Mainland Chinese buyers snap up Hong Kong homes at two-year high

Mainland Chinese buyers snapped up 1,892 Hong Kong homes in April, the fastest pace in two years, spending HK$18.9 billion and accounting for 27.5% of all housing transactions in the city. The surge underscored how cross-border money, not a broad-based local housing boom, is driving much of Hong Kong’s recovery.

The appetite was strongest in the primary market. Mainland buyers purchased 1,032 new homes in April, close to half of all new-home sales, reinforcing a pattern that has favored developers more than the broader resale market. That split matters: a rebound led by mainland capital can lift transaction volumes, but it does little to ease affordability for local households still facing some of Asia’s steepest housing costs.

Hong Kong’s property market has been trying to find its footing since the government scrapped all buy-side tightening measures for residential property on February 28, 2024. At the time, Hong Kong home prices were still down almost 20% from their 2021 peak, and the government’s home price index had fallen for a ninth straight month in January 2024. The policy shift gave sentiment an immediate lift, with the Hang Seng Property index rising 2.4%, but the latest buying wave shows that the recovery has become increasingly dependent on mainland demand.

That dependence is visible in the numbers. Mainland-buyer transactions rose 53% year on year in the first quarter of 2026 to 3,882 units, while spending jumped 93% to HK$42.7 billion. Of that, HK$24.7 billion went into new homes, signaling a clear preference for higher-value properties and newly launched developments. Midland Realty’s March 2026 analysis said mainland-buyer registrations surged 162.8% to 27,702 cases between March 2024 and February 2026, injecting HK$288.4 billion into the market, with more than 60% of that capital flowing into the primary market.

JLL said in December 2025 that Hong Kong’s housing market had turned the corner after a six-year correction that began in late 2019, and forecast mass residential prices would rise about 5% in 2026. But the latest surge suggests the next phase of the recovery is being shaped less by local end-users than by mainland professionals, new arrivals and investors responding to a stronger yuan and rising rents. Benny Sham of Midland Realty said more Chinese professionals working in the city are choosing to buy rather than rent, adding that the trend could continue as rental costs climb. Mainland-related demand has already shown up in recent launches in Tai Wai, Sai Sha and Kai Tak, a sign that Hong Kong’s housing market is being reshaped by cross-border capital as much as by local conditions.