Sun Hung Kai Properties, the world’s biggest developer by market value, paid HK$10.9 billion ($1.4 billion) for a residential site at a public auction in HongKong.

At HK$12,540 per square foot, it is the highest price paid in a government auction in urban Hong Kong since the market peaked in 1997.

Luxury home prices may rise 20 percent this year as the economy expands and supply remains limited, real estate broker CB Richard Ellis said in January.

Sun Hung Kai Properties, the world’s largest developer by market value, raised the price of two penthouses in Hong Kong by 50 percent to a record HK$75,000 ($9,700) a square foot as demand surges for luxury apartments.

The units, situated on the 91st to 93rd floor of the 270-meter (886-feet) towers, will be offered for $38.5 million each.

They each have 4,000 square feet (372 square meters) on three floors, six bedrooms, an outdoor garden and a swimming pool.

“Evangelical Chinese billionaires have created the world’s first biblically proportioned Noah’s Ark which opened this week in Hong Kong.

The Noah’s Ark at Ma Wan Park in Hong Kong is a tourist attraction built by the Kwok brothers (pictured below), who are behind Hong Kong’s largest real estate developer Sun Hung Kai Properties.”

The message in its 450-foot-long hull, its rooftop luxury hotel and 67 pairs of fiberglass animals: “The financial tsunami will be over,” says Spencer Lu, the Kwoks’ project director at Noah’s Ark.