Hong Kong protests prompts Ip Man star to scout for properties in Singapore?

Yen and Wang were not the only ones out shopping in Singapore’s high-end real estate market.

“Some of the Chinese visitors who were here over the past two weeks mentioned that they knew of friends and associates who were planning to come to Singapore during the Golden Week,” says Bruce Lye, managing partner of SRI, a realtor specialising in marketing high-end homes. “It’s one of the reasons they decided to get a head start by locking in their property purchases.”

While high-end malls and luxury hotels in Hong Kong were bereft of crowds in the weekend before Golden Week, Lye says many of his foreign friends visiting Singapore in the same period have complained that they could not get a room in the mid-range to upscale hotels here as they were fully booked. “There are many Chinese and Hong Kong visitors in Singapore this Golden Week,” he adds. “We have a list of at least 13 high-net-worth individuals, the majority of them mainland Chinese, who are in town. Shopping for a property is on their agenda. It will be interesting to see how much stock gets moved this week.”

In September, a Chinese national purchased a 5,662 sq ft unit at Ritz-Carlton Residences Cairnhill Singapore for $20 million ($3,532 psf) in a deal brokered by an agent from SRI.