Hong Kong real estate developer Carol Chow founded Lofter 10 years ago. With more than $1 billion in projects, she’s found a niche in the housing market.
Carol Chow isn’t your typical Hong Kong real estate developer.
Raised in a Kowloon public housing project, the 39-year-old comes from a different world than the city’s billionaire property clans. Yet in just a decade, she has built a company from scratch that’s quickly found its own niche in the market.
Chow’s Lofter Group Ltd. specializes in redeveloping buildings for global institutional investors including Schroders Capital and Singapore’s SC Capital Partners, and now has more than $1 billion in projects under management. In a territory where land is famously scarce, the firm scours sites with run-down buildings that can be bought and made over. It may also start to acquire land at government auctions, putting itself in direct competition with established developers that have held sway for decades.