No Sale After All For $57 Million Hong Kong Apartment

Last October we heard about a $57 million Hong Kong apartment. The five-bedroom duplex suite in a building called 39 Conduit Road was, at 6,158 square feet, believed to be Asia's most expensive property per square foot. But now the developer, Henderson Land Development Company Limited, says the deal for the penthouse with the harbor views has collapsed. And the same buyer has walked away from five other apartments. The $57 million penthouse was listed as being on the 68th floor but was actually on the 45th, the second tallest in this 46-story building. The top floor was numbered as the 88th, the numbers were used to attract Chinese buyers who are often superstitious about lucky numbers.

The developer created a building of 66 units total ranging from 2,800 to 7,600 square feet. Henderson says a total of 20 deals in the tower have been canceled representing a total of 2.67 billion Hong Kong dollars (nearly $343 million). The failure of the sales are seen as a sign that Hong Kong's real estate market is cooling.