Apartment rents in Hong Kong sink to lowest in almost two years

An employee, right, attends to a customer at a foreign currency exchange store at Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong, China, on Monday, Feb. 17, 2020. Preliminary visitor arrivals data for February show average daily traffic to the city plummeted to fewer than 3,000 people, according to the Hong Kong Tourism Board. Photographer: Paul Yeung/Bloomberg

HONG KONG: Apartment rents in Hong Kong have dropped to the lowest in almost two years as people leave the city and home owners try to lease rather than sell.

Advertised residential prices on a per-square-foot basis are the least since March 2018, data from property agency Spacious show. While the city’s rents have been under pressure since anti-government protests started mid-last year, the spreading coronavirus is also damping demand.