Macau Urban Renewal Limited (MUR) announced in a statement yesterday that all Macau residents aged 18 or over are now eligible to buy flats in the Macau New Neighbourhood (MNN) residential estate on Zhuhai’s Hengqin island – regardless of whether they own any residential properties in Zhuhai or Macau.
The statement did not say whether there is a ceiling on the number of MNN flats that a Macau resident can buy.
Hitherto, only Macau residents aged at least 18 who did not own any residential property in Zhuhai nor owned more than one residential unit in Macau were eligible to buy an MNN flat.
According to the statement, the “relaxation of eligibility requirements” to buy an MNN flat took effect yesterday.
The statement said that with Hong Kong and Macau having successively implemented new measures for their property markets, i.e., both having lifted all property-market cooling measures, MUR had decided to relax its eligibility requirements to buy an MNN flat, in the wake of the latest changes in the economic and property-market conditions, and after listening to opinions from various segments of Macau’s civil society.
Afterwards, the statement said, MUR applied to the executive committee of the Guangdong-Macau In-depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin for permission to revise the eligibility requirements for the purchase of MNN flats, adding that the zone’s executive committee had “recently” approved the request.
The statement said that Zhuhai Hengqin Macau New Neighbourhood Development Company Limited, an MUR fully-owned subsidiary tasked with carrying out the development of the MNN project, signed an agreement on Monday last week with Hengqin’s respective public entities on amending the eligibility criteria for buying MNN flats.
The MNN project, which got off the ground in 2021, was developed by MUR, which is owned by the Macau government. MNN home sales started on November 28 last year after the project had been fully completed.
The MNN neighbourhood consists of 27 residential towers with 19 to 26 floors each. The 27 MNN towers have a total of 4,279 flats, comprising about 4,000 units for purchase and around 200 units earmarked for highly-qualified professionals for rent only.
The MNN flats are sold at an average price of 30,000 yuan (33,370 patacas) per square metre.
Some 80 percent of the MNN residential units are two-bedroom flats, while the remaining 20 percent are three-bedroom flats. The two-bedroom flats have a gross floor area of about 88 square metres, while the three-bedroom flats have a gross floor area of about 118 square metres.
The two-bedroom flats are being sold for between 2.41 million and 2.63 million yuan, while the three-bedroom flats are being sold for between 3.53 million and 3.71 million yuan.
MUR told reporters early this year that over 1,000 MNN flats had been sold by that time since home sales started on November 28 last year.
Yesterday’s MUR statement did not mention how many MNN flats have been sold so far, but the company said in a recent reply to a written interpellation made by lawmaker-cum-unionist Leong Sun Iok that over 1,000 MNN flats had been sold as of early March.
Leong made the written interpellation in February, after which MUR Chairman Peter Lam Kam Seng made and signed the reply in early March, a copy of which was sent by Leong’s office to the media yesterday.
This photo taken on New Year’s Eve shows vehicles parked outside the Macau New Neighbourhood (MNN) estate in Hengqin.
– Photo: Tony Wong
