HK folk's 'good life' homes on the mainland

HONG KONG - The long-repressed domestic goddess in marketing executive Jodie Hui, 37, finally emerged this year.

Her abode of 10 years - a flat in Tsing Yi, an island off New Territories - was inconvenient for friends to get to, frustrating her efforts to organise dinner parties.

That was until the Hong Konger bought a second home in January. It is right next to the Guomao MTR station in Shenzhen's liveliest district Luohu, a two-minute ride from the boundary with Hong Kong.

In her cosy 420 sq ft apartment at Elegant Residence, Ms Hui can hold regular gatherings, inviting friends both in Shenzhen and Hong Kong over for home-cooked meals before they adjourn to a karaoke lounge downstairs.

Simple pleasures like these make her very happy.

"I use this apartment as a base to meet friends," said the singleton, who now splits her time between her homes in Hong Kong and Shenzhen.

Ms Hui is part of a wave of working-class Hong Kongers pursuing what sociologist Maggy Lee calls "the good life", according to a new two-year study on lifestyle migration.

Hong Kongers started buying a second home in neighbouring Guangdong province in the early 1990s, as the Chinese government gradually liberalised its property laws and Hong Kong developers started moving in.

To date, about 500,000 Hong Kongers own property in the province, of whom 200,000 are in boomtown Shenzhen, said Ms Xu Feng, chief research director at the China arm of Hong Kong real estate agency Midland.

Buying homes across the border is hardly an uncommon phenomenon. The British bought holiday houses in rural France - as epitomised by former adman Peter Mayle, who wrote about his experiences in his memoir A Year In Provence. Closer to home,

Singaporeans are trooping into showflats in Iskandar Malaysia. But they are mostly from the affluent upper or middle-income strata.

Dr Lee's research in Shenzhen, Dongguan, Guangzhou, Foshan and Zhuhai found that working-class Hong Kongers have been whipping out their chequebooks as well.

Cramped in small flats - sometimes public housing - in the city, with long work hours and little time to travel, they see in these second homes a form of escape.

"Crossing the border to the mainland for weekend trips enables them to break the routine in their everyday life and to reinvent themselves, however temporarily," said the University of Hong Kong academic.

The Hong Konger can derive enjoyment from just spending time in his or her private space in Shenzhen, or getting VIP treatment at restaurants where a meal costs a fraction of that in Hong Kong, or simply cooking for the family in a fully equipped kitchen.

What's propelling this trend are property prices in Hong Kong, which have more than doubled in the past four years.

In the case of Ms Hui, who draws a monthly salary of HK$20,000 (S$3,300), she certainly would not have been able to afford to entertain in a similar fashion in Hong Kong. She bought her Shenzhen home for 900,000 yuan (S$185,000) including taxes. The same amount would yield her a 147 sq ft studio flat in the sedate Diamond Hill district in Kowloon.

Another catalyst is the slew of cooling measures such as additional stamp duties introduced in the past year, said Midland's Ms Xu. Since then, the number of Hong Kongers viewing Shenzhen property has increased by 10 to 15 per cent, she added. They now comprise 10 per cent of total transactions in the city.

Time is money, so astute developers are wasting no time. And as Shenzhen prices rise due to demand, Hong Kongers are looking further afield within the province.

In recent months, for instance, a new seafront project in Huizhou is being heavily marketed in Hong Kong. Chinese actress Tang Wei, who is popular here, touts the "sunshine and the beach" there in impeccable Cantonese. A shuttle bus transports those interested in day-long tours to the development two hours away.

It seems to have worked: An agent said 30 per cent of buyers are from Hong Kong.

What is key for Hong Kongers is that unlike foreigners, they are treated like mainland Chinese when buying property, said Mr Christopher Dillon, author of mainland property buying guide Landed China.

So while a foreigner has to reside continuously in China for a year before he is eligible to buy an apartment, Hong Kongers can do so instantly. The same treatment is extended to Taiwanese and Macanese.

It had not all been smooth-sailing though. In the earlier years, there were conflicts between Hong Kong buyers and local estate management. Horror stories abounded of shoddy construction work - a new homeowner found that the toilet seat was simply adhered to the floor, without any plumbing connected.

"It took a while to get the kinks out," said Mr Dillon, adding such incidents are rare nowadays.

For Ms Hui, there has certainly been no complaints.

"I'm so comfortable here," she said with a beatific smile.

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