KUALA LUMPUR (March 10): Country Garden Pacificview Sdn Bhd, the master developer of the RM444 billion Forest City in Johor, said today the closure of its sales centres for the project in China is temporary and is in line with the shift in its sales and marketing efforts, which started early this year.

It also dismissed that the closure was a reaction to the Chinese government’s recent crackdown on capital flight.

"We have always planned to sell beyond China and have therefore chosen to bring those plans forward this year," Country Garden Pacificview chief of strategy Yu Runze said in a statement today.

"Country Garden will be taking a holistic approach to our sales and marketing initiatives, and look to present an overview of our projects in China and beyond, for example, our mixed-used development in Hainan and Forest City, among others.

"This will also allow us to sell to foreigners. As such, we had to close our centres to refurbish our sales galleries, upgrade our marketing materials and retrain our sales professionals," he explained.

Yu was responding to a report by the South China Morning Post on Thursday that highlighted Hong Kong-listed Country Garden Holdings Co Ltd's closure of all its sales centres in China for the massive mixed development in Johor.

"Country Garden’s objective has always been to develop and sell homes to anyone, and the Forest City project is a demonstration of this commitment," said Yu.
 
"We initially targeted buyers from China because of our strong reputation in the market. We have successfully delivered 500 township projects in China and a residential project in Australia, so Chinese home owners trust us to create world-class property, and they have also followed us to subsequent projects, be it in China, Australia, Malaysia or elsewhere.
 
"We envisage the Forest City project to be one that will attract buyers from around the world, and are promoting Forest City to prospective buyers from Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea, India, the Middle East, Europe and the US," he added.

Yu also said Forest City has partnered with international property sales consultants such as Edmund Tie & Company, CBRE, Ray White and High Mark Real Estate Brokers to promote the project in key markets in Asia and beyond.

Plans are afoot to set up sales gallery in Vietnam, Myanmar, Taiwan, Dubai and Japan in the coming months.

The South China Morning Post had also quoted a former sales agent of Country Garden’s Malaysia company, Alan Ho, as saying that about 90% of Forest City buyers were from China.