China | Chasing ghosts

A spectre looms over Hong Kong’s property market

Why mortgage payments in the city can be ghoulishly expensive

Dragon Lodge, Hong Kong
Photograph: SCMP
|HONG KONG

Properties on the Peak, a rich neighbourhood in Hong Kong, are among the world’s most desirable. But nobody lives in Dragon Lodge, an Italianate mansion built in the 1920s. It was abandoned shortly after it sold, for HK$118m ($15m), in 1997. Rumour has it that nuns were beheaded there during the Japanese occupation in the second world war; they haunt the shadowy halls.

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This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “The spectre of lower prices”

From the July 20th 2024 edition

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