Hong Kong’s moribund commercial property market is getting a much needed lifeline. After widespread chatter about Chief Executive Carrie Lam and her council considering elimination of the seven-year-old supplementary stamp duty on commercial property, the city’s top leader made the rumours a reality in her 2020 Policy Address on Wednesday.
Introduced in 2013, the double stamp duty (DSD) — officially the Ad Valorem Duty for Non-Residential Property — was an additional levy on commercial assets, scaled to as high as 8.5 percent on sales of property valued at over HK$21 million ($2.7 million).
“Removal of the double stamp duty will help to improve the transactional volume for commercial properties as we move into 2021, which will also be boosted by pent-up investor demand,” said Hannah Jeong, head of valuation and advisory services at Colliers International. But the agency veteran does not expect removal of the DSD to be a magic bullet.
