A Hong Kong buyer has bucked the real estate market’s weak sentiment by splashing out for a detached house on the city’s south side.

The buyer yesterday paid HK$ 252 million for a 5,051 square feet house in a luxury development in Chung Hung Kok. It is the biggest residential transaction in the Southern district since the government introduced a 15 per cent stamp duty for corporate buyers and non-permanent residents in late October to cool the property market. The measure has kept mainlanders, who had accounted for about 40 per cent of new luxury homes sales, away.