The well publicised sale of the world’s most overpriced expensive apartment raced around the media in late 2009. The developer, Henderson Land, has been quiet about the identity of the purchaser so how could we dig a bit deeper on this transaction to get more information?

Land search
As we’ve written about before, transactions are recorded in the Land Registry and are listed against the property they relate to. Our first stop is the Land Registry’s IRIS land search website to pay $10 for a land search on the unit.

After a brief search we can see the unit we are interested in:

Let’s take the first property in the list, with Property reference number: D1542132
Address:
DUPLEX FLAT A ON 45TH FLOOR (ALSO KNOWN AS 68TH FLOOR) (LOWER AND UPPER) WITH BALCONY, UTILITY PLATFORM, AIR-CONDITIONING PLANT ROOM AND FLAT ROOF “39 CONDUIT ROAD” NO.39 CONDUIT ROAD HONG KONG

We can purchase and download this search for $10. The first section of the land search document is entitled “Owner Particulars” which shows the current owner(s) of the property:

The current owners are listed as CARRY EXPRESS INVESTMENT LIMITED and NATION SHEEN LIMITED. They own the property as tenants in common in shares of 6,075/10,000 and 3,925/10,000 respectively (a 60.75% : 39.25% split).

The most recent transaction, which is recorded at the very bottom of the document, is an “Agreement for Sale and Purchase with Plans”.

Transaction details of the Sale and Purchase are:
Memorial No.: 09111102590279
Consideration price: $438,942,300.00
Purchaser: NEW PRIME LIMITED (財金有限公司)
Date of Instrument: 15/10/2009

The Memorial number column is the ID number assigned by the Land Registry to this document to track it within their database. This would be an interesting document to read – perhaps it lets us know more about the purchaser’s identity.

Back to IRIS to download the document with Memorial No. 09111102590279. Below is the cover page and the details show we are on the right track.

After reading through the Sales and Purchase Agreement contract we note the following interesting points:

• The Saleable area is 433.90sqm of which the balcony is 5 sqm and the utility platform is 1.5sqm
• Additional areas include 7.86sqm for the bay windows, 31.93sqm for the flat roof and 15.66sqm for the a/c plant room.
• Central A/C in the living and dining rooms with split-type in the bedrooms and all units have a Central Vacuum Cleaning system installed
• Henderson Real Estate Agency Limited acted as agent for both parties. (If this were a typical sales transaction, the agent would receive a cool 2% or $4.39m agency fee)

Payment
The deposit amount paid was $21.9m with two follow up payments of the same amount due in November and December of 2009. The outstanding balance of $373.1m was to be paid within 14 days of the Purchaser being notified in writing that the Occupation Permit has been issued and the Vendor can validly assign the property.

Purchaser
The signatory of this S&P Agreement for the Purchaser was one Tsun Sin Man Samuel (or Qin Shan Wen), on behalf of New Prime Limited. A Google search indicates he is likely the Chairman of Uonlive Corp (previously known as China World Trade Corporation).

Whether this individual is the beneficial owner or not is hard to know for sure, but a company search could help to clarify any other parties involved. If you have any links or information to add, please do so in the comments.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 19th, 2010 and is filed under Landsearch, Transactions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.