gjanf
These are back of my beer coaster numbers but it is possible to walk away from owning property in HK even with the company paying it off and lose money. There are some guys around that are still behind from the Asian economic crisis in 1997. Let’s assume you buy a place for HK$7.8M with an average annual interest rate of 3.5% over a term of 15 years. Total interest will be about HK$2.4M and tax will be about HK$1.7M. This leaves a total profit with no capital gains of HK$3.7M. After stamp duty, property taxes, management fees etc, you would only need to have the property market decline about 40% if you bought at the wrong part of the cycle and you are stuffed. It’s happened before and it will happen again.