A housing market expert says property investors are returning to Macao, with non-resident buyers accounting for a large portion of sales. The shift is the result of the SAR government’s lifting of measures imposed to curb property speculation back in 2010, the Macau Daily Times reports.
Roy Ho, director of Centaline Macau and Zhuhai Hengqin Property, said that the volume of properties being sold on the secondary market was up by between 30 and 50 percent since the measures were removed on 12 April – though new builds had seen less of an obvious upturn.
“Generally speaking, the transaction proportion is much higher,” he noted.
[See more: Everything you need to know about buying property in Macao]
According to Ho, foreign students and expatriate workers were among the main buyers. He said that developers were offering discounts to these two groups in order to spur transactions.
Before the reforms, foreign buyers had to pay an additional 10 percent stamp duty. They also had to provide larger deposits than locals. Neither of these rules is in place any longer and foreign investors can now borrow up to 70 percent of a property’s value for their mortgages.
Other measures lifted – in a bid to boost the city’s ailing property market – included a 10 percent stamp duty for the purchase of a third property, and a penalty on owners who sold their property within a two-year-period.
