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Foreign, mainland students flock to Hong Kong sparking property demand in education sector

Hong Kong’s bid to become a global education hub is likely to transform the sector as a sustainable source of property demand, with the city…

By Samantha Johnson / September 8, 2026

Hong Kong’s bid to become a global education hub is likely to transform the sector as a sustainable source of property demand, with the city tipped to see around 200,000 non-local students by 2035, according to CBRE.

The city’s international schools are estimated to require enormous additional real estate to accommodate nearly 30,000 to 40,000 non-local students, as the institutions would need to set up 40 to 50 new school campuses.

This could mean up to an extra 1.11 million square metres (12 million square feet) of gross floor area, a study released by the consultancy on Monday showed.

At the tertiary level, with a projected inflow of 150,000 students, universities were likely to expand their academic space by 1.39 million to 2.14 million square metres. Currently, Hong Kong’s 12 institutions that award degrees occupy around 4 million square metres of gross floor area.

Moreover, the student accommodation segment would also need more than 70,000 additional beds to provide living space for these students in about a decade.

“Hong Kong’s education sector is undergoing a structural transformation,” said Marcos Chan, executive director and head of research at CBRE Hong Kong.

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