There really is no place like home in Covid-19 Hong Kong

Real estate in the territory is running at two speeds – a battered retail and office sector with fortunes tied to the broader economy that contracted 8.9% in the first quarter co-existing with a resilient housing market that seems impervious to the disaster around it.

IF working from home during the pandemic has shown anything, it’s that apartments and houses are our castles, like it or not. Hong Kong is emerging from a semi-lockdown (restaurants open, schools shut, workers everywhere on the home-office spectrum) and it’s clear that investors see refuge in housing, too.

The world’s least-affordable residential prices look likely to keep floating in their own bubble, even as the coronavirus pummels the economy to its worst levels on record.