For the next 3 years experts consider that there is enough new property coming on the market to meet demand. However beyond that, they note that there is insufficient in the pipeline, which could lead to rising prices again.
At the end of Wong’s presentation several comments were made from the floor. One addressed the lack of future supply, suggesting that the government should focus on supporting urban renewal programmes, and offering building maintenance and renovation subsidies for older properties. Another commented on the restrictions on mortgage loan ratios that make it extremely tough for first time buyers to have the required funds to afford their own housing. Again it was proposed that this segment of the buying market be given assistance through more favorable loan terms.
Photographs: The good ones by Eduardo Martins for Macau Closer. The less good ones by Suzanne Watkinson!
